Catholic Metanarrative: March 2009

Friday, March 27, 2009

Article: Letter of His Holiness Pope Benedict XVI to the Bishops of the Catholic Church

POPE BENEDICT XVI

The remission of the excommunication of the four Bishops consecrated in 1988 by Archbishop Lefebvre without a mandate of the Holy See has for many reasons caused, both within and beyond the Catholic Church, a discussion more heated than any we have seen for a long time.

Dear Brothers in the Episcopal Ministry!

The remission of the excommunication of the four Bishops consecrated in 1988 by Archbishop Lefebvre without a mandate of the Holy See has for many reasons caused, both within and beyond the Catholic Church, a discussion more heated than any we have seen for a long time. Many Bishops felt perplexed by an event which came about unexpectedly and was difficult to view positively in the light of the issues and tasks facing the Church today. Even though many Bishops and members of the faithful were disposed in principle to take a positive view of the Pope's concern for reconciliation, the question remained whether such a gesture was fitting in view of the genuinely urgent demands of the life of faith in our time. Some groups, on the other hand, openly accused the Pope of wanting to turn back the clock to before the Council: as a result, an avalanche of protests was unleashed, whose bitterness laid bare wounds deeper than those of the present moment. I therefore feel obliged to offer you, dear Brothers, a word of clarification, which ought to help you understand the concerns which led me and the competent offices of the Holy See to take this step. In this way I hope to contribute to peace in the Church.

An unforeseen mishap for me was the fact that the Williamson case came on top of the remission of the excommunication. The discreet gesture of mercy towards four Bishops ordained validly but not legitimately suddenly appeared as something completely different: as the repudiation of reconciliation between Christians and Jews, and thus as the reversal of what the Council had laid down in this regard to guide the Church's path. A gesture of reconciliation with an ecclesial group engaged in a process of separation thus turned into its very antithesis: an apparent step backwards with regard to all the steps of reconciliation between Christians and Jews taken since the Council -- steps which my own work as a theologian had sought from the beginning to take part in and support. That this overlapping of two opposed processes took place and momentarily upset peace between Christians and Jews, as well as peace within the Church, is something which I can only deeply deplore. I have been told that consulting the information available on the internet would have made it possible to perceive the problem early on. I have learned the lesson that in the future in the Holy See we will have to pay greater attention to that source of news. I was saddened by the fact that even Catholics who, after all, might have had a better knowledge of the situation, thought they had to attack me with open hostility. Precisely for this reason I thank all the more our Jewish friends, who quickly helped to clear up the misunderstanding and to restore the atmosphere of friendship and trust which -- as in the days of Pope John Paul II -- has also existed throughout my pontificate and, thank God, continues to exist.

Another mistake, which I deeply regret, is the fact that the extent and limits of the provision of 21 January 2009 were not clearly and adequately explained at the moment of its publication. The excommunication affects individuals, not institutions. An episcopal ordination lacking a pontifical mandate raises the danger of a schism, since it jeopardizes the unity of the College of Bishops with the Pope. Consequently the Church must react by employing her most severe punishment -- excommunication -- with the aim of calling those thus punished to repent and to return to unity. Twenty years after the ordinations, this goal has sadly not yet been attained. The remission of the excommunication has the same aim as that of the punishment: namely, to invite the four Bishops once more to return. This gesture was possible once the interested parties had expressed their recognition in principle of the Pope and his authority as Pastor, albeit with some reservations in the area of obedience to his doctrinal authority and to the authority of the Council. Here I return to the distinction between individuals and institutions. The remission of the excommunication was a measure taken in the field of ecclesiastical discipline: the individuals were freed from the burden of conscience constituted by the most serious of ecclesiastical penalties. This disciplinary level needs to be distinguished from the doctrinal level. The fact that the Society of Saint Pius X does not possess a canonical status in the Church is not, in the end, based on disciplinary but on doctrinal reasons. As long as the Society does not have a canonical status in the Church, its ministers do not exercise legitimate ministries in the Church. There needs to be a distinction, then, between the disciplinary level, which deals with individuals as such, and the doctrinal level, at which ministry and institution are involved. In order to make this clear once again: until the doctrinal questions are clarified, the Society has no canonical status in the Church, and its ministers -- even though they have been freed of the ecclesiastical penalty -- do not legitimately exercise any ministry in the Church.

In light of this situation, it is my intention henceforth to join the Pontifical Commission "Ecclesia Dei" -- the body which has been competent since 1988 for those communities and persons who, coming from the Society of Saint Pius X or from similar groups, wish to return to full communion with the Pope -- to the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith. This will make it clear that the problems now to be addressed are essentially doctrinal in nature and concern primarily the acceptance of the Second Vatican Council and the post-conciliar magisterium of the Popes. The collegial bodies with which the Congregation studies questions which arise (especially the ordinary Wednesday meeting of Cardinals and the annual or biennial Plenary Session) ensure the involvement of the Prefects of the different Roman Congregations and representatives from the world's Bishops in the process of decision-making. The Church's teaching authority cannot be frozen in the year 1962 -- this must be quite clear to the Society. But some of those who put themselves forward as great defenders of the Council also need to be reminded that Vatican II embraces the entire doctrinal history of the Church. Anyone who wishes to be obedient to the Council has to accept the faith professed over the centuries, and cannot sever the roots from which the tree draws its life.

I hope, dear Brothers, that this serves to clarify the positive significance and also the limits of the provision of 21 January 2009. But the question still remains: Was this measure needed? Was it really a priority? Aren't other things perhaps more important? Of course there are more important and urgent matters. I believe that I set forth clearly the priorities of my pontificate in the addresses which I gave at its beginning. Everything that I said then continues unchanged as my plan of action. The first priority for the Successor of Peter was laid down by the Lord in the Upper Room in the clearest of terms: "You… strengthen your brothers" (Lk 22:32). Peter himself formulated this priority anew in his first Letter: "Always be prepared to make a defence to anyone who calls you to account for the hope that is in you" (1 Pet 3:15). In our days, when in vast areas of the world the faith is in danger of dying out like a flame which no longer has fuel, the overriding priority is to make God present in this world and to show men and women the way to God. Not just any god, but the God who spoke on Sinai; to that God whose face we recognize in a love which presses "to the end" (cf. Jn 13:1) -- in Jesus Christ, crucified and risen. The real problem at this moment of our history is that God is disappearing from the human horizon, and, with the dimming of the light which comes from God, humanity is losing its bearings, with increasingly evident destructive effects.

Leading men and women to God, to the God who speaks in the Bible: this is the supreme and fundamental priority of the Church and of the Successor of Peter at the present time. A logical consequence of this is that we must have at heart the unity of all believers. Their disunity, their disagreement among themselves, calls into question the credibility of their talk of God. Hence the effort to promote a common witness by Christians to their faith -- ecumenism -- is part of the supreme priority. Added to this is the need for all those who believe in God to join in seeking peace, to attempt to draw closer to one another, and to journey together, even with their differing images of God, towards the source of Light -- this is interreligious dialogue. Whoever proclaims that God is Love "to the end" has to bear witness to love: in loving devotion to the suffering, in the rejection of hatred and enmity -- this is the social dimension of the Christian faith, of which I spoke in the Encyclical Deus Caritas Est.

At times one gets the impression that our society needs to have at least one group to which no tolerance may be shown; which one can easily attack and hate. And should someone dare to approach them -- in this case the Pope -- he too loses any right to tolerance; he too can be treated hatefully, without misgiving or restraint.

So if the arduous task of working for faith, hope and love in the world is presently (and, in various ways, always) the Church's real priority, then part of this is also made up of acts of reconciliation, small and not so small. That the quiet gesture of extending a hand gave rise to a huge uproar, and thus became exactly the opposite of a gesture of reconciliation, is a fact which we must accept. But I ask now: Was it, and is it, truly wrong in this case to meet half-way the brother who "has something against you" (cf. Mt 5:23ff.) and to seek reconciliation? Should not civil society also try to forestall forms of extremism and to incorporate their eventual adherents -- to the extent possible -- in the great currents shaping social life, and thus avoid their being segregated, with all its consequences? Can it be completely mistaken to work to break down obstinacy and narrowness, and to make space for what is positive and retrievable for the whole? I myself saw, in the years after 1988, how the return of communities which had been separated from Rome changed their interior attitudes; I saw how returning to the bigger and broader Church enabled them to move beyond one-sided positions and broke down rigidity so that positive energies could emerge for the whole. Can we be totally indifferent about a community which has 491 priests, 215 seminarians, 6 seminaries, 88 schools, 2 university-level institutes, 117 religious brothers, 164 religious sisters and thousands of lay faithful? Should we casually let them drift farther from the Church? I think for example of the 491 priests. We cannot know how mixed their motives may be. All the same, I do not think that they would have chosen the priesthood if, alongside various distorted and unhealthy elements, they did not have a love for Christ and a desire to proclaim him and, with him, the living God. Can we simply exclude them, as representatives of a radical fringe, from our pursuit of reconciliation and unity? What would then become of them?

Certainly, for some time now, and once again on this specific occasion, we have heard from some representatives of that community many unpleasant things -- arrogance and presumptuousness, an obsession with one-sided positions, etc. Yet to tell the truth, I must add that I have also received a number of touching testimonials of gratitude which clearly showed an openness of heart. But should not the great Church also allow herself to be generous in the knowledge of her great breadth, in the knowledge of the promise made to her? Should not we, as good educators, also be capable of overlooking various faults and making every effort to open up broader vistas? And should we not admit that some unpleasant things have also emerged in Church circles? At times one gets the impression that our society needs to have at least one group to which no tolerance may be shown; which one can easily attack and hate. And should someone dare to approach them -- in this case the Pope -- he too loses any right to tolerance; he too can be treated hatefully, without misgiving or restraint.

Dear Brothers, during the days when I first had the idea of writing this letter, by chance, during a visit to the Roman Seminary, I had to interpret and comment on Galatians 5:13-15. I was surprised at the directness with which that passage speaks to us about the present moment: "Do not use your freedom as an opportunity for the flesh, but through love be servants of one another. For the whole law is fulfilled in one word: ‘You shall love your neighbour as yourself'. But if you bite and devour one another, take heed that you are not consumed by one another." I am always tempted to see these words as another of the rhetorical excesses which we occasionally find in Saint Paul. To some extent that may also be the case. But sad to say, this "biting and devouring" also exists in the Church today, as expression of a poorly understood freedom. Should we be surprised that we too are no better than the Galatians? That at the very least we are threatened by the same temptations? That we must always learn anew the proper use of freedom? And that we must always learn anew the supreme priority, which is love? The day I spoke about this at the Major Seminary, the feast of Our Lady of Trust was being celebrated in Rome. And so it is: Mary teaches us trust. She leads us to her Son, in whom all of us can put our trust. He will be our guide -- even in turbulent times. And so I would like to offer heartfelt thanks to all the many Bishops who have lately offered me touching tokens of trust and affection, and above all assured me of their prayers. My thanks also go to all the faithful who in these days have given me testimony of their constant fidelity to the Successor of Saint Peter. May the Lord protect all of us and guide our steps along the way of peace. This is the prayer that rises up instinctively from my heart at the beginning of this Lent, a liturgical season particularly suited to interior purification, one which invites all of us to look with renewed hope to the light which awaits us at Easter.

With a special Apostolic Blessing, I remain

Yours in the Lord,

BENEDICTUS PP. XVI

From the Vatican, 10 March 2009

ACKNOWLEDGEMENT

Pope Benedict XVI. "Letter of His Holiness Pope Benedict XVI to the Bishops of the Catholic Church concerning the remission of the excommunication of the four bishops consecrated by Archbishop Lefebvre." March 10, 2009.

THE AUTHOR

Pope Benedict XVI has written Jesus of Nazareth,Questions and Answers, Journey to Easter: Spiritual Reflections for the Lenten Season, The Apostles: The Origin of the Church and Their Co-Workers, God's Word: Scripture, Tradition, Office, Jesus, the Apostles and the Early Church, The End of Time?: The Provocation of Talking about God, Truth and Tolerance: Christian Belief and World Religions, Salt of the Earth: An Exclusive Interview on the State of the Church at the End of the Millennium, God and the World: Believing and Living in Our Time, In the Beginning: A Catholic Understanding of the Story of Creation and the Fall, The Spirit of the Liturgy, The Ratzinger Report: An Exclusive Interview on the State of the Church, Introduction to the Catechism of the Catholic Church, Introduction to Christianity, Called to Communion: Understanding the Church Today, Milestones: Memoirs 1927-1977, Behold the Pierced One, and God Is Near Us: The Eucharist, the Heart of Life.

Article: The Crucifixion

VENERABLE JOHN HENRY CARDINAL NEWMAN

Unless we have a true love of Christ, we are not His true disciples; and we cannot love Him unless we have heartfelt gratitude to Him; and we cannot duly feel gratitude, unless we feel keenly what He suffered for us.

"He was oppressed, and He was afflicted, yet He opened not His mouth; He is brought as a lamb to the slaughter, and as a sheep before her shearers is dumb, so He opened not His mouth." Isaiah liii. 7.

St. Peter makes it almost a description of a Christian, that he loves Him whom he has not seen; speaking of Christ, he says, "whom having not seen, ye love; in whom, though now ye see Him not, yet believing, ye rejoice with joy unspeakable and full of glory." Again he speaks of "tasting that the Lord is gracious." (1 Pet. i. 8; ii. 3.) Unless we have a true love of Christ, we are not His true disciples; and we cannot love Him unless we have heartfelt gratitude to Him; and we cannot duly feel gratitude, unless we feel keenly what He suffered for us. I say it seems to us impossible, under the circumstances of the case, that any one can have attained to the love of Christ, who feels no distress, no misery, at the thought of His bitter pains, and no self-reproach at having through his own sins had a share in causing them.

I know quite well, and wish you, my brethren, never to forget, that feeling is not enough; that it is not enough merely to feel and nothing more; that to feel grief for Christ's sufferings, and yet not to go on to obey him, is not true love, but a mockery. True love both feels right, and acts right; but at the same time as warm feelings without religious conduct are a kind of hypocrisy, so, on the other hand, right conduct, when unattended with deep feelings, is at best a very imperfect sort of religion. And at this time of year especially are we called upon to raise our hearts to Christ, and to have keen feelings and piercing thoughts of sorrow and shame, of compunction and of gratitude, of love and tender affection and horror and anguish, at the review of those awful sufferings whereby our salvation has been purchased.

Let us pray God to give us all graces; and while, in the first place, we pray that He would make us holy, really holy, let us also pray Him to give us the beauty of holiness, which consists in tender and eager affection towards our Lord and Saviour: which is, in the case of the Christian, what beauty of person is to the outward man, so that through God's mercy our souls may have, not strength and health only, but a sort of bloom and comeliness; and that as we grow older in body, we may, year by year, grow more youthful in spirit.

You will ask, how are we to learn to feel pain and anguish at the thought of Christ's sufferings? I answer, by thinking of them, that is, by dwelling on the thought. This, through God's mercy, is in the power of every one. No one who will but solemnly think over the history of those sufferings, as drawn out for us in the Gospels, but will gradually gain, through God's grace, a sense of them, will in a measure realize them, will in a measure be as if he saw them, will feel towards them as being not merely a tale written in a book, but as a true history, as a series of events which took place. It is indeed a great mercy that this duty which I speak of, though so high, is notwithstanding so level with the powers of all classes of persons, learned and unlearned, if they wish to perform it. Any one can think of Christ's sufferings, if he will; and knows well what to think about. "It is not in heaven that thou shouldst say, Who shall go up for us to heaven and bring it to us, that we may hear it and do it? Neither is it beyond the sea that thou shouldst say, Who shall go over the sea for us? ... but the word is very nigh unto thee;" very nigh, for it is in the four Gospels, which, at this day at least, are open to all men. All men may read or hear the Gospels, and in knowing them, they will know all that is necessary to be known in order to feel aright; they will know all that any one knows, all that has been told us, all that the greatest saints have ever had to make them full of love and sacred fear.

Now, then, let me make one or two reflections by way of stirring up your hearts and making you mourn over Christ's sufferings, as you are called to do at this season.

First, as to these sufferings you will observe that our Lord is called a lamb in the text; that is, He was as defenceless, and as innocent, as a lamb is. Since then Scripture compares Him to this inoffensive and unprotected animal, we may without presumption or irreverence take the image as a means of conveying to our minds those feelings which our Lord's sufferings should excite in us. I mean, consider how very horrible it is to read the accounts which sometimes meet us of cruelties exercised on brute animals. Does it not sometimes make us shudder to hear tell of them, or to read them in some chance publication which we take up? At one time it is the wanton deed of barbarous and angry owners who ill-treat their cattle, or beasts of burden; and at another, it is the cold-blooded and calculating act of men of science, who make experiments on brute animals, perhaps merely from a sort of curiosity. I do not like to go into particulars, for many reasons; but one of those instances which we read of as happening in this day, and which seems more shocking than the rest, is, when the poor dumb victim is fastened against a wall, pierced, gashed, and so left to linger out its life. Now do you not see that I have a reason for saying this, and am not using these distressing words for nothing? For what was this but the very cruelty inflicted upon our Lord? He was gashed with the scourge, pierced through hands and feet, and so fastened to the Cross, and there left, and that as a spectacle. Now what is it moves our very hearts, and sickens us so much at cruelty shown to poor brutes? I suppose this first, that they have done no harm; next, that they have no power whatever of resistance; it is the cowardice and tyranny of which they are the victims which makes their sufferings so especially touching. For instance, if they were dangerous animals, take the case of wild beasts at large, able not only to defend themselves, but even to attack us; much as we might dislike to hear of their wounds and agony, yet our feelings would be of a very different kind; but there is something so very dreadful, so satanic in tormenting those who never have harmed us, and who cannot defend themselves, who are utterly in our power, who have weapons neither of offence nor defence, that none but very hardened persons can endure the thought of it. Now this was just our Saviour's case: He had laid aside His glory, He had (as it were) disbanded His legions of Angels, He came on earth without arms, except the arms of truth, meekness, and righteousness, and committed Himself to the world in perfect innocence and sinlessness, and in utter helplessness, as the Lamb of God. In the words of St. Peter, "Who did no sin, neither was guile found in His mouth; who, when He was reviled, reviled not again; when He suffered, He threatened not; but committed Himself to Him that judgeth righteously." (1 Pet. ii. 22, 23.) Think then, my brethren, of your feelings at cruelty practised upon brute animals, and you will gain one sort of feeling which the history of Christ's Cross and Passion ought to excite within you. And let me add, this is in all cases one good use to which you may turn any accounts you read of wanton and unfeeling acts shown towards the inferior animals; let them remind you, as a picture, of Christ's sufferings. He who is higher than the Angels, deigned to humble Himself even to the state of the brute creation, as the Psalm says, "I am a worm, and no man; a very scorn of men, and the outcast of the people." (Ps. xxii. 6.)
Take another example, and you will see the same thing still more strikingly. How overpowered should we be, nay not at the sight only, but at the very hearing of cruelties shown to a little child, and why so? for the same two reasons, because it was so innocent, and because it was so unable to defend itself. I do not like to go into the details of such cruelty, they would be so heart-rending. What if wicked men took and crucified a young child? What if they deliberately seized its poor little frame, and stretched out its arms, nailed them to a cross bar of wood, drove a stake through its two feet, and fastened them to a beam, and so left it to die? It is almost too shocking to say; perhaps, you will actually say it is too shocking, and ought not to be said. O, my brethren, you feel the horror of this, and yet you can bear to read of Christ's sufferings without horror; for what is that little child's agony to His? and which deserved it more? which is the more innocent? which the holier? was He not gentler, sweeter, meeker, more tender, more loving, than any little child? Why are you shocked at the one, why are you not shocked at the other?

Or take another instance, not so shocking in its circumstances, yet introducing us to another distinction, in which Christ's passion exceeds that of any innocent sufferers, such as I have supposed. When Joseph was sent by his father to his brethren on a message of love, they, when they saw him, said, "Behold, this dreamer cometh; come now, therefore, and let us slay him." (Gen. xxxvii. 19, 20.) They did not kill him, however, but they put him in a pit in spite of the anguish of his soul, and sold him as a slave to the Ishmaelites, and he was taken down into a foreign country, where he had no friends. Now this was most cruel and most cowardly in the sons of Jacob; and what is so especially shocking in it is, that Joseph was not only innocent and defenceless, their younger brother whom they ought to have protected, but besides that, he was so confiding and loving, that he need not have come to them, that he would not at all have been in their power, except for his desire to do them service. Now, whom does this history remind us of but of Him concerning whom the Master of the vineyard said, on sending Him to the husbandmen, "They will reverence My Son?" (Matt. xxi. 37-39.) "But when the husbandmen saw the Son, they said among themselves, This is the Heir, come, let us kill Him, and let us seize on His inheritance. And they caught Him, and cast Him out of the vineyard, and slew Him." Here, then, is an additional circumstance of cruelty to affect us in Christ's history, such as is suggested in Joseph's, but which no instance of a brute animal's or of a child's sufferings can have; our Lord was not only guiltless and defenceless, but He had come among His persecutors in love.
And now, instead of taking the case of the young, innocent, and confiding, let us take another instance which will present to us our Lord's passion under another aspect. Let us suppose that some aged and venerable person whom we have known as long as we could recollect any thing, and loved and reverenced, suppose such a one, who had often done us kindnesses, who had taught us, who had given us good advice, who had encouraged us, smiled on us, comforted us in trouble, whom we knew to be very good and religious, very holy, full of wisdom, full of heaven, with grey hairs and awful countenance, waiting for Almighty God's summons to leave this world for a better place; suppose, I say, such a one whom we have ourselves known, and whose memory is dear to us, rudely seized by fierce men, stripped naked in public, insulted, driven about here and there, made a laughing-stock, struck, spit on, dressed up in other clothes in ridicule, then severely scourged on the back, then laden with some heavy load till he could carry it no longer, pulled and dragged about, and at last exposed with all his wounds to the gaze of a rude multitude who came and jeered him, what would be our feelings? Let us in our mind think of this person or that, and consider how we should be overwhelmed and pierced through and through by such a hideous occurrence.

But what is all this to the suffering of the holy Jesus, which we bear to read of as a matter of course! Only think of Him, when in His wounded state, and without garment on, He had to creep up the ladder, as He could, which led Him up the cross high enough for His murderers to nail Him to it; and consider who it was that was in that misery. Or again, view Him dying, hour after hour bleeding to death; and how? in peace? no; with His arms stretched out, and His face exposed to view, and any one who pleased coming and staring at Him, mocking Him, and watching the gradual ebbing of His strength, and the approach of death. These are some of the appalling details which the Gospels contain, and surely they were not recorded for nothing; but that we might dwell on them.

Do you think that those who saw these things had much heart for eating or drinking or enjoying themselves? On the contrary, we are told that even "the people who came together to that sight, smote their breasts and returned." (Luke xxiii. 48.) If these were the feelings of the people, what were St. John's feelings, or St. Mary Magdalene's, or St. Mary's, our Lord's blessed mother? Do we desire to be of this company? do we desire, according to His own promise, to be rather blessed than the womb that bare Him, and the paps that He sucked? do we desire to be as His brother, and sister, and mother? Then, surely, ought we to have some portion of that mother's sorrow! When He was on the cross and she stood by, then, according to Simeon's prophecy, "a sword pierced through her soul." (Luke ii. 35.) What is the use of our keeping the memory of His cross and passion, unless we lament and are in sorrow with her? I can understand people who do not keep Good Friday at all; they are indeed very ungrateful, but I know what they mean; I understand them. But I do not understand at all, I do not at all see what men mean who do profess to keep it, yet do not sorrow, or at least try to sorrow. Such a spirit of grief and lamentation is expressly mentioned in Scripture as a characteristic of those who turn to Christ. If then we do not sorrow, have we turned to Him? "I will pour upon the house of David," says the merciful Saviour Himself, before He came on earth, speaking of what was to come, "upon the inhabitants of Jerusalem, the spirit of grace and of supplications; and they shall look upon Me whom they have pierced, and they shall mourn for Him, as one mourneth for his only son, and shall be in bitterness for Him, as one that is in bitterness for his first-born." (Zech. Xii. 10.)

One thing I will add: -- if there be persons here present who are conscious to themselves that they do not feel the grief which this season should cause them, who feel now as they do at other times, let them consider with themselves whether perhaps this defect does not arise from their having neglected to come to church, whether during this season or at other times, as often as they might. Our feelings are not in our own power; God alone can rule our feelings; God alone can make us sorrow, when we would but cannot sorrow; but will He, if we have not diligently sought Him according to our opportunities in this house of grace? I speak of those who might come to prayers more frequently, and do not. I know well that many cannot come. I speak of those who can, if they will. Even if they come as often as they are able, I know well they will not be satisfied with their own feelings; they will be conscious even then that they ought to grieve more than they do; of course none of us feels the great event of this day as he ought, and therefore we all ought to be dissatisfied with ourselves. However, if this is not our own fault, we need not be out of heart, for God will mercifully lead us forward in His own time; but if it arises from our not coming to prayers here as often as we might, then our coldness and deadness are our own fault, and I beg you all to consider that that fault is not a slight one. It is said in the Book of Revelation, "Behold He cometh with clouds; and every eye shall see Him, and they also which pierced Him: and all kindreds of the earth shall wail because of Him." (Rev. i. 7.) We, my, brethren, every one of us, shall one day rise from our graves, and see Jesus Christ; we shall see Him who hung on the cross, we shall see His wounds, we shall see the marks in His hands, and in His feet, and in His side. Do we wish to be of those, then, who wail and lament, or of those who rejoice? If we would not lament at the sight of Him then, we must lament at the thought of Him now. Let us prepare to meet our God; let us come into His Presence whenever we can; let us try to fancy as if we saw the Cross and Him upon it; let us draw near to it; let us beg Him to look on us as He did on the penitent thief, and let us say to Him, "Lord remember me when Thou comest in Thy kingdom." (Luke xxiii. 42.)

Let this be added to the prayer, my brethren, with which you are about to leave this church. After I have given the blessing, you will say to yourselves a short prayer. Well; fancy you see Jesus Christ on the cross, and say to Him with the penitent thief, "Lord, remember me when Thou comest in Thy kingdom;" that is, "Remember me, Lord, in mercy, remember not my sins, but Thine own cross; remember Thine own sufferings, remember that Thou sufferedst for me, a sinner; remember in the last day that I, during my lifetime, felt Thy sufferings, that I suffered on my cross by Thy side. Remember me then, and make me remember Thee now."

ACKNOWLEDGEMENT

Venerable John Henry Cardinal Newman. "The Crucifixion." In Parochial and Plain Sermons vol. VII (London & New York: Longman, Green, and Company, 1891): 1496-1502.

This article reprinted with permission from Bob Elder, editor of the Newman Reader, an online resource of the writings of Cardinal Newman. The purpose of Newman Reader (NR) is to make the written works of Cardinal Newman available in as complete and accessible a manner as resources allow. Bob Elder may be contacted here. All rights reserved.

THE AUTHOR

Venerable John Henry Newman was born in London, 21 February 1801, and died Birmingham, 11 August 1890. As Vicar of St. Mary's Oxford he exerted a profound spiritual influence on the Church of England. Joining the Catholic Church in 1845 he founded Oratories of St. Philip Neri in Birmingham and London, was the first rector of the Catholic University in Dublin, and was made Cardinal by Pope Leo XIII in 1879. Through his published writings and private correspondence he created a greater understanding of the Catholic Church and its teachings, helping many persons with their religious difficulties. At his death he was praised for his unworldliness, humility, and prayerful contact with the invisible world. He was declared Venerable on 22 January 1991. John Henry Cardinal Newman is the author of many books including, Parochial and Plain Sermons, Essay on the Development of Christian Doctrine, An Essay in Aid of a Grammar of Assent, Difficulties of Anglicans, The Idea of a University, Fifteen Sermons Preached Before the University of Oxford Between A.D. 1826 and 1843, and Apologia Pro Vita Sua.

Wednesday, March 25, 2009

Wednesday Liturgy: Blessings at Holy Communion

ROME, MARCH 24, 2009 (Zenit.org).- Answered by Legionary of Christ Father Edward McNamara, professor of liturgy at the Regina Apostolorum university.

Q: In America, the custom of giving blessings to people who are unable to receive Communion is growing rapidly. In my parish, in Texas, it appears that the practice of extraordinary ministers of holy Communion tracing a cross onto the head of small children and visitors has become more important than the Eucharist itself. Many have commented to me that it is so "unwelcoming" not to do this. I have pointed out in liturgy meetings that neither the Rite of Blessings nor the Roman Missal envisions this practice. As a deacon I am greatly bothered by this trend, but my "parish administrator" is hesitant to change the habit of the previous pastor. In fact, at weddings and funerals this behavior is encouraged for non-Catholics by our presiding priests. I would greatly appreciate reading or hearing your opinion/suggestions on what appears to be an insert into the Eucharistic rite and perhaps a disservice to our ability to create a true desire and understanding for receiving Christ at Mass in
holy Communion. -- D.I., Texas

A: We have addressed this topic on a couple of occasions (May 10 and 24, 2005) in which we expressed misgivings regarding this practice. At the same time, we pointed out that the legal situation of the usage is murky with bishops making statements falling on both sides of the argument.

Recently, however, a document has appeared in several Internet sources which indicate that the Holy See is tending toward a negative view of the practice. The document is a letter (Protocol No. 930/08/L) dated Nov. 22, 2008, sent in response to a private query and signed by Father Anthony Ward, SM, undersecretary of the Congregation for Divine Worship.

As a private reply the letter is not yet a norm with legal force and, as it makes clear, is not a definitive reply. However, it provides some valuable pointers on the legitimacy of this practice and the mind of the Holy See regarding it.

The letter said that "this matter is presently under the attentive study of the Congregation," so "for the present, this dicastery wishes to limit itself to the following observations":

"1. The liturgical blessing of the Holy Mass is properly given to each and to all at the conclusion of the Mass, just a few moments subsequent to the distribution of Holy Communion.

"2. Lay people, within the context of Holy Mass, are unable to confer blessings. These blessings, rather, are the competence of the priest (cf. Ecclesia de Mysterio, Notitiae 34 (15 Aug. 1997), art. 6, § 2; Canon 1169, § 2; and Roman Ritual De Benedictionibus (1985), n. 18).

"3. Furthermore, the laying on of a hand or hands -- which has its own sacramental significance, inappropriate here -- by those distributing Holy Communion, in substitution for its reception, is to be explicitly discouraged.

"4. The Apostolic Exhortation Familiaris Consortio n. 84, 'forbids any pastor, for whatever reason or pretext even of a pastoral nature, to perform ceremonies of any kind for divorced people who remarry'. To be feared is that any form of blessing in substitution for communion would give the impression that the divorced and remarried have been returned, in some sense, to the status of Catholics in good standing.

"5. In a similar way, for others who are not to be admitted to Holy Communion in accord with the norm of law, the Church's discipline has already made clear that they should not approach Holy Communion nor receive a blessing. This would include non-Catholics and those envisaged in can. 915 (i.e., those under the penalty of excommunication or interdict, and others who obstinately persist in manifest grave sin)."

Although the letter as such is not legally binding, some of its points, such as No. 2 on the prohibition of lay ministers giving liturgical blessings, are merely restatements of existing law and as such are already obligatory.

Nor did the letter deal with all possible circumstances, such as the case of small children mentioned by our reader. Because of this, some dioceses have taken a prudent wait-and-see attitude regarding these blessings. For example, the liturgy office of the Archdiocese of Atlanta, while reiterating that "the Archdiocese has no policy prohibiting the use of blessings at the time of Holy Communion," prudently suggested to pastors that it "may be appropriate to avoid promoting the practice until a more definitive judgment regarding its value in the liturgical celebration can be obtained."

Wednesday Liturgy: Follow-up: Eucharist in Sacristy Safe

ROME, MARCH 24, 2009 (Zenit.org).- Answered by Legionary of Christ Father Edward McNamara, professor of liturgy at the Regina Apostolorum university.

In the wake of our March 10 comments on the importance of the altar of repose, a priest from Arizona wrote: "Thank you for clarifying what is meant by the rubrics for Holy Thursday. The only challenge is that since no hosts are consecrated on Good Friday we need to reserve a very large amount to accommodate the faithful who participate in the Liturgy of the Lord's Passion. Most repositories, and even tabernacles, are too small to reserve the Blessed Sacrament. Also, most repositories are portable and not secured as the tabernacle is required to be. Hence, the sacristy closet. What say you?"

Another reader asked: "At the end of the Holy Thursday service there is a procession of the Blessed Sacrament. Up until a few years ago the procession ended at the tabernacle in our church. Our worship committee and liturgical director decided to build a resting place or shrine (for lack of a better description) for the Blessed Sacrament. This is located in the middle of the gym floor in our grade school next door. So now our procession goes through the church and then outside and over to the gym. My question: Is this liturgically correct? We have a perfectly good church and a tabernacle. I have a problem (as do others) with Jesus being left at center court. Not to mention the complaints I've received from people who have no way to kneel because of the hard gym floor."

Taking both questions together, I would suggest that most of these difficulties can be resolved over time and with careful planning. Since these difficulties will return every year, a parish could invest in a suitably sized portable tabernacle and large sacred vessels. In some cases, such as the Good Friday celebration, it is also an opportunity to reuse the large ciboria that were common before the present (and commendable) preference for administrating hosts consecrated at the same Mass. These large ciboria may still be held in storage somewhere.

It might also be an opportunity to purchase and restore to sacred use the liturgical appointments such as tabernacles and large candlesticks that come from closed-down churches.

Since the Holy Thursday procession represents the movement from the Lord's Supper to Gethsemane, the place for reservation should not be in the habitual tabernacle unless the church has a separate Blessed Sacrament chapel. It may be a side altar or some other place within the church or another suitable location nearby. It should be as beautiful as possible and decorated with flowers, lamps and candles. Many places also include portable olive trees and wheat sheaves to create a suitable ambience for prayer and reflection. It is also common to avoid excessive electric lighting and to drape the space around the tabernacle with carpet and fine cloth.

Therefore, it is not against liturgical law to set up the altar in the school gymnasium, provided that the place is decorated in a manner worthy of the Blessed Sacrament. It is important that at least some pews or kneelers be provided so as to allow for adoration. If the altar of repose is in the same church, then only the ministers and a representative of the faithful need take part in the procession while the others remain in their pews.

Because of its temporary status, and the fact that the Eucharist is usually accompanied almost all the time, the altar of repose need not be secured like other tabernacles. As mentioned last time, if there is a real danger of theft, then the Eucharist may be temporarily withdrawn after adoration.

What if so many people attend the Good Friday services that far more hosts are required than can be reserved in the altar of repose? In that case, it is possible to reserve just one large ciborium in the altar-of-repose tabernacle and reserve the others in a suitable place that should remain locked until the moment of communion. In this way, all adoration would center around the altar of repose. If the other place is the sacristy, then strict silence should be observed out of respect.

After communion on Good Friday the remaining hosts may only be used for the sick or, on Holy Saturday, as viaticum. These are not returned to the altar of repose but are placed in some other suitable and worthy place that remains locked. For example, if the church has a Blessed Sacrament chapel, then the hosts could be placed there but the chapel should be curtained and inaccessible until after the Easter Vigil Mass. It could also be some other space in the sacristy that can be suitably cordoned off.

After the Good Friday service a temporary altar of repose is usually dismantled and stored away. The flowers which customarily adorn it may be used for the Easter Vigil.

From the point of view of the sign, it is best not to use the hosts consecrated on Holy Thursday until Easter Monday so that as far as possible the faithful may receive hosts consecrated at the Easter Masses.

Friday, March 20, 2009

Article: Preserving Marriage in Substance, Not Just Name

RYAN T. ANDERSON

Should the state treat marriages the same way it treats baptisms and bar mitzvahs -- as purely religious practices properly left to religious institutions?

That's what some are now arguing. If the state didn't create marriage, they reason, then religion must have; and the state shouldn't endorse sectarian religious beliefs. But their argument is profoundly flawed.

This can of worms is in the news because of the debate generated by California's Proposition 8, a state constitutional amendment enacted last November to restore to the law -- after its invalidation by California's supreme court -- the conjugal conception of marriage as the union of a man and a woman. Legal scholar Doug Kmiec (who initially endorsed the proposition) now argues that it "is oblivious to the differing faith practices of our citizens." "Marriage is of religious origin," he claims, and "it should remain there." He observes that "some faiths accept same-sex relationships and others profoundly object." And he argues that "as a matter of religious freedom, both must be accommodated." His solution is to "separate state and church," which, he insists, can occur only if the state "employs non-marriage terminology for all couples" -- gay or straight -- while religious institutions continue using the term "marriage" however they see fit.

Kmiec's proposal has gotten some traction. In oral arguments last Friday in a challenge to Proposition 8, Justice Ming W. Chin referred to Kmiec's argument, asking the lawyers on both sides of the case whether his solution would be acceptable. Meanwhile, the Los Angeles Times ran an editorial endorsing the idea:

The argument frequently raised against same-sex marriage is that marriage represents a special bond, traditionally and biblically reserved for a man and woman. But under this approach, religions and other belief groups could continue to sanction marriage in accordance with their definitions, and the state could concern itself with the civil rights and responsibilities of two people who decide to share life, home, family and the remote.

Kmiec and the editors of the Times join a long series of activists who insist on framing the same-sex marriage debate as a clash between civil liberties and religion. But that's not what it is. This debate is about the substantive differences between same-sex marriage and traditional marriage, whatever they are called. The question is whether the substance of the traditional institution should be endorsed both by voluntary associations (including houses of worship) and by the state as the ideal union of adults and the ideal environment for childbearing and childrearing.

Much more than share a television remote, spouses play a crucial public role in any healthy society. Much more than the private union of consenting adults, marriage is vitally important for the well-being of our nation's children. That's why Kmiec's characterization of marriage is unsound. While he is right to note that the state did not create marriage, he is wrong to claim that religion did. Marriage exists as a natural, pre-political, and pre-religious institution based upon human nature and its fulfillment. States and religions rightly recognize and support marriage, but it precedes both. Kmiec, who writes as a Catholic, fails to notice that his argument contradicts the Catholic faith, which teaches that you don't need the Book of Genesis -- or any divine revelation -- to know that man and woman are sexually differentiated and that marriage is founded on the bodily union of sexually complementary spouses. Though Catholics believe that Jesus elevated this natural relationship to participate sacramentally in the divine Trinitarian life, this elevation does nothing to eliminate or obscure marriage's status as a natural human institution. That is why the Catholic church has always regarded the marriages of nonbelievers as true and valid.

The anthropological record affirms that marriage is a natural institution, as scholars from the right and the left gathered by the Institute for American Values were able to agree:

Marriage exists as a natural, pre-political, and pre-religious institution based upon human nature and its fulfillment. States and religions rightly recognize and support marriage, but it precedes both.

Marriage exists in virtually every known human society. . . . At least since the beginning of recorded history, in all the flourishing varieties of human cultures documented by anthropologists, marriage has been a universal human institution. As a virtually universal human idea, marriage is about the reproduction of children, families and society. . . . Marriage across societies is a publicly acknowledged and supported sexual union which creates kinship obligations and sharing of resources between men, women, and the children that their sexual union may produce.

So if supporters of Proposition 8 aren't seeking special protection for sectarian religious views, what do they want? Simply put, to preserve a sound understanding of marriage, for the well-being of both spouses and the children their union may produce. As Prop 8 supporters see it, the institution of marriage exists to bring a man and a woman together in a sexual relationship that is publicly recognized and approved because of its unique aptness for the bearing and rearing of children. Marriage attaches a father to his children -- and to his children's mother -- and fulfills the societal need for children to have the love and care of both mother and father. This institution is the natural response to human sexual embodiment as male and female, to human longing for bonding and intimacy, and to human dependency and need (especially in view of the fact that human newborns, unlike newborns of many other species, require many years of nurture before reaching self-sufficiency). That is why a well-ordered society protects and encourages marriage in the first place.

Redefining (or "undefining") marriage so that the state comes to embrace same-sex relationships as equally beneficial would deprive a class of children of their birthright to be raised by their natural mother and father. It would advance the notion that children do not need both a mother and a father, let alone their own mother and father. Same-sex parenting would send the message that parenting is not naturally gendered. There would be nothing known as "mothering" or "fathering," only unisex "parenting." Both culture and law would be unable to stress the important role that fathers play in their children's lives without giving offense to "alternative" families in which there simply is no father. This would have disastrous effects for our nation's children. Even the left-leaning research organization Child Trends affirms the importance of married mothers and fathers to child well-being. In a research brief summing up the scholarly consensus, they write:

Research clearly demonstrates that family structure matters for children, and the family structure that helps the most is a family headed by two biological parents in a low-conflict marriage. Children in single-parent families, children born to unmarried mothers, and children in stepfamilies or cohabiting relationships face higher risks of poor outcomes. . . . There is thus value for children in promoting strong, stable marriages between biological parents.

No matter what, the law will teach. Either it will teach that marriage exists as a natural institution with the public purpose of joining one man and one woman as husband and wife, ready to become father and mother to their children; or it will teach that marriage (or whatever we now call it) is just a creation of the state meant to recognize adults' private sexual choices and fulfill their desires. Neither option is neutral.

Regardless of the name given to it, the state's promotion of any pairing of adults as the functional equivalent of marriage would eliminate in law and weaken in culture the ideal that children should be raised by their married, natural parents. The public meaning and purpose of marriage would be ended; marriage would be redefined as merely a private relationship of consenting adults, and parenthood as merely a legal status applied to those who choose to take responsibility for a child. The social function marriage plays in society -- providing children with their natural mother and father -- would be lost.

No longer seeing the point of public ratification of a strictly personal relationship, many people would cease to get or stay married. As the marriage rate fell, we would also see higher rates of divorce, cohabitation, and non-marital childbearing. As marriage came to be understood as simply a private relationship, the sense of its importance would erode. Traditional marriage would become one lifestyle and family choice among many -- one that could not legitimately be given a privileged status in law. That would eliminate the ideal of marriage as the place to bear and rear children. We've already seen these developments in several European nations.

To take Kmiec's reasoning to its logical conclusion entails state recognition of polygamy and polyamory. Some, no doubt, will cry that this is just extremist slippery-slope reasoning, but the conclusion follows strictly from Kmiec's principle: If some religions favor polygamous and polyamorous relationships, and if the state is supposed to be neutral among competing voluntary arrangements of adults, then on what grounds could the state refuse to recognize polygamous and polyamorous civil unions?

ACKNOWLEDGEMENT

Ryan T. Anderson. "Preserving Marriage in Substance, Not Just Name." National Review (March 11, 2009).

This article is reprinted with permission from Ryan T. Anderson and National Review. To subscribe to the National Review write P.O. Box 668, Mount Morris, Ill 61054-0668 or phone 815-734-1232.

THE AUTHOR

Ryan T. Anderson is editor of Public Discourse: Ethics, Law, and the Common Good. Previously he was the assistant editor of First Things and a Fellow of the Phillips Foundation. His articles have appeared in First Things, the Weekly Standard, National Review, the New Atlantis, the Claremont Review of Books, Touchstone, Books and Culture, Christianity Today, and the Human Life Review. Anderson is an alumnus of Princeton University, where he graduated Phi Beta Kappa and magna cum laude. Ryan Anderson is on the advisory board of the Catholic Education Resource Center.

Article: The Persistence of Ideology

THEODORE DALRYMPLE

Grand ideas still drive history.

Ideological politics: the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem
salutes Bosnian Muslim recruits to the Waffen-SS
in 1943.

In 1960, the sociologist Daniel Bell published The End of Ideology, in which he argued that ideology -- understood in the sense of a coherent, single-minded philosophical outlook or system of abstractions intended as much as a lever to change society as a description to explain it -- was dead, at least in the West, and in the United States in particular. A combination of democracy and mass prosperity had "solved" the political question that had agitated humanity since the time of Plato. There were to be no more grand and transformative, if woefully erroneous, ideas; all that remained was public administration, with, at most, squabbles over small details of policy. The new version of the old saw, mens sana in corpore sano, a sound mind in a sound body, was a capitalist economy in a liberal democratic polity. That was the lesson of history.

In 1989, as the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe were reforming -- indeed collapsing -- so rapidly that it became clear that Communism could not long survive anywhere in Europe, Francis Fukuyama went one step beyond Bell and wrote an essay for The National Interest titled "The End of History?" In this soon-to-be-famous article, later expanded into a book, Fukuyama suggested that the end of ideology that Bell saw in the West was now global. By "the end of history," he did not mean the end of events, of course; one team or another would continue to win the Super Bowl, and there might yet be wars between national rivals. But broadly, history had given its lesson and mankind had taken it. Henceforth, those who resisted the march of liberal democracy were like the Luddites, those English workers at the beginning of the Industrial Revolution who smashed machines, blaming them for destroying the independent livelihoods of workers at home.

At the end of his essay, however, Fukuyama -- more concerned to understand the world than to change it, by contrast with Marx -- implicitly raised the question of the role of ideology in the world's moral economy. With no ideological struggles to occupy their minds, what will intellectuals have to do or think about? Virtually by definition, they like to address themselves to large and general questions, not small and particular ones: as Isaiah Berlin would say, by temperament, they are hedgehogs, who know one large thing, not foxes, who know many small things. Fukuyama admitted that he would miss ideology, if only as something to oppose. "I have ambivalent feelings for the civilization that has been created in Europe since 1945, with its North Atlantic and Asian offshoots," he wrote. "Perhaps this very prospect of centuries of boredom at the end of history will serve to get history started once again."

As it turned out, of course, we did not have long (let alone centuries) to suffer existential boredom. Our dogmatic slumbers -- to use Kant's phrase for the philosophic state from which reading David Hume roused him -- had barely begun when a group of young fanatics flew commercial airliners into the Twin Towers and the Pentagon, thus demonstrating that pronouncements of the death of both ideology and history were somewhat premature.

In truth, we should have known it, or at least guessed it, without needing to be reminded. Fukuyama's concluding sentences contain a hint of the psychological function that ideology plays. It is not just disgruntlement with the state of the world that stimulates the development and adoption of ideologies. After all, disgruntlement with society there has always been and always will be. Dissatisfaction is the permanent state of mankind, at least of civilized mankind. Not every dissatisfied man is an ideologist, however: for if he were, there would hardly be anyone who was not. Yet ideology, at least as a mass phenomenon, is a comparatively recent development in human history.

The attractions of ideology are not so much to be found in the state of the world -- always lamentable, but sometimes improving, at least in certain respects -- but in states of mind.

Who, then, are ideologists? They are people needy of purpose in life, not in a mundane sense (earning enough to eat or to pay the mortgage, for example) but in the sense of transcendence of the personal, of reassurance that there is something more to existence than existence itself. The desire for transcendence does not occur to many people struggling for a livelihood. Avoiding material failure gives quite sufficient meaning to their lives. By contrast, ideologists have few fears about finding their daily bread. Their difficulty with life is less concrete. Their security gives them the leisure, their education the need, and no doubt their temperament the inclination, to find something above and beyond the flux of daily life.

If this is true, then ideology should flourish where education is widespread, and especially where opportunities are limited for the educated to lose themselves in grand projects, or to take leadership roles to which they believe that their education entitles them. The attractions of ideology are not so much to be found in the state of the world -- always lamentable, but sometimes improving, at least in certain respects -- but in states of mind. And in many parts of the world, the number of educated people has risen far faster than the capacity of economies to reward them with positions they believe commensurate with their attainments. Even in the most advanced economies, one will always find unhappy educated people searching for the reason that they are not as important as they should be.

One of the first to notice the politicization of intellectuals was the French writer Julien Benda, whose 1927 La trahison des clercs -- "the treason of the clerks," with "clerk" understood in its medieval sense as an educated person distinct from the uneducated laity -- gave a phrase to educated discourse. Today, people most frequently use the phrase to signify the allegiance that intellectuals gave to Communism, despite the evident fact that the establishment of Communist regimes led everywhere and always to a decrease in the kind of intellectual freedom and respect for individual rights that intellectuals claimed to defend.

Benda meant something much wider by it, though support for Communism would have come under his rubric: the increasing tendency of intellectuals to pursue lines of thought not for the sake of truth, or for guiding humanity sub specie aeternitatis, but for the sake of attaining power by adopting, justifying, and manipulating the current political passions of sections of humanity, whether national, racial, religious, or economic. The political passions that Benda most feared when he wrote his book were nationalism, xenophobia, and anti-Semitism, which then had plenty of intellectual apologists, and which indeed soon proved cataclysmic in their effects; but really he was defending the autonomy of intellectual and artistic life from political imperatives.

That ideological ways of thinking have survived the collapse of Communism in Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union would not have surprised Benda. The collapse did severely reduce Marxism's attractiveness, and despite decades of attempts by intellectuals to dissociate the doctrine's supposed merits from the horrors of the Soviet system, it was only natural that many people believed that the death of Marxism meant the death of ideology itself. But as Benda might have predicted, what resulted instead was the balkanization of ideology -- the emergence of a wider choice of ideologies for adoption by those so inclined.

The most obvious example of an ideology that came into prominence -- or better, prominently into our consciousness -- after Communism's fall was Islamism. Because of its emphasis on returning to Islamic purity, and its apparent -- indeed noisy -- rejection of modernity, most people failed to notice how modern a phenomenon Islamism was, not just in time but in spirit. This is evident from reading just one of Islamism's foundational texts: Sayyid Qutb's Milestones, first published in 1964. The imprint of Marxism-Leninism is deep upon it, especially the Leninist component.

Because of its emphasis on returning to Islamic purity, and its apparent -- indeed noisy -- rejection of modernity, most people failed to notice how modern a phenomenon Islamism was, not just in time but in spirit.

Qutb starts with cultural criticism that some might find eerily prescient. "The leadership of mankind by Western man is now on the decline, not because Western culture has become poor materially or because its economic and military power has become weak," he writes. "The period of the Western system has come to an end primarily because it is deprived of those life-giving values which enabled it to be the leader of mankind." Since, according to Qutb, those "life-giving values" cannot come from the Eastern Bloc, he thinks (like Juan Domingo Perón, the Argentinean dictator, and Tony Blair, the former British prime minister) that a Third Way must exist: which, he says, can only be Islam.

Just as in Marx only the proletariat bears the whole of humanity's interests, so in Qutb only Muslims (true ones, that is) do. Everyone else is a factionalist. In Qutb's conception, the state withers away under Islam, just as it does -- according to Marx -- under Communism, once the true form is established. In Marx, the withering away comes about because there are no sectional material interests left that require a state to enforce them; in Qutb, there is no sectional interest left once true Islam is established because everyone obeys God's law without the need for interpretation and therefore for interpreters. And when all obey God's law, no conflict can arise because the law is perfect; therefore there is no need for a state apparatus.

One finds a unity of theory and praxis in both Qutb's Islamism and Marxism-Leninism. "Philosophy and revolution are inseparable," said Raya Dunayevskaya, once Trotsky's secretary and a prominent American Marxist (insofar as such can be said to have existed). And here is Qutb: "Thus these two -- preaching and the movement -- united, confront ‘the human situation' with all the necessary methods. For the achievement of freedom of man on earth -- of all mankind throughout the earth -- it is necessary that these methods should work side by side."

Like Lenin, Qutb thought that violence would be necessary against the ruling class (of bourgeois in Lenin's case, unbelievers in Qutb's).

Like Lenin, Qutb thought that violence would be necessary against the ruling class (of bourgeois in Lenin's case, unbelievers in Qutb's): "Those who have usurped the authority of God and are oppressing God's creatures are not going to give up their power merely through preaching." Again like Lenin, Qutb believed that until human authority disappeared, the leader's authority must be complete. Referring to "the Arab" of the Meccan period -- an age whose moral qualities he wants to restore -- Qutb says: "He was to be trained to follow the discipline of a community which is under the direction of a leader, and to refer to this leader in every matter and to obey his injunctions, even though they might be against his habit or taste." Not much there with which Lenin could have disagreed. The British Stalinist historian Eric Hobsbawm wrote of himself: "The Party had the first, or more precisely, the only real claim on our lives. . . . Whatever it had ordered, we would have obeyed."

Qutb is as explicit as Lenin that his party should be a vanguard and not a mass party, for only a vanguard will prove sufficiently dedicated to bring about the revolution. And like Leninism, Qutb's Islamism is dialectical:

[Islam] does not face practical problems with abstract theories, nor does it confront various stages with unchangeable means. Those who talk about Jihaad in Islam and quote Qur'anic verses do not take into account this aspect, nor do they understand the nature of the various stages through which the movement develops, or the relationship of the verses revealed at various occasions with each stage.

Compare this with Lenin's Left-Wing Communism, an Infantile Disorder:

Right doctrinairism persisted in recognizing only the old forms, and became utterly bankrupt, for it did not notice the new content. Left doctrinairism persists in the unconditional repudiation of certain old forms, failing to see that the new content is forcing its way through all and sundry forms, that it is our duty as Communists to master all forms, to learn how, with the maximum rapidity, to supplement one form with another, to substitute one for another, and to adapt our tactics to any such change that does not come from our class or from our efforts.

There are many other parallels between Leninism and Qutb's Islamism, among them the incompatibility of each with anything else, entailing a fight to the finish supposedly followed by permanent bliss for the whole of mankind; a tension between complete determinism (by history and by God, respectively) and the call to intense activism; and the view that only with the installation of their systems does Man become truly himself. For Qutb's worldview, therefore, the term Islamo-Leninism would be a more accurate description than Islamofascism.

Feminists continued to see every human problem as a manifestation of patriarchy, civil rights activists as a manifestation of racism, homosexual-rights activists as a manifestation of homophobia, anti-globalists as a manifestation of globalization, and radical libertarians as a manifestation of state regulation.

Qutb was a strange man: he never married, for example, because (so he claimed) he found no woman of sufficient purity for him. You wouldn't need to be Freud to find the explanation suspect, or to find his reaction to Greeley, Colorado, in 1950, where he spent time on a scholarship -- he saw it as a hotbed of unrestrained vice -- somewhat hysterical, a cover for something seething deeply and disturbingly inside him. Devotion to an ideology can provide an answer of sorts to personal problems, and since personal problems are common, it isn't surprising that a number of people choose ideology as the solution.

Ideological thinking is not confined to the Islamists in our midst. The need for a simplifying lens that can screen out the intractabilities of life, and of our own lives in particular, springs eternal; and with the demise of Marxism in the West, at least in its most economistic form, a variety of substitute ideologies have arisen from which the disgruntled may choose.

Most started life as legitimate complaints, but as political reforms dealt with reasonable demands, the demands transformed themselves into ideologies, thus illustrating a fact of human psychology: rage is not always proportionate to its occasion but can be a powerful reward in itself. Feminists continued to see every human problem as a manifestation of patriarchy, civil rights activists as a manifestation of racism, homosexual-rights activists as a manifestation of homophobia, anti-globalists as a manifestation of globalization, and radical libertarians as a manifestation of state regulation.

How delightful to have a key to all the miseries, both personal and societal, and to know personal happiness through the single-minded pursuit of an end for the whole of humanity! At all costs, one must keep at bay the realization that came early in life to John Stuart Mill, as he described it in his Autobiography. He asked himself:

"Suppose that all your objects in life were realized; that all the changes in institutions and opinions which you are looking forward to, could be effected at this very instant: would this be a great joy and happiness to you?" And an irrepressible self-consciousness distinctly answered, "No!" At this my heart sank within me: the whole foundation on which my life was constructed fell down. All my happiness was to have been found in the continual pursuit of this end. The end had ceased to charm, and how could there ever again be any interest in the means? I seemed to have nothing left to live for.

This is the question that all ideologists fear, and it explains why reform, far from delighting them, only increases their anxiety and rage. It also explains why traditional religious belief is not an ideology in the sense in which I am using the term, for unlike ideology, it explicitly recognizes the limitations of earthly existence, what we can expect of it, and what we can do by our own unaided efforts. Some ideologies have the flavor of religion; but the absolute certainty of, say, the Anabaptists of Münster, or of today's Islamists, is ultimately irreligious, since they claimed or claim to know in the very last detail what God requires of us.

The most popular and widest-ranging ideology in the West today is environmentalism, replacing not only Marxism but all the nationalist and xenophobic ideologies that Benda accused intellectuals of espousing in the 1920s. Now, no one who has suffered respiratory difficulties because of smog, or seen the effects of unrestrained industrial pollution, can be indifferent to the environmental consequences of man's activities; pure laissez-faire will not do. But it isn't difficult to spot in environmentalists' work something more than mere concern with a practical problem. Their writings often show themselves akin to the calls to repentance of seventeenth-century divines in the face of plague epidemics, but with the patina of rationality that every ideology needs to disguise its true source in existential angst.

For example, a recent column in the Guardian, by the environmental campaigner George Monbiot, carried the headline the planet is now so vandalised that only total energy renewal can save us. Monbiot, it is true, does not offer us heaven on earth if we follow his prescriptions; only the bare -- and by no means certain, for "we might have left it too late" -- avoidance of total biological annihilation. But behind Monbiot's urgency, even hysteria, one senses a deep lust for power. He cannot really believe what he says, for starters. "Do we want to be remembered," he asks rhetorically, "as the generation that saved the banks but let the biosphere collapse?" If it is really true that we must either have "total energy renewal" or die, however, we cannot be remembered as the generation that let the biosphere collapse, for if we let it collapse, ex hypothesi no one will be around to remember us. This reminds me of patients I used to see who would threaten suicide, in the clear expectation of a long life ahead, unless someone did what they wanted. And though Monbiot says that it is uncertain that anything we do now will make any difference, he nevertheless proposes that every human being on the earth follow his prescriptions.

The environmentalist ideology threatens to make serious inroads into the rule of law in Britain. This past September, six environmentalists were acquitted of having caused $50,000 worth of damage to a power station -- not because they did not do it but because four witnesses, including a Greenlander, testified to the reality of global warming.

One recalls the disastrous 1878 jury acquittal in St. Petersburg of Vera Zasulich for the attempted assassination of General Trepov, on the grounds of the supposed purity of her motives. The acquittal destroyed all hope of establishing the rule of law in Russia and ushered in an age of terrorism that led directly to one of the greatest catastrophes in human history.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENT

Theodore Dalrymple. "The Persistence of Ideology." City Journal (Winter, 2009).

City Journal is published by the Manhattan Institute, a think tank whose mission is to develop and disseminate new ideas that foster greater economic choice and individual responsibility.

THE AUTHOR

Theodore Dalrymple is a former psychiatrist and prison doctor. He writes a column for the London Spectator, contributes frequently to the Daily Telegraph, is a contributing editor of the Manhattan Institute's City Journal. He lives in France and is the author of Not With a Bang But a Whimper: The Politics and Culture of Decline, In Praise of Prejudice: The Necessity of Preconceived Ideas, Our Culture, What's Left of It: The Mandarins and the Masses, Life at the Bottom: The Worldview That Makes the Underclass, and So Little Done.

Article: Fourteen Easy Ways to Improve the Liturgy

ARLENE OOST-ZINNER AND JEFFREY TUCKER

Boredom during the liturgy is something all Catholics have felt from time to time, and it’s never justifiable.

No matter how mundane the architecture, how dull the homily, or how bad the music, what's taking place on the altar is a miraculous sacrifice that gives us the grace for salvation. That reality should be enough to keep our attention.

And yet boredom is a reality that good liturgy can help fight. Many parishes try to do so by inventing every manner of new enticement: brighter and larger banners, forced attempts to create an upbeat environment of friendliness and commuity, big bowls of incense carried by special ministers, and Donahue-style homiletics.

The attempt to jazz up the liturgy usually takes the form of musical enhancements and nearly always means more instruments and rhythms drawn from popular music. The rationale isn't complicated. Liturgists are frustrated that people don't get as excited about religion as they do about the pop divas and music videos, and they conclude that they need ever more musical pyrotechnics to make the difference.

But these approaches often backfire since the argument for them is flawed at its root. Community feeling and fun are fine, but if the liturgy doesn't offer a setting conducive to prayer and the contemplation of eternal mysteries, it has failed its first aesthetic aim.

In any case, Catholics can't compete with the local evangelical community centers for inspiring a toe-tapping community feeling. The latest Gallup poll of Catholics shows that weekly Mass attendance (45 percent do so) continues to slip, and for the first time has slipped behind Protestant churches (48 percent). The defectors from the Roman rite include those who flee to indults and Eastern liturgies or just drop out.

There are many reasons for this (demographic, cultural, and theological) and liturgists don't deserve all the blame. Yet the decline in the desire to attend Mass coincides with the de-emphasis on solemnity and the advance of mundane art forms in liturgy -- the popularization of music being the most conspicuous shift. People may say they love to hold hands, dance, and tap their toes at Mass, but this wears thin over time and eventually undermines the rationale for steady devotion. In fact, a 1981-1989 Notre Dame Study of Catholic Parish Life concluded that unrelenting attempts to get people to sing -- especially attempts that employ guitars -- actually increase boredom.

There are, however, ways to break with routine and inspire steadfastness and personal attachment to the liturgy. What follows are 14 very simple steps for repairing the weaknesses that mar many U.S. Catholic liturgies. Professional liturgists resist them because of the prevailing bias against anything that smacks of a pre–Vatican II sensibility. Nonetheless, the following suggestions are born of experience and a conviction that the first aim of liturgy is to aid inner reflection.

The suggestions below are simple and costless. They need not be implemented all at once. Small changes week by week will make a huge difference over time.

1. Turn down the volume.

It's hard to imagine this today, but Christian liturgy thrived for 1,950 years without microphones, electronic keyboards, amplifiers, mixers, sound technicians, and surround-sound speakers. These days, conventional guidebooks on liturgy emphasize "proclaiming" and broadcasting one's voice. Cantors use microphones as if they're music-video performers.

Beyond just being heard, the goal of all these contraptions and behaviors is to make the liturgy ever louder. The results are more often than not earsplitting, creating a sort of stupor. People feel that they're being imposed upon. Most of this, of course, comes about in reaction against the traditional use of the sotto voce -- the under voice -- which has been derided by modern liturgists as silence or whispering so that the people couldn't hear what was going on. Ironically, experts in the advertising world have found that the low voice actually draws out the attention of the listener.

The virtue of silence has been rediscovered in recent years, with numerous statements by Pope John Paul II and Vatican officials praising its ability to convey meaning in a noisy world. The musical counterpart to silence is not in-your-face pop but distant sounds of contemplation. Turn down the mikes and sing as if the human voice alone is responsible for filling the space. This will diminish the electronic presence in the liturgy and increase the God-given one as a means through which we are worshiping Him.

2. Chant for a prelude.

If you've ever been to an evangelical service, you know that the ten minutes prior to the service are social time. For Catholics, on the other hand, it's a time for prayer and preparation. Keyboard music is common during this time, but imagine something different: simple Latin chant, sung calmly, without affectation, with silence between verses. The simple sounds inspire prayer. A common objection is that people can't understand the words. Yet this isn't the time for pedagogy. It is a time for reflection, to begin to hear the voice of angels who speak in an unfamiliar tongue. The meaning is conveyed in the line of notes. The holy sounds remind people entering the church that they're in a holy place.

3. Curb the announcements.

If you've ever been to an evangelical service, you know that the ten minutes prior to the service are social time. For Catholics, on the other hand, it's a time for prayer and preparation.

In an age when the secular world lays claim on most of our time, making a few announcements has become a pastoral necessity. Sunday Mass is often the only opportunity a pastor has to inform his flock concerning parish and community life. Few are lucky enough to have schedules that permit them to go to daily Mass, much less have their children attend Catholic schools, and gone are the days where the parish or church plays a central role in the life of the village.

That being the reality, it's wise to adhere closely to the General Instruction of the Roman Missal's directive, inserting announcements after the liturgy of the Eucharist and before the dismissal, where they have the least chance of interrupting the framework of prayer set up by the liturgy. Welcoming statements from cantors or others before the procession even begins have nothing to do with the rite itself and are most likely utterances contrived for the purpose of artificially engaging the attention of the congregation. Announcements should not be made before Mass begins, save concerning matters absolutely necessary to the people's understanding of that particular Mass itself or other issues prudentially suggested by the pastor.

Mass doesn't begin because a cantor gets up and proclaims when, where, and how it is to happen. Mass begins when the priest enters the church, with or without a cross bearer, book bearer, lector, or deacon.

4. Choose plain, traditional hymns for the processional.

The first Christian hymns were Psalms, the text of which was already 500 years old when first used, and the melodies handed down from Jewish and Greek traditions. The principle then is the same today: Hymns should bespeak the long tradition of the faith, whether in Latin or in English, in form or in style. Liturgical music that mimics the sound of secular music should be left outside the church.

Singable hymns with familiar meters and cadences will tie members of the congregation together in adoration and prayer and to the experience of the whole body of Christ, in all times and all places. Liturgical music exclusively tied to current times and styles cannot accomplish this. More importantly, the sights and sounds of the Mass, although communal in one sense, must ultimately point the individual conscience to the mystery unfolding on the altar.

Processional music can also employ the choir alone, a stately piece of polyphony that lets people put down their hymnbooks and watch as the celebrant and altar servers walk forward carrying the crucifix. People should not be so busy with their hands and eyes that they don't notice this beautiful sight. In any case, liturgists make a great mistake in believing that people come to Mass only because they want to sing or that active participation can only take one form.

5. Sing the Kyrie.

One of the earliest and most recognizable parts of the Mass is not in Latin but Greek: the Kyrie. It has long been a living symbol of the unity of Eastern and Western Christendom. And yet for all the bits of music in the Roman Rite, the "Lord, Have Mercy" is most often said, not sung, by the priest and answered by the people. This beautiful passage of the penitential rite begins and is over in less than a few seconds.

The Kyrie seems to have taken on a diminished role in the liturgy, but is it too much to ask that a bit more time be taken in this beautiful expression of penance? If active participation in singing is what we desire, the Kyrie can be easily sung by even the least-musical priest or cantor and answered by the faithful. It can be sung in the original Greek. Everyone knows the words. By introducing new music settings according to the liturgical season, variation can be brought to the Mass. It serves at the outset as a reminder of why we have gathered at Mass as a community.

6. Choose a plainer Gloria.

So many thousands of settings of the Gloria are available today that it's a wonder that most parishes use pop versions filled with frippery and faux exuberance. An about-face is in order toward the simpler settings that can be easily learned and sung by all. A simple, English version can tap into traditional, chant-like sensibilities and do much to restore dignity and beauty to this song of praise.

A timeless Latin Gloria remains unmatched for the purpose of praising God in the liturgy. If your parish is one where a Latin ordinary is feared, as is the case in many parishes across the country, there's still something that can be done. Attempting the Gloria in Latin can be part of your reformist plan, but it's best to start on a small scale. Congregations can be easily overwhelmed when faced with something the length of the Gloria. The Latin will come in time, should you choose to keep working toward it.

An English Gloria may well fit the needs of the congregation on most occasions. Not to be forgotten, however, is that the General Instruction does permit a Gloria sung by the choir alone. You might want to exercise this option and do a plain Latin Gloria on certain feast days only, or perhaps even pull out all of the stops and do a polyphonic version, if rehearsal time and resources permit.

7. Fix the Psalm.

St. John Chrysostom reports that the Christians sang the Psalms unceasingly, and it was the earliest part of Scripture translated into Latin. Their centrality in Christian worship cannot be overestimated. The development of the sung Psalter is central to the development of all Christian music and music itself. What has happened to the Psalms today? Many settings published today sound like miniature versions of jazz ballads, and they're preprinted in the missalettes, giving the impression that these are an ecclesiastical requirement (they're not).

The goal might be the restoration of the Latin Psalter (via the Graduale or the Simplex), but that simply isn't viable at most parishes today, nor is any English rendering of the elaborate Gregorian chant readily available. What is possible is that they be done in radically reduced melodic form, without strange intervals or leaps. A simple line consisting of just a few notes is a fitting transition to using psalm tones or something more elaborate. At first, it might seem intimidating, even downright frightening, to abandon the printed line of music. The method is to sense the need for solemnity, and let the ear guide you.

The Psalm should begin not with an instrument but a confident single voice. His or her line of notes should be simple enough to be repeated by the people. The verses themselves should not be sung by the entire choir (which makes them sound muddy) but, again, by a single voice, who should think of it as a sung text. That means the singer must enunciate clearly and modulate the voice in a way that uses the space well.

8. The Offertory should be a time of preparation.

During the offertory, the bread and wine are brought forward to prepare us for the Eucharistic Prayer and the Consecration. The music therefore should not overshadow what follows but rather point to the coming sacrifice and prepare us mentally and spiritually.

Something quiet and beautiful (again, employing the human voice) is the way. Have the congregation sing a simple hymn, beginning with accompaniment if necessary, allowing the final verse or two to be sung a capella. The keyboard might be of assistance in getting people to sing, but in the long run, the congregation will become more confident if allowed to experience the beauty and mystery of their own voices joining together in preparation for the feast.

The offertory is also a good time to familiarize people with the great Latin hymns of the faith. Over the course of a year, the goal can be to cover only a modest number: Ave Maria, Jesu Dulcis, Ave Maris Stella, Ubi Caritas, Attende Domine, Ave Verum, and seasonal chants like Veni Creator and Regina Caeli. With enough repetition, these can be learned by anyone. They really should become part of the life of faith again.

9. Reduce and simplify the ‘Mystery of Faith' and the ‘Great Amen.'

The settings of these used in parishes are most commonly those put out by the big publishing houses. They tend to have Broadway-type orchestration, to be overdrawn, and to appear suddenly and without warning. Jarring at best, their drama, distilled into five seconds, can compete with the mystery of the Consecration itself. Simple chants sung by the people in a manner that extends from silent prayer are more appropriate.

The "Mystery of Faith" was never separate from the Consecration in the "old" Mass, so there is no authentic precedent to light our way. What can be done, however, is to reduce the "Mystery of Faith" to a single, unrepeated line without accompaniment. For that matter, the Amen need not be "great" but rather just two notes.

10. Shorten the Sign of Peace.

Let's be frank: This part of the liturgy, once very formal and reserved to the deacons and subdeacons, can be disconcerting. The minutes after the consecration just seem like a bad time to be required to greet people with a friendly hello or a kiss. The choir can do something about this. Don't let the Sign of Peace go on and on. Just begin the "Lamb of God" right away. Most people will be grateful.

11. Begin the communion chant (a simple Latin hymn will do) after the priest receives.

What to do while waiting for Communion? In parishes, there is no choice: watch in silence as the celebrant gives Communion to the elite laypeople who have been selected as official "eucharistic ministers." That is just not a pleasant sight, so it's best to introduce some music as a way of diverting attention and turning toward inward prayer. The General Instruction recommends that the communion song begin when the priest receives. So it should. And by the choir alone.

12. Don't force people to sing during communion.

Various attempts have been made over the years to get people to sing while they're standing in line or receiving. But these have been a failure. It is a simple fact that people don't want to sing during communion. Here's the archetype when active participation means something other than singing a song. It means receiving the Body of Christ. This is the perfect time for the choir to develop a sense of singing in a sacred manner, quietly and beautifully. Again, chant and polyphony are best, but don't overlook the possibility of a quiet organ piece as well. It should be prayerful, not boisterous. Mostly, people will be glad just to be left alone.

13. Allow for silence after communion.

One of the remarkable aesthetic aspects of the Roman rite is how quickly and suddenly it ends. Only a few minutes pass between the reception of Communion and the time of departure. This is a wonderful time for silence: no music, announcements, children's blessings, or anything. Just prayer.

14. Don't attempt a rousing good-bye.

Mass ends with the words "The Mass is ended," so nothing that happens after that should upstage what came before. The recessional, which is not mandatory, can be exuberant, of course. But many parishes have the problem of a great deal of talking and saying hello taking place after Mass, and upbeat recessionals can only make the problem worse. If the goal is to send people out into the world with a sense of what just took place, a recessional that recalls the quiet power of the whole liturgy is best.

More Elaborate Suggestions

There are other methods for enhancing the sense of solemnity, which really means creating sights and sounds that remind people they're in church. The choir can be in an inauspicious place. Carpet can be pulled up to eliminate the deadness in a room that compels the use of microphones. Traditional polyphony is a great way to add texture to a liturgy dominated by chant. Starting a children's choir is an investment in the future generation of singers and can dispel the impression that Latin is anachronistic or unsingable. Tacky banners can be taken down and replaced with beautiful art and statues from Christian history.

The General Instruction is a worthy guide for achieving solemnity at Mass, and 2,000 years of tradition provide experience enough to prove it. Further proof comes when the liturgy again begins to spark the spiritual imagination and reminds us why we're there.

All of these changes help a liturgy become rooted in the broad range of Christian experience through the ages and convey the sense that the individual is part of something far larger than one parish or one age.

Catholic liturgy, by its nature and structure, cannot provide an imitation form of popular entertainment any more than the rock concert can suitably provide a good medium to encourage a sense of penance and the presence of the sacred. The unrelenting attempt to try and try again can have the unintended effect of causing people to feel manipulated. What's more, the clamor for ever more innovative liturgical enticements is wholly unnecessary.

Musical Reminders from the General Instruction

Purpose

The Christian faithful who gather together as one to await the Lord's coming are instructed by the Apostle Paul to sing together Psalms, hymns, and spiritual songs (cf. Col 3:16). Singing is the sign of the heart's joy (cf. Acts 2:46). Thus Saint Augustine says rightly, "Singing is for one who loves." There is also the ancient proverb: "One who sings well prays twice."

Goal

[All elements of the Mass] should form a complete and organic unity, clearly expressive of the unity of the entire holy people. The character and beauty of the place and all its appointments should foster devotion and show the holiness of the mysteries celebrated there.

Style

All other things being equal, Gregorian chant holds pride of place because it is proper to the Roman liturgy. Other types of sacred music, in particular polyphony, are in no way excluded, provided that they correspond to the spirit of the liturgical action and that they foster the participation of all the faithful.

Assembly

Since the faithful from different countries come together ever more frequently, it is fitting that they know how to sing together at least some parts of the Ordinary of the Mass in Latin…

Choir/Cantor

Among the faithful, the schola cantorum or choir exercises its own liturgical function, ensuring that the parts proper to it, in keeping with the different types of chants, are properly carried out and fostering the active participation of the faithful through the singing. It is fitting that there be a cantor or a choir director to lead and sustain the people's singing. When in fact there is no choir, it is up to the cantor to lead the different chants, with the people taking part.

Mass Parts

The singing at the entrance is done either alternately by the choir and the people or in a similar way by the cantor and the people, or entirely by the people, or by the choir alone. Since the Kyrie is a chant by which the faithful acclaim the Lord and implore his mercy, it is ordinarily done by all, that is, by the people and with the choir or cantor having a part in it. The Gloria is intoned by the priest or, if appropriate, by a cantor or by the choir; but it is sung either by everyone together, or by the people alternately with the choir, or by the choir alone. It is preferable that the responsorial Psalm be sung, at least as far as the people's response is concerned. The Alleluia constitutes a rite or act in itself. It is sung by all while standing, and led by the choir or cantor. The supplication Agnus Dei is, as a rule, sung by the choir or cantor with the congregation responding. While the priest is receiving the Sacrament, the Communion chant is begun. The singing is continued for as long as the Sacrament is being administered to the faithful. This is sung either by the choir alone or by the choir or cantor with the people.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENT

Arlene Oost-Zinner and Jeffrey Tucker. "Gloria in Excelsis Deo!" Our Sunday Visitor (May 2004): 37-41.

Reprinted with permission of the authors, Arlene Oost-Zinner and Jeffrey Tucker and Our Sunday Visitor.

THE AUTHOR

Arlene Oost-Zinner and Jeffrey Tucker are directors of the St.Cecilia Schola Cantorum in Auburn, Ala. You may e-mail them here.

Catholic Metanarrative

Friday, March 27, 2009

Article: Letter of His Holiness Pope Benedict XVI to the Bishops of the Catholic Church

The remission of the excommunication of the four Bishops consecrated in 1988 by Archbishop Lefebvre without a mandate of the Holy See has for many reasons caused, both within and beyond the Catholic Church, a discussion more heated than any we have seen for a long time.

Article: The Crucifixion

Unless we have a true love of Christ, we are not His true disciples; and we cannot love Him unless we have heartfelt gratitude to Him; and we cannot duly feel gratitude, unless we feel keenly what He suffered for us.

Wednesday, March 25, 2009

Wednesday Liturgy: Blessings at Holy Communion

Wednesday Liturgy: Follow-up: Eucharist in Sacristy Safe

Friday, March 20, 2009

Article: Preserving Marriage in Substance, Not Just Name

Should the state treat marriages the same way it treats baptisms and bar mitzvahs -- as purely religious practices properly left to religious institutions?

Article: The Persistence of Ideology

Grand ideas still drive history.

Article: Fourteen Easy Ways to Improve the Liturgy

Boredom during the liturgy is something all Catholics have felt from time to time, and it’s never justifiable.

What is Catholic Metanarrative?

About Me

Links

Previous

Archives