O Clavis David 2024

O Clavis David, et sceptrum domus Israel; qui aperis, et nemo claudit; claudis, et nemo aperit: veni, et educ vinctum de domo carceris, sedentem in tenebris, et umbra mortis.

O Key of David and sceptre of the House of Israel; who openest and no man shutteth; shuttest and no man openeth: come and lead the prisoners from the prison house, that sit in darkness and the shadow of death. 

The Harrowing of Hell, from an Exsultet scroll of the later 11th century.

Understanding the Advent Ember Days with the Help of the Golden Legend

Hanukkah

The Ember Days have been part of the Roman liturgical tradition since time immemorial, and as such they have invited much reflection. Today, as we did in September, let us turn to the author of the Golden Legend, Bl. Jacobus de Voragine (1230-98), for help in how to observe today and tomorrow, this time the Ember Friday and Ember Saturday of Advent. Jacobus offers several thoughts, which I consolidate into three categories: looking backwards or forwards; looking out; and looking in.

Looking Backwards or Forwards 

Jacobus finds it commendable that we incorporate aspects of the Hebrew calendar into our liturgical and ascetical lives. Such an incorporation is not a superstitious or slavish Judaizing of the New Covenant, but an allegorical attempt to fulfill, in the path of Our Lord, every jot and tittle of the Law. It also pays due respect to our spiritual ancestors in the right key.

For the Jews fasted four times in the year, that is to wit, before Easter [Passover], before Whitsunside [the Jewish feast of Shavuoth], before the setting of the Tabernacle in the Temple in September [Yom Kippur and Sukkoth], and before the dedication of the Temple in December [Hanukkah].

The September Embertide is a good example of “looking back” insofar as some of its propers honor the Hebrew calendar. The first lesson (Lev. 23, 26-32) and the Epistle (Heb. 9, 2-12) of the September Ember Saturday are about the Feast of the Atonement or Yom Kippur, and the second lesson (Lev. 23, 39-43) is about the Feast of Tabernacles or Sukkoth. 

The December Ember Days, however, are dominated by the liturgical season in which they find themselves. And since that season, the season of Advent, looks forward to the coming of Jesus Christ, so do they. Ember Saturday is replete with Old Testament prophecies about the Messiah, while Ember Wednesday honors the Annunciation and Ember Friday the Visitation. 

Fra Angelico’s Cortona altarpiece of the Annunciation, 1433-34.

Looking Out

In the Northern hemisphere, December is wintertime, and for Jacobus, this season of want and lifelessness is a call to go and do likewise: 

In December there is also a fast, and this is the fourth: in this time the herbs die, and we ought to be mortified to the world. 

Looking Within

Combining the qualities of seasonal weather with the four humors (and drawing from St. John Damascene), Jacobus also sees an opportunity for addressing particular temperamental weaknesses and vices throughout the course of the year. Since winter is cold and moist, it produces more phlegm in the human body, and thus the Advent Embertide is for phlegmatics and for a battle with "the phlegm of lightness and forgetting" (to which phlegmatics are prone) as well as a battle against the "coldness of untruth and malice" (to which all are prone). The Lenten Embertide, by contrast, is for sanguines and for a battle with concupiscence and luxury, the Whitsun Embertide is for cholerics and for a battle with wrath and avarice, and the September Embertide is for melancholics and for a battle with pride.

The Four Temperaments by Virgil Solis, 1530-62, via The British Museum, London

The phlegmatic temperament in the above illustration is personified as a woman sitting on water (a link to the elemental connotations of the four humors). She holds a spit in her right hand and a rattle in her left. An owl is on her shoulder, and behind her is an ass. Can anyone make out the Latin inscription? And any guesses on the various symbols?

O Radix Jesse 2024

O Radix Jesse, qui stas in signum populorum, super quem continebunt reges os suum, quem gentes deprecabuntur: veni ad liberandum nos, jam noli tardare.

O Root of Jesse, which standest as a sign to the peoples, at whom kings shall shut their mouths, whom the gentiles shall beseech, come to deliver us, delay thou not!

The Tree of Jesse, from the chapel of the Conception of the Virgin and of St. Anne in the cathedral of Burgos, Spain.

“Tuned to the Truth. The Catholic Triad of Faith, Life, and Liturgy” (Part 2)

We continue our translation of P. Bernward Deneke FSSP's lecture. See here for Part 1. - PAK

3. The basis of the Christian creed

It is now time to examine the matter of truth within the sphere of the Christian religion. This should be done on the basis of the following problem: What is the answer of a serious Catholic to the question of why he professes and practices this faith, of all things?

Reasons of subjective utility, such as pointing to personal advantages, the resulting prestige and social advancement, do not come into question; they have been eliminated almost everywhere in our time. The days when one had to be baptized a Catholic in order to become General Music Director in Vienna, like Gustav Mahler, are over.

Instead, motives of personal preference may be offered as an answer, for example in the subjective form: “Catholicism is simply beautiful, it corresponds to my personal taste,” or in a more objective form: “The Catholic world of faith, life and worship meets the highest aesthetic standards, which are not found in any other Christian denomination or other religion.”

There are indeed sincere people who find their way to the Catholic faith on the via aesthetica. The fascination that emanates in particular from our liturgy is described with a strong autobiographical coloring by Oscar Wilde in the 11th chapter of his novel The Picture of Dorian Gray:

It was rumoured of him once that he was about to join the Roman Catholic communion, and certainly the Roman ritual had always a great attraction for him. The daily sacrifice, more awful really than all the sacrifices of the antique world, stirred him as much by its superb rejection of the evidence of the senses as by the primitive simplicity of its elements and the eternal pathos of the human tragedy that it sought to symbolize. He loved to kneel down on the cold marble pavement and watch the priest, in his stiff flowered dalmatic, slowly and with white hands moving aside the veil of the tabernacle, or raising aloft the jewelled, lantern-shaped monstrance with that pallid wafer that at times, one would fain think, is indeed the "panis caelestis," the bread of angels, or, robed in the garments of the Passion of Christ, breaking the Host into the chalice and smiting his breast for his sins. The fuming censers that the grave boys, in their lace and scarlet, tossed into the air like great gilt flowers had their subtle fascination for him. 

Ten years separated the scandal-ridden author, when he wrote this in 1890, from his own last-minute conversion: On November 28, 1900, Father Cuthbert Dunn in Paris admitted the seriously ill Wilde into the Church before he died on November 30 as a result of an inflammation of the middle ear with penetration into the midbrain.

It is deeply gratifying when, in Catholic worship, especially in the offering of the sacrifice and the adoration of the Eucharistic Lord, that beauty shines forth which – according to Dostoyevsky's famous saying – “saves the world”. But is that always the case? And is a great aesthetic experience enough to justify the most important, all-important choice in life?

Even a hyperaesthete like Oscar Wilde would certainly have answered in the negative at the hour of his conversion, which was carried out without liturgical pomp in the squalor of his sickbed. And those who have grown up in the Church and matured as Christians are also unlikely to cite beauty as the ultimate reason for their Catholicism.

Another answer comes from the moral sphere. It is said, for example, “No other worldview has such a high-minded and coherent ethic; in no other religion or Christian denomination does one resist relativizing trends that undermine and erode morality as in the Catholic Church.

The argument is valid in itself, but not without problems at the present time. In the present hour, when wafts of ambiguity have been cast over the monument of unambiguousness by statements from high places, the moral authority and superiority of institutional Catholicism appears questionable in the eyes of not a few observers.

Furthermore, an analysis of the morally good shows that it is not self-justifying, but rests on a deeper basis. In philosophy, there has been and continues to be extensive debate about whether the sphere of ought, that is, the morally good, is connected to the sphere of being – and thus of truth. Without burdening the reader with the arguments about David Hume's being-should fallacy and George E. Moore's natural fallacy, it should be noted that, for example, St. Thomas Aquinas takes the reference of the good to the truth for granted, which he also substantiates with arguments. The often quoted sentence Agere sequitur esse, “Action follows from being”, expresses the essential, as does the other: Nihil volitum, nisi praecognitum, "Nothing is willed that has not been previously known.”

Josef Pieper, who has written a valuable booklet entitled “Reality and the Good” about the foundations of the “should” in being, summarizes St. Thomas' view as follows:

All ‘should’ is based on ‘being’. Reality is the foundation of the ethical. The good is in accordance with reality. Those who want to know and do good must turn their gaze to the objective world of being. Not to their own 'convictions', not to their 'conscience', not to 'values', not to arbitrarily set 'ideals' and 'role models'. They must look away from their own act and look at reality."[1]

What is important in our context: anyone who states that the ethical height, the moral claim, in short: the goodness of the Catholic religion is the reason for their decision in favor of it, has not yet stated the ultimate reason. Goodness presupposes truth. A worldview can only be truly good if it is really real, that is, if it corresponds to reality, and that means: if it is true.

Therefore, the answer of our serious Catholic to the question of why he has adopted this faith and no other is: “I am Catholic because I am convinced of the truth of the Christian religion.”

“Truth of the Christian religion” means nothing other than: This religion is objectively true. Its contents are facts even if no human being recognizes them. The events, teachings and institutions faithfully accepted in Catholic Christianity really go back to the one and only God and have validity before him.

It is obvious that this view corresponds to the biblical testimony. When the disciples on the road to Emmaus had hurried back to Jerusalem to the eleven apostles after their encounter with the risen Jesus to tell them about their experience, they learned there that the Lord had truly risen and had appeared to Simon (Luke 24:34). The true – in the original Greek text ὄντως, “genuine”, “real” – is emphasized. In the 15th chapter of 1 Corinthians, Paul also insists on the reality of the resurrection, without which faith is in vain. Inspired by this, in the Easter season, believers of Greek tongue greet each other with “Christòs anésti – alithõs anésti”, and Russians with “Christos voskres – voistinu voskres”: “Christ is risen – He is truly risen.”

The Christian faith is thus based on the truth and veracity of this event, and, as logic demands, everything that the resurrection implies as a prerequisite and what it subsequently explains is also established. Prerequisites are truths such as the Trinity of God, the incarnation of the eternal Son in the virginal womb of Mary through a conception brought about by the Holy Spirit, and his voluntary surrender of life for us on the cross. In the wake of the resurrection, we recognize the mission of the Holy Spirit, the birth of the visible Church with its sacraments and the offices authorized to represent Christ, with its perpetual sacrifice, the lasting presence of the Lord in the Eucharist, with its authority to forgive sins, its inerrancy and indestructibility. And our prospect of future bliss in the presence of God is linked to the resurrection of Jesus.

All this and much more is, so the Catholic Christian is convinced, true and real. Because he accepts it as true and real by faith, he is a Catholic Christian. It is not goodness or beauty that forms the keynote of the Catholic triad, but truth. It carries goodness as well as beauty, allows it to be truly good and truly beautiful.

St Thomas teaching students

4. What is truth?

In view of this emphasis on truth, the question raised by Pontius Pilate at the trial of Jesus may now arise. The Lord had given the following self-testimony: “Yes, I am a king. For this I have come into the world, to bear witness to the truth. Everyone who is of the truth hears my voice.” (John 18:37) The governor reacted to this in a manner that, according to Carl Schmitt's apt description, was not a genuine search for truth, but rather a tired skepticism and agnosticism or the superior tolerance displayed by the ideologically neutral statesman.[2] However, this should not prevent us from asking the Pilate question with a genuine desire for knowledge: What is truth?

In a formulation that has become classic, St. Thomas Aquinas explains truth as an adaequatio intellectus et rei, as an “approximation of the intellect and a thing (or a set of facts)” (S.Th. I 21,2). If I think about something, let it be x, and if it is actually true that it is x, then my judgment is true. My thought is measured here against reality. If the two coincide, then there is truth.

What is important here is that the opposite is also true. It is not only the state of affairs that can be the measure of knowledge, but also knowledge that can be the measure of the state of affairs. Instead of speaking of a logical truth, we speak of an ontological truth, namely the truth that does not lie in the post-cognitive thought, but rather in the thing itself.

This sounds very philosophical and abstract and should therefore be illustrated. An artist has a certain image in his imagination, it captures him, awakens his creative urge and his creative powers. He wants to place what he has seen as a work of art in the objective world of the visible, so he reaches for his paintbrush and begins his painting.

This will now be “true” insofar as it corresponds to the artistic idea, but it will be “untrue” insofar as it either falls short of it due to a lack of skill or is overgrown in its authentic form by additions, perhaps details that are intended only to show off mere skill. If, for example, Caspar David Friedrich, whose 250th birthday we are celebrating this year, had added beach huts and ships to his Monk by the Sea (Mönch am Meer), even if they were perfectly depicted, it would certainly no longer have been about the original inner vision. The painting would have become “untrue”.

In a higher sense, this ontological truth applies to the relationship of all created beings to their Creator. Whatever is created has truth in so far as it corresponds to the original, archetypal divine idea. The truth of a tree, for example, lies in the fact that it is as God conceived it. The same applies to man, albeit with the difference that he is endowed with truth not only in the sense of an objective gift, but that it was also given to him as an objective task in life. We are to become what we already always are in the creative thoughts of God; in the words of Friedrich Rückert: “Before each stands an image of what he should become: / As long as he is not that, his peace is not complete.”[3]

It should be mentioned in passing that this view is diametrically opposed to the existentialism of a Jean-Paul Sartre and his descendants, according to which man has neither a predetermined nature nor a divine mission, but must rather design himself and realize this design himself. Between such a view and the Christian view there is an unbridgeable gulf, which remains even if some moral theologians of our time try to combine the two.

At this point, if we briefly apply the ontological truth to the exalted object of the sacred liturgy, we can say that it is “true” insofar as it corresponds to the divine original model, as it appears in revelation and in the proclamation of the Church. A rite of the Mass in which the sacrifice of Jesus Christ and his Eucharistic presence are validly expressed and which leads the faithful to genuine worship of God and fruitful participation in the mysteries, is undoubtedly in accordance with God's thoughts. Therefore it is “true”. And so it is a sure guide for us into the truth of the mysterium fidei.

Truth is therefore a relation; a relationship between thought and reality. From here, we have a glimpse into the very foundations of truth. Where else should they lie but in God Himself? However, it seems important to me to correct the frequently heard statement that God Himself is the truth, the “absolute truth”.

St. Thomas Aquinas also argues in this direction when he writes in his commentary on John: “All truth that our intellect can grasp is finite, and therefore there must be a truth that transcends every intellect, that is incomprehensible and infinite, and that is God” (Commentary on the Gospel of John, Prologue, 6).

On closer inspection, however, one is more likely to agree with St. Augustine when he distinguishes: “Truthful” (verax) is the Father, “the truth” (veritas), however, is the Son (Commentary on the Gospel of John V 1). While Scripture does not simply identify God with the truth, Jesus calls himself “way, truth and life” (Jn 14:6). This saying certainly requires a more extensive theological discussion, but this much is certain: the eternal Logos, from whom the Father was born before time and of one being with him, is from eternity "the radiance of his glory and the express image of his being“ (Hebrews 1:3) and as the incarnate Son, ”the image of the invisible God” (Colossians 1:15); whoever sees him sees the Father (14:9). Since the Second Divine Person is the perfect image of the First, having emerged from the latter's self-awareness, it is more appropriate to ascribe truth or “being the truth” not simply to God, but more precisely to the Son.

In any case, truth consists in agreement and has its ultimate reason in God. In the briefest formula, one can say: the divine truth is the Son, the Christian truth is Christ. Jesus could have answered the governor's question, “What is truth?” quite succinctly: “I am.” On the foundation of this truth, everything rests. It is both the supporting basis and the all-encompassing whole; the principle that gives meaning and purpose to everything, without which everything, including the good and the beautiful, would fall into meaninglessness and aimlessness.

To understand the relationship between truth, goodness and beauty, let us take a brief look at the divine archetype. Saint Thomas Aquinas explains that the two inner-divine processes, the begetting of the Son and the breathing of the Holy Spirit, correspond to the knowing and the willing in God. There can be no process of love without a focus on the process of the Word, because the will only focuses in love on that which has been previously recognized. Although there is no before or after in God's eternity, the logical order of the generation of the Son must be attributed a priority (S.Th. I 27,3 ad 3).

Transferred to the relationship between the cognitively true and the volitionally good, this in turn means the priority of the true. As already stated: Nihil volitum, nisi praecognitum, “Nothing is willed that has not been previously known.” But beauty also presupposes truth. More will be said about this at a later point in order to understand it.

(To be concluded next time.)

NOTES

[1] Josef Pieper, Reality and the Good (Munich, 1949), 11.

[2] Carl Schmitt, Der Leviathan in der Staatslehre des Thomas Hobbes (Cologne, 1982), 67.

[3] Friedrich Rückert, Werke, vol. 2 (Leipzig/Vienna, 1897), 44.

O Adonai 2024

O Adonai, et Dux domus Israel, qui Moysi in igne flammae rubi apparuisti, et ei in Sina legem dedisti: veni ad redimendum nos in brachio extento.

O Adonai, and Ruler of the house of Israel, who appeared unto Moses in the burning bush, and gave him the Law on Sinai, come to redeem us with arm outstretched!

Historical Falsehoods about Active Participation: A Response to Dr Brant Pitre (Part 1)

Just over two weeks ago, on the anniversary of Sacrosanctum Concilium, the YouTube channel of Catholic Productions published a video by Dr Brant Pitre, who is the Distinguished Research Professor of Scripture at the Augustine Institute Graduate School. The video is part of a series called “The Mass Explained”, which was published a bit over a year ago through the Catholic Productions website. This specific video is now being offered on YouTube as an encouragement to explore the full series; its subject is the much-debated concept of active participation in the liturgy.

Dr Pitre is a Biblical scholar, and by far the most successful part of this video is his attempt to give a solid Scriptural foundation to the concept; a useful endeavor, given the hopeless ambiguity of so much of Sacrosanctum Concilium. Unfortunately, his presentation is marred by a considerable number of really drastic historical errors, including one on which the whole narrative arc, so to speak, of his presentation rests. The errors are in fact too many to describe in a single post, and this response will have to be presented in more than one part.

I wish to be clear that I certainly do not ascribe to Dr Pitre any conscious dishonesty. There are plenty of liturgists and people who have written about the liturgy who can be excused of the charge of deliberate lying only if one grants that before attempting to deceive others, they have first gone to enormous pains to deceive themselves. (I wish I could take credit for this bon mot, but it comes from Sir Peter Medawar’s brilliantly savage review of Teilhard de Chardin’s The Phenomenon of Man.) I see no reason to think that Dr Pitre is among them; indeed, I think it very likely that he himself is among those whom others have deceived.

Nor does he fall into the fatuous excesses that so many others have fallen into when writing or speaking about this topic specifically, and claim that “active participation”, however defined, is incompatible with the historical Roman Rite. Indeed, he acknowledges that active participation of the lay faithful has been a part of it in the past. His gigantic historical error lies in his would-be description of when, how, why and to what degree this changed, leading the Second Vatican Council to call for its restoration. (I will cover most of what he says about this in part 2 of this article.)

He begins (2:55) with the first occurrence of the term “actuosa participatio – active participation” in Sacrosanctum Concilium, paragraph 14, saying that it is “arguably the most important topic of the Second Vatican Council.” Unfortunately, the translation of Sacrosanctum Concilium which he cites contains a very significant mistake, which is no less of a mistake for being repeated on the Vatican’s own website. The English version which he gives is as follows: “In the restoration and promotion of the sacred liturgy, this full and active participation by all the people is the aim to be considered before all else.” (His emphasis.)

But the Latin original does not say that active participation “is to be considered before all else,” which would be a license for doing anything and everything in the liturgy, provided the claim were made that it fostered active participation. And of course, in the so-called “spirit” of Vatican II, many people, including the very men who invented the post-Conciliar Rite, have taken it as just such a license, in order to excuse their ignoring significant parts of Sacrosanctum Concilium itself, and all of the Church’s earlier magisterial teaching on the liturgy, to say nothing of others justifying the most appalling abuses in the actual celebration of the liturgy.

Much active. Very participation.

The Latin words of the Constitution are “actuosa participatio … summopere attendenda est”, which would be properly rendered “active participation … is to be given the greatest attention.” And it is in fact thus rendered in the Italian, French, Spanish and German translations also available via the Vatican’s website. (I cannot vouch for the Arabic, Chinese, Swahili or various Slavic versions.)

This would have also been the perfect place to add that there is a solid case to be made that “actual participation” is a better translation of the words “actuosa participatio” than “active participation.” This case was laid out very thoroughly by Fr Peter Stravinskas in a paper which he delivered to the CIEL conference in Paris in 2003, and graciously allowed NLM to reprint in 2016. (Part 1; Part 2) For of course, as we all know, the word “active” has deceived many within the Church into confusing activity with achievement, and thus taking it for granted that as long as the laity are doing something, they are actively participating, and it doesn’t much matter what exactly they are doing or how they are doing it.

In regard to the Council’s statement that the people’s participation in the liturgy should be “full”, Dr Pitre very rightly points out (6:45) that this means fully participating in the parts which properly belong to them, “and only those parts which belong to them, and the people shouldn’t be doing what is exclusive to the priest, and vice versa.” For of course, it was the furthest thing from the Council Fathers’ minds to foster the participation of the laity by blurring this necessary distinction. This would have been a good place, therefore, to point out that “active” participation in the modern liturgy has been brought about in no small part by redefining “what is exclusive to the priest”, and giving to the laity liturgical roles that the tradition of the Church has always given to the clergy: the reading of the Scriptures, and the distribution of Communion. Perhaps this comes up elsewhere in the series.

At 7:50, Dr Pitre very rightly notes that the phrase “actuosa participatio” goes back to St Pius X’s famous motu proprio Tra le sollicitudini on sacred music in the liturgy, and that singing the parts proper to them is above all the most important way in which the faithful actively participate in the liturgy. Perhaps some other part of the series points out that in practical terms, Tra le sollicitudini has been completely overthrown by the post-Conciliar reform, since the confusion between activity and achievement, a confusion which the word “active” positively invites, often leads to the replacement of good music with bad music or no music, because it is easier for the congregation to sing bad music than good, and easier still to recite than to sing.

It would also be worth mentioning somewhere along the line that Sacrosanctum Concilium itself does not cite Tra le sollecitudini, because in the last phase of its redaction, the numerous citations of the Church’s prior magisterial teaching on the liturgy qua liturgy, and particularly those related to sacred music, were expunged. This includes not only multiple references to Tra le sollecitudini, but also to Pius XI’s 1928 Apostolic Constitution Divini cultus, Pius XII’s encyclicals Mediator Dei (1947) and Musicae sacrae disciplina (1955) as well as the instruction issued by the Sacred Congregation for Rites in 1958, De musica sacra et sacra liturgia. (This removal was documented by Susan J. Benofy in an article entitled “Footnotes for a Hermeneutic of Continuity: Sacrosanctum Concilium’s Vanishing Citations”, published in the Adoremus Bulletin in 2015.)

At 9:30, Dr Pitre introduces a few key Biblical texts that refer to active participation in the liturgy, and as I stated earlier, this really is the strongest part of the video. The first of these is a description of the assembly in Nehemiah 8, which he describes as “actively listening” to the word of God read to them by the priests. This passage occupies a prominent and very ancient place in the historical Roman Rite, as the second reading of the Ember Wednesday of September. With the suppression of the Ember days in the post-Conciliar Rite, it has been assigned to a Sunday of Ordinary time in year C, and a Thursday in year 1. (This might have been the place to mention that the books of Ezra and Nehemiah refer much more often to the organization of trained cantors among the ministerial orders of the Temple, since the use of professional choirs will later be noted as one of the developments within the Church which putatively detracted from the participation of the laity.)

The second quotation is a foundational passage for the priesthood of all the baptized, 1 Peter 2, 9, which is cited in the aforementioned paragraph 14, and this is followed by the passages which describe the heavenly liturgy in the Apocalypse, and the various ways in which all of the different orders of the Church participate, including silent participation. And since the “heavenly model provide(s) the template for what worship should look like on earth, if all of the members of the mystical body of Christ are actively engaged (in the liturgy) in heaven, then the same thing should be true of the liturgy on earth.”

At 18:00, Dr Pitre begins to adduce examples from the history of the Church which show that “for the first thousand years or so of Christian worship, this is precisely what we’re going to find.” Unfortunately, this is precisely the point where he begins to run his ship aground. For his reference to the “first thousand years or so” implies that a change took place after that point, a change which he will later explicate very wrongly; wrongly enough that, as I said earlier, I will need a second part of this article to explain it all. (The words “or so” are also being made to do far too much work here.)

There follow six examples of things in which the people fully participated in the liturgy during those first thousand years: in his order, the Sanctus, the giving of the peace, the responsorial psalm (sic), the Amen at the end of the prayers, including the Canon, the Creed and the Our Father. Regarding the last of these, he correctly acknowledges that it has always been the Roman custom for the priest to sing it alone (except, of course, for the final words), and just as correctly notes that in some other Western liturgies, it was sung by everyone, as it still is in the Byzantine Rite.

First of all, I note that with four of these, the Sanctus, the Amens, the Creed and Our Father (i.e. the end of it), it has always been possible for the faithful to sing them. It has always been possible for the faithful to pray the Our Father silently along with the priest. There are of course ways of singing them in which not all the faithful can participate, such as the very rich polyphonic settings of the Lord’s Prayer composed for the Byzantine Divine Liturgy. There have been specific sociocultural and historical circumstances in which the faithful did not sing them, although apologists for the post-Conciliar reform have habitually exaggerated the degree to which this is true, and regrettably, Dr Pitre falls into this trap. Nevertheless, the faithful have never been excluded from singing them in principle.

A polyphonic setting of The Lord’s Prayer in Church Slavonic, by the Ukrainian composer Maxim Berezovsky (1745 ca. - 1777).

Concerning the Sanctus, he cites the statement of the Liber Pontificalis that it was instituted by the eighth Pope, St Sixtus I, who reigned from roughly 115-125. But the liturgical notices in the Liber Pontificalis, the statements that “Pope so-and-so instituted such-and-such a custom”, are notoriously anachronistic, the more so the earlier they go. For example, the very next entry attributes the institution of Christmas to Sixtus’ successor St Telesphorus (125-36 ca.); all scholars recognize that the feast dates to about two centuries later. It is not per se impossible that St Sixtus instituted the Sanctus, but we have no real evidence that he did in fact do so.

Secondly, the Liber Pontificalis has come down to us in very rough condition, and is full of textual problems. The relevant part of the entry for St Sixtus says, “Hic constituit ut intra actionem, sacerdos incipiens populo hymnum decantare, ‘Sanctus, sanctus, sanctus, Dominus Deus Sabahot’, et cetera.” As written, the infinitive “decantare” (to sing) is a grammatical error, and the passage is marked in modern editions as corrupt; an easy emendation has been proposed, “decantaret.” If this is correct, the passage would mean “This one (viz. Pope Sixtus) established that within the action (i.e. the saying of the canon, as is written above the Hanc igitur in the Missal) the priest as he begins should sing to the people (‘populo’ in the dative case; my emphasis) the hymn ‘Sanctus…’ ” etc.

One might object that it makes no sense to say that the priest sang the Sanctus and the people did not. But there is some evidence that this was in fact a custom of the Ambrosian Rite on certain penitential days, on which the priest alone sang the Sanctus as part of the preface. But even if this custom was never observed in the Roman Rite, this text does not say that the people sang the Sanctus; quite the opposite.

After references to the giving of the peace, Dr Pitre goes on to say that “in the fifth century, St Augustine tells us that the people would sing the responsorial psalm,” and the video cites The Confessions, book 9, 8.15, as given in Lawrence Johnson’s Worship in the Early Church: An Anthology of Historical Sources (3:12). But this passage does not refer to the people’s participation in the Mass. It refers to an event of St Ambrose’s episcopacy for which Augustine and his mother were present, when the Empress Justina planned to turn one of the basilicas in Milan over to the Arians. The Catholic faithful occupied the church, and the custom was therefore established that the people should hymns and psalms “after the manner of the eastern regions, lest the people pine away in the tediousness of sorrow…”

Augustine does go on to say that this custom, “retained from then till now, is now imitated by many, and nearly all of (the Lord’s) flocks throughout the rest of the world.” But nothing about it suggests that it was a specifically liturgical custom, much less that it involved anything like what we now call a responsorial psalm.

After a mention of what St Isidore of Seville says about the readings being for the instruction of the people, i.e., that they are meant to be actively listened to by the faithful, Dr Pitre now turns (at 20:50) to a text known as the Ordo Romanus Primus, the “First Roman Order”, an ancient description of a Roman stational liturgy. This text is presented to set up a supposed contrast with the later medieval manner of celebrating the liturgy in the papal chapel which gave us the so-called Tridentine Missal. This contrast, however, is so thoroughly and so badly misconstrued that it must be described in another part of this article.

O Sapientia 2024

O Sapientia, quae ex ore Altissimi prodiisti, attingens a fine usque ad finem, fortiter suaviterque disponens omnia: veni ad docendum nos viam prudentiae.

O Wisdom, that comest from the mouth of the Most High, that reachest from one end to another, mightily and sweetly ordering all things, come and teach us the way of prudence.

A icon of Holy Wisdom, 1860

Many years ago, I stumbled across a book which described a very charming medieval custom, by which the O antiphons were assigned to different members of a cathedral chapter or monastic community, connecting the first words of the antiphons with various positions within the house. One version is given by a post from twelve years ago on the blog A Clerk of Oxford. “The right of intoning one of the O Antiphons was jealously limited by immemorial custom to certain higher officers in the community and each of these great functionaries had his own appropriate antiphon. In most monasteries, the antiphon O Sapientia (O Wisdom) was reserved to the Abbot and O Adonai to the Prior. Some antiphons were intoned by the obedientiary or functionary most closely associated with the theme of the antiphon: O Radix Jesse was reserved to the gardener, O Clavis David to the cellarer whose duty it was to keep things under lock and key, and O Rex Gentium to the infirmarian, since the antiphon contained the clause, ‘Come and save (or heal) man whom you have formed out of clay.’ ” If memory serves, O Sapientia might also be given to the cathedral schoolmaster, and O Emmanuel to one of the boy choristers. If anyone knows more about this custom, or can point to a reference that gives more information, please be so kind as to leave a note in the combox. Prope est jam Dominus: venite, adoremus!

The Other Major Antiphons for the End of Advent

The best known feature of the Office in Advent is of course the O Antiphons, which begin this evening, and are said with the Magnificat from December 17-23. Their prominence has perhaps overshadowed some of the other riches of the season, which has an unusually large number of proper texts. In addition to the daily antiphons of the Benedictus and Magnificat, the psalms at Sunday Matins also have their own antiphons, which is not true of either Lent or Passiontide, and each individual Sunday has another set of five antiphons for the psalms of Lauds and Vespers, also used at the minor Hours of the day.

The last six ferias before the vigil of Christmas also each have a proper set of antiphons to be sung with the psalms of Lauds, and repeated at the minor Hours, though not at Vespers; they are one of the most beautiful parts of the Gregorian repertoire. If December 17 is a Sunday, these begin on Monday the 18th; otherwise, on the 17th, along with the Os.

A folio of the winter volume of the Hartker Antiphonary, end of the 10th century, beginning with the 3rd antiphon for Monday. San Gallen Stiftsbibliothek. Cod. Sang. 390. 

I have here set them out in tables, with the Latin on one side and an English translation on the other. With the Latin, I have indicated the psalms and canticles with which they are currently sung according to the Breviary of St Pius X. Prior to his reform in 1911, the third psalm of Lauds each day was Psalms 62 and 66 said together as a single psalm, and the fifth was Psalms 148, 149 and 150, also said together as a single psalm.

On the English side, I have noted the Biblical citations in the text; “vs.” stands for “verse”, indicating that the antiphon is a verse of the psalm or canticle with which it is sung. Many of them are not Scriptural at all, and some of them, such as the very first one, Ecce veniet Dominus, are either vaguely or only partially taken from the Bible. The traditional corpus of Breviary antiphons is very ancient, and some of the Biblical citations come from the Old Latin version of the Bible used before St Jerome’s Vulgate translation, such as the antiphon Deus a Libano which is said with the canticle of Habacuc.

Monday

Aña 1 Ecce veniet Dominus, princeps regum terræ: beati qui parati sunt occurrere illi. Psalm 50	Behold the Lord shall come, the Prince of the kings of the earth: blessed are they that are pre- pared to meet him. (Apoc. 1, 5)
2 Cum venerit Filius hominis, putas inveniet fidem super terram? Psalm 5	When the Son of Man shall come, thinkest thou that He shall find faith upon the earth? (Luke 18, 8)
3 Ecce jam venit plenitudo temporis, in quo misit Deus Filium suum in terras. Psalm 28	Behold, the fullness of time hath already come, in which God hath sent His Son upon the lands. (Galatians 4, 4)
4 Haurietis aquas in gaudio de fontibus Salvatoris. Canticle of Isaiah, chapter 12, 1-6	Ye shall draw waters in joy from the fountains of the Savior. (vs. 3)
5 Egredietur Dominus de lo- co sancto suo: veniet ut sal- vet populum suum. Ps. 116	The Lord will go forth from His holy place, He will come to save his people.

Tuesday

Aña 1 Rorate, caeli, desuper, et nubes pluant justum; ape- riatur terra, et germinet Sal- vatorem. Psalm 50	Drop down dew, ye heavens, from above, and let the clouds rain the Just One; let the earth be opened, and bud forth a Savior. (Isaiah 45, 8)
2 Emitte Agnum, Domine, Dominatorem terræ, de Petra deserti, ad montem filiae Sion. Psalm 42	Send forth the lamb, O Lord, the ruler of the earth, from Petra of the desert, to the mount of the daughter of Sion. (Isaiah 16, 1)
3 Ut cognoscamus, Domine, in terra viam tuam, in omni- bus gentibus salutare tuum. Psalm 66	May we know, o Lord, Thy way upon the earth, Thy salvation in all nations. (vs. 3)
4 Da mercedem, Domine, sustinentibus te, ut Prophe- tae tui fideles inveniantur. Canticle of King Ezechiah, Isaiah, 38, 10-20	Reward them, o Lord, that patiently wait for Thee, that Thy prophets may be found faithful. (Sir. 36, 18)
5 Lex per Moysen data est; gratia et veritas per Jesum Christum facta est. Psalm 134	The law was given by Moses; grace and truth came by Jesus Christ. (John 1, 17)

In many medieval Uses, the first antiphon of the following set, Prophetae praedicaverunt, was said with the Psalms of either Lauds or Vespers, or both, in the Little Office of the Virgin Mary during Advent.

The Nativity with the Prophets Isaiah and Ezekiel, by Duccio di Buoninsegna, 1308-11. (From the website of the National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C.; click to see in high resolution.)

Wednesday

Aña 1 Prophetae praedica- verunt nasci Salvatorem de Virgine Maria. Psalm 50	The prophets foretold that the Savior would be born of the Virgin Mary.
2 Spiritus Domini super me, evangelizare pauperi- bus misit me. Psalm 64	The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, He hath sent me to preach good tidings to the poor. (Isa. 61, 1, as cited in Luke 4, 18)
3 Propter Sion non tacebo, donec egrediatur ut splen- dor justus ejus. Psalm 100	For Sion’s sake I will not hold my peace, till her just one come forth as brightness. (Isa. 62, 1)
4 Ecce veniet Dominus, ut sedeat cum principibus, et solium gloriae teneat. Canticle of Anna, I Kings 2, 1-10	Behold, the Lord shall come to sit with princes, and hold the throne of glory. (vs. 8)
5 Annuntiate populis et di- cite: Ecce Deus Salvator noster veniet. Psalm 145	Proclaim ye to the peoples, and say: Behold, God our Savior shall come.

Thursday

Aña 1 De Sion veniet Domi- nus omnipotens, ut salvum faciat populum suum. Ps. 50	From Sion shall come the Lord Almighty to save His people.
2 Convertere, Domine, ali- quantulum, et ne tardes ve- nire ad servos tuos. Psalms 89	Return, o Lord, a little while, and delay not to come to Thy ser- vants.
3 De Sion veniet, qui regna- turus est Dominus, Emma- nuel magnum nomen ejus. Psalm 35	From Sion shall come the Lord who is to rule, Emmanuel is His great name.
4 Ecce Deus meus, et hono- rabo eum: Deus patris mei, et exaltabo eum. Canticle of Moses, Exodus 15, 1-19	Behold my God, and I will honor Him, the God of my father, and I will exalt Him. (vs. 2)
5 Dominus legifer noster, Dominus Rex noster, ipse veniet, et salvabit nos. Psalm 146	The Lord is our law-giver, the Lord is our king, He will come and save us. (Isaiah 33, 22)

Friday

Aña 1 Constantes estote, vi- debitis auxilium Domini su- per vos. Psalm 50	Be ye steady, ye shall see the help of the Lord upon you. (I Chronicles 20, 17)
2 Ad te, Domine, levavi animam meam: veni, et eri- pe me, Domine, ad te con- fugi? Psalm 142	To Thee, o Lord, I have lifted up my soul: come and deliver me, o Lord, to thee have I fled. (vss 8-9)
3 Veni, Domine, et noli tar- dare: relaxa facinora plebi tuae Israël. Psalm 84	Come, o Lord, delay Thou not; forgive the crimes of Thy people Israel.
4 Deus a Libano veniet, et splendor ejus sicut lumen erit. Canticle of Habakkuk, chapter 3, 1-19	God will come from the Leba- non, and His brightness shall be as the light. (vss. 8 and 9)
5 Ego autem ad Dominum aspiciam, et exspectabo Deum, Salvatorem meum. Psalm 147	But I will look towards the Lord, I will wait for God my Saviour. (Micah 7, 7)

The Testament of Moses, by Luca Signorelli and Bartolomeo della Gatta, 1482, Sistine Chapel, Vatican City.

The Breviary of St Pius V has no special set of antiphons for Saturday, on which the ones impeded by the feast of St Thomas the Apostle on December 21st are used. (Obviously, this is not done if Saturday itself is the 21st, as it is this year.) However, the antiphon for the Old Testament canticle from the impeded set is replaced by a proper antiphon Exspectetur, which corresponds to the Canticle of Moses in Deuteronomy 32. When the vigil of Christmas falls on a Sunday, the Thursday set is impeded by St Thomas, and omitted that year; the antiphons from the Fourth Sunday of Advent are anticipated to Saturday, with Exspectetur for the canticle.

This custom was changed in the Breviary reform of St Pius X; Saturday is given its own antiphons, and those impeded by St Thomas’ day are simply omitted. Of the four new antiphons, the first and fifth (Intuemini and Paratus esto) are found in several very old chant manuscripts, and were widely used in the Middle Ages; the second and third (Multiplicabitur and Ego Dominus) appear to be new compositions made specifically for this reform.

Saturday

Aña 1 Intuemini, quantus sit gloriosus iste, qui ingreditur ad salvandos populos. Psalm 50	Behold ye how glorious is this one, that cometh in to save the peoples.
2 Multiplicabitur ejus im- perium, et pacis non erit finis. Psalm 91	His empire shall be multiplied, and there shall be no end of peace. (Isaiah 9, 7)
3 Ego Dominus prope feci justitiam meam, non elon- gabitur, et salus mea non morabitur. Psalm 63	I the Lord have brought my jus- tice near, it shall not be afar off, and my salvation shall not tarry. (Isaiah 46, 12)
4 Exspectetur, sicut pluvia, eloquium Domini: et de- scendat, sicut ros, super nos Deus noster. Canticle of Moses, Deut. 32, 1-43	Let the word of the Lord be awaited, like the rain, and let our God descend upon us like the dew. (vs. 2)
5 Paratus esto, Israel, in oc- cursum Domini, quoniam venit. Psalm 150	Be prepared, Israel, to meet the Lord, when He cometh. (Amos 4, 12)

Finally, on December 21st and 23rd, there are special antiphons to be said with the Benedictus, the last of these an especially fitting final word of the season, before the special office of the vigil of the Nativity. (Nolite timere is used for the commemoration of Advent on the feast of St Thomas, unless the feast is transferred off the 4th Sunday of Advent.)

Aña Nolite timere: quinta enim die veniet ad vos Do- minus noster.	Fear ye not, for on the fifth day our God will come to you.
Ana Ecce completa sunt omnia, quae dicta sunt per Angelum de Virgine Maria.	Behold, all things are fulfilled which were said by the Angel about the Virgin Mary.

In many medieval Uses, the antiphon Ecce completa sunt was sung in the Office of Christmas, or as part of the Little Office of the Virgin Mary in the Christmas season. In the following recording, it is followed by the versicle “Post partum, Virgo...” and the Christmastide prayer of the Virgin, “Deus, qui salutis aeternae.”

David Clayton Interviewed by Tammy Peterson

On Christianity, Art and Culture, and Saving the West with Beauty

Here is an interview which I did with Tammy Peterson, recorded in September and published on her YouTube channel just a few days ago. Tammy is married to Jordan Peterson. Despite being a relatively new Christian convert (she was received into the Church only this past Easter), Tammy is an excellent interviewer on the Christian faith and culture from a Catholic perspective. Her approach displays a genuine curiosity and a sincere desire to learn from the interviewee. This made for an enjoyable and wide-ranging conversation in which I was given time and space to communicate what I thought was important. I have included her show notes below.

Show notes: David Clayton, a prominent UK-born artist, writer, and educator currently based in the US, is globally acknowledged for his artistic work and spiritual teachings. As Provost of Pontifex University, Clayton has a renowned Master of Sacred Arts program and serves as Artist-in-Residence at the Princeton-based Scala Foundation. Regularly contributing to respected publications and blogs like scalafoundation.org and newliturgicalmovement.org, he is also the creator of The Way of Beauty process, offering personal formation to people of varied backgrounds. Clayton's acclaimed works include The Little Oratory, The Way of Beauty, The Vision for You, and Veiling to Reveal, while his commissioned pieces beautify churches in the UK and US. His illustrious career further includes a seven-year tenure as Artist-in-Residence at Thomas More College of Liberal Arts.

Find more from David: The Vision for You, How To Discover the Life You Were Made For:
https://www.amazon.com/Vision-You-Dis...

Veiling to Reveal: John Paul II’s Theology of the Body and the Role of Clothing in Christian Art and Anthropology: https://a.co/d/9At9yRy

The Way of Beauty: Liturgy, Education, and Inspiration for Family, School, and College: https://a.co/d/bo56rYB

The Little Oratory: A Beginner’s Guide to Praying in the Home: https://a.co/d/1Ihdgfi

Information on The Way of Beauty workshops and personal coaching: https://thewayofbeauty.org/formation Blog: https://thewayofbeauty.org/blog

Contact: https://thewayofbeauty.org/contact

To connect with Tammy Peterson:
Instagram:   / tammy.m.peterson   Facebook:   / tammypetersonpodcast   TikTok:   / tammypetersonpodcast   Twitter:   / tammy1peterson   Rumble: https://rumble.com/c/TammyPetersonPod...

“Tuned to the Truth: The Catholic Triad of Faith, Life, and Liturgy” — A Lecture by P. Bernward Deneke, FSSP (Part 1)

(source)

NLM is grateful to Monika Rheinschmitt of Pro Missa Tridentina and Pater Bernward Deneke, FSSP, for their permission to publish in installments a translation of the lecture P. Deneke delivered for the PMT General Assembly on June 8, 2024 at Neviges. The original text may be found here. - PAK

Introduction

Decades ago, a priestly colleague told me the following story: For some time, he had noticed a young man of student age who occasionally turned up among the attendees of his Masses. This stranger attended the service but never received Holy Communion. He also quite obviously did not seek contact with the other believers, but quickly withdrew each time.

“That’s his right,” the priest thought to himself, but as an apostolically minded person, he wanted to at least make an effort to get to know the Mass-goer. So one day he caught up with him, had a rather superficial conversation with him, invited him to various spiritual events, and also tried to introduce this loner to some zealous Catholics his age. The young man’s reaction was extremely cool. A few days later, a letter arrived in which he explained himself.

He first let the priest know in no uncertain terms that he was not interested in any catechesis, prayer events or getting to know pious people. Then came the strange statement: “I may be a Catholic, but I’m no Christian.” He does not believe in Jesus of Nazareth, the Messiah and Son of God. Rather, his interest was focused solely on the ancient form of the mass. It gave him the experience of the sacred, the divine. In it, he sees a rite whose basic elements coincide with the sacrificial acts of archaic cultures.

For him as a European, something of the numinous radiates here in the midst of the industrialized and engineered environment and the intellectual atmosphere, which has been banalized and corrupted by egalitarianism, loss of identity, and arbitrariness. This is something that Africans, for example, could experience in their old tribal rituals. Therefore, it was only for this reason that he visited churches where the rite of the Roman Mass liturgy is performed in as traditional a manner as possible. He asked to be spared further offers in the future.

The Catholic liturgy as an experience of the divine, detached from Catholic dogma and ecclesiastical morality. As a medium through which the spirit of the Westerner can plunge into those primal depths of numinous human experience from which the various cultic traditions arise and in which they, the exoteric forms of the different religions, coincide esoterically... It would be an exaggeration to say that this “traditional” or “perennialist” view is widespread in our country. But it does occur. It places itself with us against the modern cult of arbitrariness and equality, but at the same time against us in our belief in Jesus Christ as the only savior of mankind.

The incident described makes it clear where one can end up without a reference to an objective truth, even in the context of tradition-oriented Catholicism: “Catholic, but not Christian.” The Catholic cult is no longer regarded as an expression and reality of the universal redemptive work of the God-man Jesus Christ. Rather, it represents the more or less successful epiphany of an indeterminate divine, which can also be found in other, possibly essentially different forms.

Such an inclination is unlikely to exist in the very few Catholics who show commitment to the Missa Tridentina. Almost without exception, our group of people shows a pronounced attachment to the Church’s doctrine and defends it against the widespread denials, reinterpretations, and silences on the part of official preachers. And yet, the danger of neglecting the question of truth and, as a result, of the various areas of Catholic life drifting apart is by no means averted. Even among adherents of the traditional form of the Mass, it can happen that reference to the Gospel and to religious doctrine takes a back seat to the aesthetic experience. Even among these people there are those who (as a fellow priest remarked wittily) advocate a liturgy before Vatican II but a morality after Vatican II. It therefore seems appropriate to focus on the matter of truth, the all-encompassing, connecting and permeating truth. I will start by giving a brief overview of the path to be taken:

1. The lost center. Pluralism and uniformism, these two contradictory tendencies of our time, have a common origin: the loss of the fundamental and connecting basis.

2. The triad. Truth, goodness and beauty sound harmoniously together, with truth forming the fundamental tone.

3. The foundation of the Christian creed. Neither utilitarian reasons nor aesthetic preferences nor ethical claims, but rather the truth is the ultimate reason for which one is or becomes Catholic.

4. What is truth? Pilate’s question is answered with a few philosophical and theological thoughts.

5. The separation of truth from good. Unfruitful faith and toxic moralism are the consequences. The traditional liturgy, in its truth, bears witness to the good.

6. Veritatis Splendor. Separating the beautiful from the true leads to aestheticism. On the other hand, the traditional liturgy makes it clear that beauty is the “splendor of truth.”

7. Conclusion. The triad of truth, the final chord of the Holy Mass, is the conclusion of this reflection.

(source)

1. Lost Center

In conservative circles, it is good (or bad) manners to criticize two things. On the one hand, people are opposed to the religious and ideological confusion that dominates society and has also found its way into the Church. On the other hand, they denounce the egalitarianism that speaks sonorously of diversity but ultimately does not tolerate any deviation from a strictly prescribed opinions.

The two phenomena seem to be in opposition to each other. Those who demand and promote pluralism do not want uniformity. And those who affirm a total to totalitarian uniformity, marching in tightly closed ranks behind the banners of decency, composure, and wokeness, should not enjoy the potpourri of arbitrariness.

Strangely enough, however, the two contrary positions almost regularly converge. It is precisely the propagandists of colorfulness who insist on unquestionable convictions, non-negotiable values and a non-discussable scientific consensus. They therefore demand boundaries and restrictions, firewalls that must be maintained at all costs. For them, everything can and should be talked about, but the “limits of what can be said” (as it is almost poetically expressed) must not be shifted.

Where does this contradiction come from? Or is it none at all? Do pluralism and uniformism perhaps belong together somehow?

In fact, a more precise analysis could show that both arise from one and the same principle and have a common root. Or rather, their principle is precisely that they have no root, no truly supporting and unifying principle. The ideology of “diversity,” like all totalitarian efforts at unity, comes from a common source—namely, the deconstruction practiced by philosophers, psychologists, sociologists, and even theologians, who have set out to eliminate the previously generally assumed objective order in the realm of the mind.

In its place, there is now chaos, a yawning, empty abyss, similar to the Tohuwabohu before the creative, ordering word of God. Except that this present-day chaos does not want to find its way back to a cosmic order. Rather, the law of horror vacui applies here: a worldview void cannot persist. It absorbs, as it were, the nearest filler material into itself. And so the “loss of the center”, which Hans Sedlmayr described in 1948 in his book of the same name (still worth reading today), using the example of art, not only leads to a disintegration of previously connected elements; rather, other principles strive for dominance.

Biblically speaking, “powers and principalities” dominate things that have become rootless and directionless. Or, to quote Ernst Jünger’s much-cited words from 1943: “The abandoned altars are inhabited by demons.” But the work of demons is the illusory emancipation of man in order to lead him into bondage, from pluralism into total uniformism.

But instead of falling back on lamentations critical of modernity and pessimistic about culture, we want to go in search of the root. It is important to rediscover the unifying and pivotal point, that supporting, cohesive, and ordering principle that has been obscured by subjective, relativistic, and nihilistic cloud formations. It should become obvious what the seemingly lost but in reality always lasting center consists of. The abandoned altars must be cleansed and become again places of worship of the one true God and divine truth.

So what has been lost in the “loss of the center”? What has made the center empty? What is the missing element? To illustrate the gap, let us cite a successful contemporary author, the poet, Protestant pastor, and liturgy scholar Christian Lehnert. In his “Fliegende Blätter von Kult und Gebet” (Flying Leaves of Cult and Prayer), he describes the situation as follows:

Today, Christianity is moved by astonishing centrifugal forces. Everywhere groups and circles, individual devotions, syncretisms—nothing but “movements,” charismatic or liberal or conservative or esoteric preachers and healers and rememberers, nothing but brotherhoods and sisterhoods, be they interested in the Latin rite or in the ordination of women—make even monolithic Roman Catholicism tremble.[1]

It is disturbing that Lehnert places two very different aspirations side by side as if they were equivalent: the Latin rite and the ordination of women. How can a theologian, even if he is a Protestant and thus an outsider, place a venerable heritage on the one hand and subversive activity on the other?

In fact, however, this pairing makes sense where there is no fixed benchmark, no valid standard for judging the opposing views. In that case, it must inevitably appear as if we are dealing with charismatic, liberal, conservative, and esoteric movements simply as different currents within the no-longer-so-“monolithic” Roman Catholicism. The female rush into the traditional male domain of the sacrament of holy orders and the nostalgic-to-reactionary longing for the old rites might then be two opposing yet somehow related variations within the general centrifugal vortex.

In any case, the process does not cause Christian Lehnert to sound the alarm. Rather hopefully, he continues:

On the supposed “field of the dead” of Christianity, things are very lively. The agile, unchanging form of Christianity, its growth in depth and height, its incompleteness, its current form towards something that is always pending—this will only show what Christianity has always been: all its beauty and love.[2]

Christianity, even that within “monolithic Roman Catholicism,” is thus in a state of ferment. It is not a foregone conclusion how it will develop. Lehnert does not assume fixed constants. The only thing he is certain of is that from the seething process, Christianity will emerge more clearly and reveal itself as what it is at its core. What exactly will emerge? “All its beauty and love.”

The author was consulted here because he clearly expresses what is missing—but expresses it by remaining silent. For the gap opens up precisely where, in the context of religion, only “beauty and love” are mentioned. Both are certainly essential to Christianity: the engaging figure, the splendor with which it appears, and the love, the goodness with which it is effective in the world. But I suspect that most readers will miss an element where the good and the beautiful are mentioned: the truth.

“Truth, Beauty, Good” is proclaimed in large letters on the frieze below the gable relief of the Alte Oper in Frankfurt. This triad is the ideal of Weimar Classicism, which Johann Wolfgang von Goethe’s Epilogue to Schiller’s Bell from 1805 expresses in view of his poet friend who recently passed away:

Meanwhile his mighty spirit onward press’d
Where goodness, beauty, truth, for ever grow;
And in his rear, in shadowy outline, lay
The vulgar, which we all, alas, obey![3]

But long before that, in ancient Greece, the triad ἀληθές, ἀγαθόν, καλόν (alethés, agathón, kalón) could be heard, at least subliminally. It permeated the Christian Middle Ages as verum, bonum, pulchrum. And it has lost none of its significance to this day.

2. The Triad

It is tempting to speak of a triad here. This chord is a phenomenon whose importance for the entire development of music since the emergence of polyphony can hardly be overestimated. Its specific sound is so much a part of the fabric of all tonally bound music that we take it for granted from Palestrina to the regrettable popular music of the present day. It is difficult for us to understand why the interval of the third was not considered pure harmony until the beginning of the modern era, and why polyphonic pieces therefore ended either on a unison root or on the root with the fifth.

A triad consists of the root, the fifth, and then an added major or minor third, depending on the major or minor color sought. It can be played in different positions: in the root or third-fifth position, with the root at the bottom; in the first inversion as a sixth chord, with the root at the top; and in the second inversion, the fourth-sixth chord, in which the root is between the other two. Even someone who is unfamiliar with musical notation and has no knowledge of chords will readily perceive when listening to the three variants of the triad that the root note remains the same in each case and that its rank is in no way denied even when the fifth or the third is in the highest position.

It is only through the root that the other two notes are given their significance. Let us imagine a C major triad consisting of the root C, the fifth G, and the third E. Without the C, the mode (major or minor) and the key are not recognizable. E and G could also be the fundamental and third of an incomplete E minor chord missing the fifth, B. Only with the C does the G become identifiable as the fifth (and thus as the main note of the so-called dominant) and the E as the major third. Even C and E, when played together, do not provide sufficient information about which mode and which key are present, because if you add an A to the two notes, you get the parallel minor chord to C major, that is, A minor.

So much for a brief excursion into the superficial aspects of music theory. In our considerations, we are dealing with a triad that is quite different from the acoustic one. But because there are such obvious analogies between the two—the structure of root, the third, and the fifth on the one hand, and the triad of truth, goodness, and beauty on the other—and because some aspects that can be easily recognized in the musical triad will be discussed later, the detour was not nugatory.

Whether one speaks of the “true, good, beautiful” in line with Goethe or, with a slight modification, of the “true, beautiful, good” in line with the inscription at the Alte Oper in Frankfurt, one has already decided which of the three elements is the main one. In both lists, the true comes first.

It is precisely this element that Christian Lehnert withholds when he says “what Christianity has always been” is “beauty and love” (or, let’s say, goodness).

My thesis is that the justly lamented “loss of the center” consists in the withdrawal of truth. The fundamental tone was taken from the triad. Without truth and the claim to truth, Christianity lacks the basis, the root from which it draws its life-forces and juices. A vacuum then opens up that virtually invites destructive powers and forces to penetrate and begin their work of destruction.

No matter how much love and beauty may be invoked and celebrated, without a religious connection to the Truth they will degenerate into more or less random products that arise from artistic talent or moral sentiment but will lack inner necessity and a clear sense of purpose. Only truth offers a guarantee of true good and true beauty.

(To be continued.)

NOTES

[1] Lehnert, Christian: Der Gott in einer Nuß. Fliegende Blätter von Kult und Gebet. Berlin 2017. S. 189.

[2] Ebd., S. 189f.

[3] Goethe, Johann Wolfgang von: Gedichte in zeitli­ cher Reihenfolge. Hrsg. v. Heinz Nicolai. 10. Aufl. Frankfurt am Main und Leipzig 1997. S. 553