Defending So-Called Doublets by Understanding Parallelism

Symmetry like that of these towers in Paris is common to all works of art, musical, poetic, rhetorical, dance, etc. What is strange is not to have parallelism. Photo by Priscilla Fraire (source)

One of the pet peeves of the modern liturgists was what they liked to call “doublets,” namely, elements that seemed to them to be redundant or uselessly repetitious. Adhering to the odd belief of Romano Guardini that devotion is characterized by repetition but liturgy by linear singularity (see this lecture of mine for the relevant texts), they claimed after the Council that the Offertory rite needlessly and confusingly anticipated the Canon and therefore needed to be radically modified. As we all know, their solution was to jettison nearly all of the existing Offertory and replace it with a faux-Jewish workerist blessing of bread and wine.

It is hard to evade the impression that such reformers were like the Enlightenment and Victorian critics who complained of obscurities, infelicities, and improprieties in Shakespeare’s plays, and therefore felt themselves justified in diligently “correcting” them for modern readers. Looking back today, we can only marvel that otherwise literate and competent people should be so blind to the extraordinary perfection of the Bard’s works, as he achieved his goals with full mastery of materials.

In his superb book Forest of Symbols, Fr. Claude Barthe guides us to see the hardly accidental or incidental parallelism that exists between the Offertory of the Roman Rite and the Roman Canon. So far from this being an example of useless repetition or incoherent anticipation, it is a glowing example of how the liturgy proceeds by way of preparation, reinforcement, parallelism, building a system of cross-references that allow the fullest meaning to be grasped—much as men have two eyes and two ears in order to see and to hear a single reality better, or as a train rides on two parallel tracks in order to remain stable and not veer to the left or right. Indeed, just about every cognitive process involves multiple sources that are compared with and complete one another. What would be strange is reducing the approach to truth to a single line, unaccompanied and unrelational. Nor is it at all surprising that no divino-apostolic liturgical rite exhibits this rationalist flaw.

Let us consider the parallels in detail, quoting from Barthe, pp. 84–88.

Parallel #1

The Suscipe, sancte Pater,
hanc immaculatam hostiam…

(Receive, O holy Father, almighty, eternal God, this spotless host, which I, thine unworthy servant, do offer unto thee, my living and true God, for mine own countless sins, offences, and negligences, and for all here present; as also for all faithful Christians, living and dead, that it may avail for my own and for their salvation unto life eternal)

…corresponds to the Hanc igitur

(We therefore beseech thee, O Lord, to be appeased, and to receive this offering of our bounden duty, as also of thy whole household; order our days in thy peace; grant that we may be rescued from eternal damnation, and counted within the fold of thine elect) of the Canon and to the consecration of the Host (This is my Body). This Suscipe is particularly important for the development of the ultimate propitiatory purpose of the Mass: an oblation for the sins of the living and the dead with a view to their salvation.

Parallel #2

The Deus qui humanae and
the Offerimus, tibi, Domine, calicem salutaris…

(O God, who in creating human nature didst marvelously ennoble it, and hast still more marvelously reformed it; grant that, by the mystery of this water and wine, we may be made partakers of his divinity who vouchsafed to become partaker of our humanity, Jesus Christ, thy Son, our Lord… We offer unto thee, O Lord, the chalice of salvation, beseeching thy clemency, that it may rise up in the sight of thy divine majesty, as a savor of sweetness, for our salvation, and for that of the whole world)

…correspond to the consecration of the wine
(This is the chalice of my blood).

Deus, qui Humanae substantiae…is, as we have seen, an ancient prayer assigned by the sacramentaries to the feast of Christmas. It refers to the representation, by the admixture of the water to the wine, of the union of the faithful with Christ. It does no more than take up an allegory of the patristic period to which reference has already been made (“When the wine in the chalice is mixed with the water, the people is being united with Christ,” says St Cyprian), which in its turn depends for its authority at least on scriptural symbolism: “The waters that you saw. . . are peoples, and nations, and tongues” (Apoc. 17, 15). Attention is thus focused on the humanity of Christ and of the faithful united with him.

The text has not given an a posteriori allegorical explanation to the action, the admixture: on the contrary, it is a clear example of the allegorical meaning of the action explaining the choice of accompanying texts. In fact, the admixture is of immense theological importance. The decree of the Council of Florence (1438–1445) relating to the Armenians, who only acknowledged the one divine nature in Christ and who consecrated only wine, without the water that symbolizes Christ’s humanity, refers to the extreme appropriateness of the admixture, citing Apoc.17, 15.

To tell the truth, the allegory is double: in the Milanese and Carthusian rites the prayer also alludes to the water that issued from Christ’s side. In fact it is a triple allegory, if we take account of St Thomas Aquinas, who in addition to a historical reason gives three mystical reasons for the mixing of wine and water in the chalice, of which the first two have just been mentioned: as a representation of the Passion, with the water and the Blood flowing from Christ’s open side (in the Carthusian Offertory, the priest says, “From the side of Our Lord Jesus Christ flowed Blood and water for the redemption of the world”); as a symbol of the union of the people with Christ; but also, as a demonstration of the effect of the sacrament, namely entry into eternal life, represented by the water that quenches every thirst (John 4, 13-14).

Parallel #3

The prayer using the royal “we,” and the invocation, which derive from Gallican missals:

In spiritu humilitatis…
Veni, sanctificator…

(In a humble spirit, and a contrite heart, may we be received by thee, O Lord; and may our sacrifice so be offered up in thy sight this day that it may be pleasing to thee, O Lord God… Come, O thou who makest holy, almighty, eternal God and bless this sacrifice, prepared for thy holy name)

correspond to the epiklesis,
Supplices te rogamus…

(We most humbly beseech thee, Almighty God, to command that these things be borne by the hands of thy holy angel to thine altar on high, in the sight of thy divine majesty, that as many of us as, at this altar, shall partake of and receive the most holy Body and Blood of thy Son, may be filled with every heavenly blessing and grace)

For all that, it does not seem that the sanctificator invoked here is specifically intended as the Person of the Holy Spirit. Moreover, contrary to the usual opinion, the notion of an epiklesis (a request, accompanied by a deep bow, that the power of God may descend or that the sacrifice may be raised up to him) does not necessarily imply an entreaty to the Holy Spirit.

Parallel #4

Psalm 25, 6-12,

Lavabo inter innocentes manus meas…

(I wash my hands among the innocent . . . Destroy not my soul with the wicked, O God: nor my life with men of blood. In whose hands are iniquities: their right hand is filled with gifts. But I have walked in mine innocence . . . My foot hath stood in the straight way: in the churches I will bless thee, O Lord), which accompanies the washing of his hands by the celebrant, and has given its name to the action,

prepares us for the
Nobis quoque peccatoribus…

(To us sinners, also, thy servants, hoping in the multitude of thy mercies, vouchsafe to grant some part and fellowship with the holy apostles and martyrs…into whose company we pray thee admit us, not considering our merit, but of thine own free pardon).

“Wash yourselves, be clean,” says Isaiah (1, 16). According to liturgical historians, this washing of hands may have been mystical from the very beginning. If not, it could be more plausibly linked to the solemn censing than to the ancient oblation of the people: St Cyril of Jerusalem (c. 315–386) had already noted that those who had to wash their hands did not have a share in the receiving of the oblations.

This washing of the hands, it seems, was already present in the pontifical Mass of the fifth and sixth centuries, and was at the same point in the Mass as it is today. The priest who is going to offer the sacrifice washes his hands, symbolizing his deeds, to indicate that he must wash and purify his conscience of evil deeds with the tears of penitence and compunction, according to the verse, “Every night I will wash my bed: I will water my couch with my tears” (Ps. 6, 7).

Parallel #5

The last great prayer of the Offertory,

Suscipe, sancta Trinitas,…
ob memoriam passionis, resurrectionis, et ascensionis…

(Receive, O Holy Trinity, this offering, which we make to thee, in remembrance of the Passion, Resurrection, and Ascension of our Lord Jesus Christ, and in honor of blessed Mary ever virgin, of blessed John the Baptist, of the holy apostles Peter and Paul, of these and of all the saints: that it may avail to their honor and our salvation: and may they vouchsafe to intercede for us in heaven, whose memory we celebrate on earth)

highlights the finality of the sacrifice. It is an anamnesis (remembrance, recollection), like that in the Canon,

Unde et memores…

(Wherefore, O Lord, we thy servants, as also thy holy people, calling to mind the blessed passion of the same Christ thy Son our Lord, and also his rising up from hell, and his glorious ascension into heaven, do offer unto thy most excellent majesty, of thine own gifts bestowed upon us…).

But the prayer also recalls the

Communicantes
with its roll call of the saints

(Communicating, and reverencing the memory, first, of the glorious Mary, ever a Virgin, Mother of our Lord Jesus Christ; likewise of thy blessed apostles and martyrs, Peter and Paul, Andrew, James…and of all thy saints; by whose merits and prayers grant that in all things we may be guarded by thy protecting help).

It is a prayer addressed to the Holy Trinity, even though the Canon, like every Eucharistic prayer, is addressed to the Father. Latinists will note that in the oldest missals the more classical form in honore with the ablative was used (beatae Mariae semper Virginis et…) rather than in honorem with the accusative, an effect heightened by the fact that an ad honorem (ut illis proficiat ad honorem) follows. In honore is equivalent to in veneratione, in honore sanctorum, and makes us think of the “in honore deorum,” the feast day of the gods in old Latin. We may also note that the progression illis ad honorem…nobis ad salutem…; intercedere in caelis…quorum memoriam agimus in terris is an interesting imitation in the Latin of the High Middle Ages of the measured parallelisms of the Latin of Late Antiquity.

Parallel #6

Orate, fratres…

(Brethren, pray that my sacrifice and yours may be acceptable to God the Father Almighty. May the Lord receive the sacrifice at thy hands, to the praise and glory of his name, to our benefit, and to that of all his holy church)

…recalls the prayer
Quam oblationem of the Canon

(Which offering do thou, O God, vouchsafe in all things, to bless, consecrate, approve, make reasonable and acceptable)

Fiat acceptabile— facere acceptabilem, that the sacrifice that is offered may be judged acceptable by God himself so that he can receive it. The theology is admirable, and again reveals the rigorous precision of Rome’s lex orandi.

But this Orate, fratres is above all a greeting, like Dominus vobiscum: the priest kisses the altar and extends his hands as a sign of peace. It can thus be a sort of blessing by the priest who is going to offer the sacrifice: we will note, in fact, that the double idea of an acceptable sacrifice and of an offering by the celebrant on behalf of those in whose name he is making the offering reappears in Placeat tibi, sancta Trinitas… (May the homage of my service be pleasing to thee, O holy Trinity; and grant that the sacrifice which I, though unworthy, have offered in the sight of thy majesty, may be acceptable to thee: and through thy mercy win forgiveness for me and for all those for whom I have offered it), the other apologia that precedes the final blessing.

Now, for the Orate, fratres the celebrant turns round in a complete circle, in a movement that is identical to that of the final blessing. Finally, we must remember that at the end of the silent prayer of the Offertory (representing the silent prayer of Christ in the Garden of Gethsemane), the priest’s invitation to the ministers to pray before entering on the sacrifice echoes that of Christ to his disciples at Gethsemane: “Pray, lest ye enter into temptation” (Luke 22, 40).

*   *   *

Fr. Barthe proceeds to show that the many other “doublets” of the Roman Rite are equally carefully contrived to bring out the fullest depth of theological meaning, even as the equivalent doublets in the Byzantine rite are. Barthe helps us to see, from new perspectives, the profound analogies between East and West that the liturgical reform almost obliterated and that the Roman Rite in its classical integrity preserves as a witness to catholicity.

Did not all these rites take their cue from the very Word of God, in which repetition and parallelism are key features? Hebrew poetry cannot be understood at all unless one grasps its use of parallel phrases that echo one another in a sort of conceptual rhyme. And who could forget the thunderous verse of the prophet Jeremiah: “Trust not in lying words, saying: The temple of the Lord, the temple of the Lord, it is the temple of the Lord” (Jer. 7, 4). It’s not enough to have a consecrated building; one must live as a consecrated people, receiving humbly and gratefully all that the Lord wishes to give. It’s not enough to have a “valid rite”; one must have the fullness of tradition, which is the fullness of validity: valid from and for a people the Lord has made His own, in a love announced, anticipated, achieved, fulfilled, and renewed.

Photo by Jan Canty (source)

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

Saint Michael, Sacred Liturgy, and the Restoration of Beauty

I have the good fortune of being obligated, for professional reasons, to regularly spend quality time with a wide variety of (digitized) medieval manuscripts. One result of this enlightening research is an appreciation for the diversity of artistic styles in pre-Renaissance Western culture. Sometimes we may find ourselves thinking in terms of an oversimplified dichotomy between highly iconographic modes in the East and a mildly symbolic proto-naturalism in the West. In reality, pre-modern religious paintings in East and West form a diverse continuum of artistic techniques, and a few outstanding artifacts can help us to reflect upon this.

One would be the Lindisfarne Gospels, with its enigmatic fusion of styles and astonishing decorations:

Another is the book of biblical scenes painted by William de Brailes, an English illuminator active during the thirteenth century. The example below, which depicts the Israelites worshipping the golden calf, has strongly iconographic features.

The Codex Calixtinus, dating to the mid-twelfth century and associated with both western France and northern Spain, is highly stylized and difficult to categorize:

Also from Spain, perhaps Segovia or Burgos, is the Hours of Infante Don Alfonso of Castile. The foliate ornamentation and grisaille-with-gold tonality in this book are deeply pleasing to me; there is an intriguing sense of mysticism in the serene faces and expressionistic scenes, along with a strong note of surreality in the surrounding details.

However, when it comes to reimagining artistic dichotomies, nothing quite compares to a twelfth-century masterpiece known as the Stammheim Missal. The illuminations in this manuscript—almost sui generis in style, and apparently the work of one extraordinarily talented monk—combine vibrant colors, curvilinear forms, strong geometries, simplified human figures, fascinating visual poetry, and profound visual theology into yet more compelling evidence that traditional Christian liturgy was the heart of Europe’s artistic genius.

The personification of Wisdom beneath God the Creator.

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The Stammheim Missal emerged from that fundamental engine of medieval learning and creativity: the Benedictine scriptorium. It was made in the twelfth century at Hildesheim Abbey, in north-central Germany, and eventually found its way to the Getty Museum in Los Angeles; reproductions can be found on the Getty’s website. Despite the fact that it was produced over eight hundred years ago, all the pages are intact, the colors haven’t faded, and the precious metals still shine. Rarely do I see such vivid proof that skilled craftsmen working with authentic, natural materials can produce artifacts of astounding quality and longevity, even in the total absence of advanced technology.

David with companion musicians.

The Michaeliskirche—the abbey church of Hildesheim—is a superb Romanesque structure. It was dedicated to St. Michael the Archangel on his feast day, September 29th, in the year 1022, and rededicated to him on the same day nine years later, when construction was complete. When I reflect on the life expectancy of modern buildings and institutions, the longevity is almost breathtaking. The church you see below was built one thousand years ago.

St. Michael’s Church in Hildesheim, Germany. Photo by Heinz-Josef Lücking.

In the culture that produced the monastery that produced the Stammheim Missal, the feast of St. Michael the Archangel was a high holy day and a rich folkloric celebration. It was also, of course, a very special day for the monks of Hildesheim, who were careful to colorfully accentuate the celebration of their patron in the missal’s September calendar page:

And the historiated initial that introduces St. Michael’s feast day is a captivating and mysterious interplay of stolid rectangles, absorbing curves, bold colors, mischievous beasts, and diversely occupied humans.

As Gregory DiPippo explained in an NLM article published on this same day two years ago, this feast is of venerable antiquity and is not restricted exclusively to St. Michael:

The traditional title of today’s feast is “The Dedication of St Michael the Archangel,” a term already found ca. 650 A.D. in the lectionary of Wurzburg, the oldest of the Roman Rite that survives, and in the ancient sacramentaries....
Despite the fact that the feast’s title refers specifically only to St Michael, September 29th is really the feast of all the Angels, as stated repeatedly in the texts of both the Office and Mass.

That Michael shares his feast with other angels subtracts nothing from the honor that we give to him on this day. Rather, it reinforces his exalted role in salvation history and Christian spirituality, for his celestial renown was gained not as a champion in single combat but as the victorious commander of the angelic host. And indeed, this is precisely how the Stammheim illuminator portrayed him in the portrait that precedes the prayers for his feast:

You can further explore the historical context and theological resonance of this remarkable image in an article that I co-authored with my Substack colleague Amelia Sims McKee. It includes vibrant, wonderfully detailed images of the painting, and I hope that it might serve as an enjoyable and profitable meditation for this great feast, nowadays sadly understated, of the prince of the heavenly armies.

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Dr. Ena Giurescu Heller, former professor of art history and specialist in medieval art, makes a crucial observation about artwork produced in the Middle Ages. She suggests that the modern “understanding of and response to medieval religious art is completely different (antithetical, really) to the response of its contemporaries.” Medieval Christians were surrounded by church buildings, stained-glass narratives, frescoes, statues, vessels, vestments, and illuminations that, despite their aesthetic magnificence,

were neither objects of any veneration (least of all aesthetic), nor ends unto themselves. They were tools—tools for the liturgy, and ... tools for transporting their beholders to the divine realm they symbolize and serve.

Furthermore, these tools for the liturgy were also inspired by the liturgy, which preceded them and which even in the absence of sumptuous visual or musical artwork was artistic in the most fundamental and transcendent sense of the word.

I say again: traditional Christian liturgy was the heart of Europe’s artistic genius. The artistic consciousness of Western civilization has suffered from long, dismal years of cardiac arrest. And yet, as the psalmist says, in the sight of God all these years are “as yesterday when it is past, and as a watch in the night.” For three days and three nights the heart of Our Lord was still. The resurrection will come, and in the meantime, let us pray that St. Michael press onward in his campaign against the Church’s ancient Enemy. We know, as Milton did, who the victor will be:

Now Night her course began and over Heaven
Inducing darkness grateful truce imposed
And silence on the odious din of war.
Under her cloudy covert both retired,
Victor and vanquished: On the foughten field
Michaël and his angels prevalent
Encamping, placed in guard their watches round,
Cherubic waving fires. On th’ other part,
Satan with his rebellious disappeared.

Another Sarum Vespers Described, by James Griffin

Better very late than never, we thank our friend Mr James Griffin of The Durandus Institute for Sacred Liturgy and Music for sharing with us these pictures of a Vesper ceremony in the Sarum Rite celebrated back in March, and for providing the written description of the ceremony.

Faithful readers of this site may recall my photo-essay from February 2020, following the Sarum Vespers for Candlemas Eve in Philadelphia, which was attended by 700 or more persons. For many of the faithful in this part of the country, that event is etched in their memories as a last hurrah before the Covid-related shutdowns brought an end to public worship.

It took four years for the right circumstances to allow my associates and me to put together a second celebration of the Sarum Use, which finally took place on Friday, March 1 at the chapel of Princeton University, New Jersey. Some estimates have the headcount at 800 this time! An excellent reflection was written shortly after the event by NLM contributor David Clayton, who also gave an academic presentation before the Vespers began. But I hadn’t found the time, or the right inspiration, to put my own words to paper until now. As with the essay in 2020, photos here are thanks to the efforts of Allison Girone and her associates. A digital version of the congregational booklet may be downloaded here, and below is a professional video recording.

The clergy and servers are led to the chancel by the verger (as the Sarum Customary puts it, “the sacristan with the rod”). At the beginning of Vespers, the candle-bearers enter in surplices, which are exchanged for full albs partway into the ceremony.

We welcomed many priests from far and wide to attend in-choir. Many wore the black cappa, as did the canons of Salisbury Cathedral, a practical measure for any cavernous stone church in a northern climate. The officiant was Fr. Armando G. Alejandro, Jr., a priest of the Ordinariate of the Chair of St. Peter, and chaplain for the Durandus Institute.

Just before the officiating priest, the rectores chori — rulers of the choir — make their entrance. Each ruler carries a stave, sometimes called a baculus cantoralis, as a sign of his office. It should be said that the practice of cantors with staves is hardly unique to the Sarum Use, having been practiced in various monastic houses and cathedrals in Europe, and even in some places in Latin America until the 20th century.

Continue Reading this Article. . .

The Epistle Settings

Lost in Translation #105

A standard feature of all Apostolic liturgies is the use of Scriptural readings to illuminate the liturgical occasion, rather than to deepen Biblical literacy per se. Readings from the Old and New Testament were generally chosen because of their thematic relevance to the season or day. Occasionally, readings were composed of specific verses selected from a Biblical passage for appropriateness to the liturgical day, with other less appropriate verses omitted, in order to further hone the message. There also exist readings of a type called a “cento”, from a Latin word meaning “patchwork”, which are assembled from verses of different books of the Bible. (These are extremely rare in the Roman and Ambrosian Rites, but common in the Byzantine.) To paraphrase Fr. Joseph Jungmann, the Church did not hesitate to break the bread of God’s word in order to prepare the faithful for a particular Eucharist breaking of the bread. [1]

One curious component of this verbal bread-breaking is the addition of settings to the sacred texts. Before reading a passage from the Bible, the reader (a lector, subdeacon, or priest) announces the name of the book from which it is taken and then adds an introductory word of address or explanation. Words of address typically go with New Testament readings while words of explanation typically go with Old Testament readings. When an Old Testament reading is used, for example, it is common to see it prefaced with “In diebus illis – In those days”, or “Haec dicit Dominus – Thus saith the Lord”. Both introductions are designed to heighten the audience’s attention.

So too are the words of address that preface a New Testament reading. Most of the readings from the Acts of the Apostles begin with In diebus illis, and the same is true of Revelation, for even though much of this apocalyptic book is a vision of the future, the revelations were given to St. John “in those days.” We will say more about In diebus illis when we discuss the Gospel setting In illo tempore in the next essay.

As for the Epistles: “Fratres – Brethren”) begins readings from St. Paul’s congregational letters [2], “Carissime – Dearly beloved” (singular) begins those from his pastoral letters [3], and “Carissimi –Dearly beloved” (plural) begins the so-called Catholic Epistles. [4] And because the Roman Missal ascribes the Epistle to the Hebrews to Saint Paul and treats it as a congregational letter, passages from Hebrews begin with Fratres as well.

St. Paul does not begin his own epistles with these greetings, although at some point he does address the churches in most of his congregational letters with Fratres. In his pastoral letters, Paul refers to Timothy and to Titus as his beloved son (dilectus filius), and once he refers to Timothy as his dearly beloved son (carissimus filius – Titus 1, 2) As for the Catholic Epistles, Saints Peter, John, and Jude all address their audiences with Carissimi (1 Pet. 2, 11; 1 John 2,7; Jude 3) while Saint James does not.

The greetings therefore serve as rough but reliable signposts, reminding the listener of the passage’s literary or ecclesiastical context. And thanks to their ordering in the Missal, they form illuminating clusters on the calendar.

The beginning of the Epistle to the Galatians in a medieval Bible.

Fratres, used for Paul’s congregational epistles, is the most common address and can be found throughout the year in both the Temporal and Sanctoral Cycles.

The single-number Carissime, used for Paul’s epistles to Timothy and Titus, appears in the Temporal Cycle only during Christmastide: the Midnight Mass, the Christmas Dawn Mass, on days within the Octave of the Nativity, on the Christmas Octave, and on the Saturday Mass for the Blessed Virgin Mary from Christmas to Candlemas. It is more common in the Sanctoral Cycle, where it is used on a variety of Saints’ feast days. The use of Carissime during the Christmas season is apt, a warm reminder of how God so loved the world that He gave us His only Son.

The plural-number Carissimi, used for the Catholic epistles, appears in the Temporal Cycle only during Eastertide and the initial Sundays after Pentecost: Easter Friday, Easter Saturday, all the Sundays after Easter, the Lesser Rogation Days, the Sunday after the Ascension, the First through Third Sundays after Pentecost, and the Fifth Sunday after Pentecost. It appears less often in the Sanctoral Cycle. The use of Carissimi during the Easter season is apt, a warm reminder of how God has exalted His Son who was obedient unto death on a cross, and made us heirs of His grace. And insofar as more people are greater (in number) than one person, it is fitting that the plural Carissimi be used for the greatest season of the liturgy year.

Liturgical settings appear in the 1970 Roman Missal and are faithfully reproduced in the lectionaries of several modern languages. For reasons unknown to me, however, they do not appear in any of the official English translations. This omission, in my opinion, is especially regrettable with the Gospel settings, to which we shall turn in the next essay.

From the 2015 Lectionary of Spain

Notes

[1] Joseph A. Jungmann, The Mass of the Roman Rite (Christian Classics, 1974), 265.

[2] Romans, 1 Corinthians, 2 Corinthians, Galatians, Ephesians, Philippians, Colossians, 1 Thessalonians, and 2 Thessalonians.

[3] 1 Timothy, 2 Timothy, Titus.

[4] James, 1 Peter, 2 Peter, 1 John, 2 John, 3 John, and Jude.

“Key to the Missal: Finding Your Way in the Traditional Mass” - Reprinted by Arouca Press

We are pleased to share this item from Arouca Press about their new reprint of a classic resource for learning about the traditional Latin Mass, Key to the Missal, by Cornelius A. Bouman and Mary Perkins Ryan, originally published in 1960.

Few books do so much in so little as this one. In sixteen short chapters the authors manage not only to present a key to the Traditional Missal, but also a key to the entire Church Year, as well as a key to the Sacred Liturgy. In addition to the chapters on the seasons of the Church Year, the book gives in two initial chapters of authentic information on the history of the Missal and its use, concluding with three chapters on the feasts of Our Lord, of the Mother of God, and of the Saints. May this book give the reader a greater appreciation for such a treasure as the Traditional Roman Missal!

“Key to the Missal is a concise but richly informative commentary on the Roman Missal, the liturgical book containing the liturgy of the Mass of the Roman Rite for every day in the year. In plain and simple language, its coauthors—Cornelius Adrianus Bouman (1911-88), a Dutch liturgical historian and Byzantine Rite deacon, and Mary Perkins Ryan (1912-93), an American religious educator—open to readers the riches of the Mass, and they do so within the broader framework of the Church’s calendar. After two introductory chapters on the history and use of the Missal, the rest of this little volume takes us through the Liturgical Year, highlighting key insights drawn from the texts of the Mass. With the Missal as our optic on the Church’s cycle of seasons and feasts, we can be certain that we are thinking as the Church thinks about the mysteries of salvation: lex orandi, lex credendi...” — from the Foreword of the new edition, by Fr Thomas Kocik

“Long out of print, Cornelius A. Bouman and Mary Perkins Ryan’s 1960 Key to the Missal has been resurrected from the ash heap of oblivion to provide a new generation of traditional worshippers guidance in how to get the most out of the traditional Latin Mass. Key to the Missal artfully combines scholarly erudition with practical advice, much of which I had not heard before but which, once presented, makes perfect sense. This is a delightful and digestible book.” — Dr. Michael P. Foley, author of Lost in Translation: Meditating on the Orations of the Traditional Roman Rite and Dining with the Saints

“People who attend the traditional Latin Mass often wonder how they can better understand and relate to the liturgy. Key to the Missal answers this very practical question by offering an accessible, insightful guide to making the best use of one's daily missal. It offers points of meditation for each season of the liturgical year and for various classes of feasts, drawing the reader's attention to themes, texts, and connections. It's like a hand-missal masterclass. The strength of its content permits one to forgive, as naive, certain vintage 1960 footnotes.“” — Dr. Peter Kwasniewski, author of The Once and Future Roman Rite

The Abbey of Grottaferrata

Today is the feast of St Nilus, who founded the important Byzantine Rite monastery of Grottaferrata, about 13 miles to the southeast of Rome, fairly close to the famous Papal summer residence at Castel Gandolfo. He was originally from a town called Rossano in the southern Italian region of Calabria, and lived an ordinary life until he was about 30 years old, when his wife and daughter both died within a short time of each other, and then he fell serious ill. These events set him on the path to a religious conversion, and the embracing of monastic life in one of the many Byzantine communities in southern Italy, in which state he earned a great reputation for sanctity and learning. The political vicissitudes of the era brought him north to Rome; in 1004, while passing through the Alban hills, he had a vision of Our Lady, from which it was made known to him that he was to found a community in that place. Nilus is reckoned the first abbot and founder of the monastery because he obtained from a local nobleman the grant of land in Grottaferrata on which it was built, and established the community, but he did not live to the see building of it even begun. This was accomplished by his successor Bartholomew, who is also a Saint.

A painting in the abbey of Saints Nilus and Bartholomew, by Annibale Carracci (1560-1609); public domain image from Wikimedia Commons.

I stumbled across the following documentary about the abbey, which tells some of its history and shows many of the church’s interesting artistic and architectural features. (It was posted on YouTube about four years ago by the Italian Basilian monks, but it seems to have been made rather longer ago, and is pretty grainy.)

The 20th Anniversary of the Death of Michael Davies

Today is the 20th anniversary of the death of Michael Davies, who is, I trust, well known to our readers, and especially in the English-speaking world, as one of the great defenders of the traditional Roman liturgy in the mad years immediately after the most recent ecumenical council. It is no exaggeration to describe as heroic the efforts which he made, both by writing and frequent lecturing, to expose how the liturgical reform betrayed that council. His most thorough and effective works in this regard are the three volumes published under the umbrella title The Liturgical Revolution: Cranmer’s Godly Order, Pope John’s Council and Pope Paul’s New Mass.

After 60 years of scholarly research and publication, it is now generally understood that most of the scholarly premises which underpin the reform were simply flat-out wrong. Indeed, this has become such a commonplace, at least among the more honest, that we have perhaps forgotten, (or perhaps the younger among us have never known), that in those mad years, men like Davies and Fr Bouyer who spoke against such errors were almost universally dismissed as cranks. (Fr Bouyer’s 20th anniversary, by the way, is less than a month away, on October 22.)

It may be instructive, and hopefully a worthy tribute to Mr Davies, to look back at this fascinating episode of the program Firing Line, broadcast on April 22, 1980. The occasion for this discussion between the host, William F. Buckley, Davies, and Fr (later Monsignor) Joseph Champlin, a priest of the Diocese of Syracuse, New York, was Pope St John Paul II’s “disciplinary” action against Fr Hans Küng; the previous December, the Pope had decreed that the University of Tübingen, where Küng was then teaching, could no longer refer to him as a “Catholic” theologian. The conversation quickly turns to a general discussion of the state of things in the Church, with much said about the liturgical reform.

Especially noteworthy is the exchange which begins at 18:30, in which Mr Davies refutes the canard, stated by Fr Champlin, that anciently the Church celebrated Mass “facing the people,” citing Fr Bouyer among others. Faced with the evidence, Fr Champlin has no response to make at all, and none has been found in the subsequent quarter of century either.

At the time, of course, the Novus Ordo was only 11 years old; in the United States, as in many other countries, the more outlandish sorts of liturgical experimentation and abuse were still very common, and the almost total prohibition on any celebration of the traditional Mass still very much in effect. De facto, if not de jure, this unjust prohibition was very often extended to any attempt to celebrate the reformed liturgy according to something resembling the mind of the Council. Buckley’s magazine National Review republished electronically an article which he wrote about the Latin Mass in 1967; almost two-and-a-half years before the Novus Ordo was promulgated, a priest dared not celebrate in Latin the wedding Mass for a member of his family, for fear that the bishop find out. Whatever difficulties we face today in the quest to improve the Church’s liturgical life, we must never allow ourselves to forget that enormous strides have been made since those days, a fact which should be an encouragement to all, and a cause for tremendous gratitude. These labors have not been in vain.

A couple of other points of interest.

1. Buckley rightly points out in his introduction, “the practical effect (of the Pope’s actions) on Fr Küng is barely noticeable; he continues to teach theology...” Nevertheless, as Davies says later (12:27), the reaction among Küng’s supporters was ferocious, with the Anglican Church Times calling the Pope the “ayatollah of the West.” The viciousness of this language may perhaps be difficult for some of our younger readers to appreciate; at the time of this broadcast, 52 Americans were being held hostage in the American embassy in Tehran, under the Ayatollah Khomeini’s government. (Archbishop Bugnini, then in his second career as nuncio in Iran, had just celebrated Easter Mass for them in the embassy two weeks before.) In his second memoir, published in 2008, Küng himself refers to this act of defamation in an approving quote from the American novelist and sociologist Fr Andrew Greeley; his chapter is titled Roma locuta, causa non finita, in a booked called, with no sense that the irony is deliberate, Disputed Truths. I will of course not be the first to note that pleas for civility and deference to Papal authority are a relatively new phenomenon among the more (can we say?) daring voices in the Church.

2. Davies also speaks (starting at 28:10) of a specific aspect of his work which affords a perfect example of the kind of dishonesty actively present in the reform which led Fr Bouyer to call Abp Bugnini (with classic French restraint) a man “as devoid of learning as he was of honesty.” It is a well-known fact that a group of six Protestant ministers were “consulted” by the Consilium ad exsequendam in the process of reforming the Mass. Bugnini would later claim in Notitiae that they only intervened once, and were merely observers; this led Davies to write to one of the six and ask to what degree they were involved, “and he said ‘Oh no, we played a very active part, and we were given all the documents same as the Catholic observers, every morning there was a discussion, a great free-for-all in which we put forward our opinions.’ That sort of thing has happened again and again.”

Blessed Hermann the Cripple

Blessed Hermannus, whose feast day is kept in some Benedictine houses on September 25, is usually called “Hermann the Cripple” or “the Lame” in English, but his Latin appellation “Contractus - the deformed” (literally ‘the contracted one’) is really more accurate, as is so often the case with Latin. The combination of congenital defects from which he suffered made him “not simply a cripple, but ... practically helpless”, writes Alban Butler. Born in 1013 to a noble family in Swabia, modern southern Germany, he survived childhood by some miracle of God’s providence, and was entrusted at the age of seven to the Benedictine abbey on Reichenau Island on the lake of Constance. He was professed at the age of twenty, and lived as a monk for twenty years more.

Although he was barely able to move without assistance, he was a polymath and a genius, well-versed in theology, music, astronomy, mathematics, Latin, Greek and Arabic. Students came to learn from him from many parts of Europe, and his intellectual achievements were such that he was known as the wonder of his age. Among his works are the earliest surviving medieval chronicle of the whole of human history, and a treatise on mathematics and astronomy; he was also able somehow to build both musical and astronomical instruments. Above all, however, his name will live in blessed remembrance as that of the composer of the Marian antiphons Alma Redemptoris Mater and Salve Regina. His cultus was officially approved by the Holy See in 1863. Beate Hermanne, ora pro nobis!

A manuscript illustration of one of Bl. Herman’s treatises on astronomy.

A 15th Century Book of Hours

Since there are two Marian feasts today, Our Lady of Ransom, the patronal feast of the Mercedarian order on the general calendar, and Our Lady of Walsingham, the patronal feast of the Anglican Use Ordinariates, I thought it would be good day to enjoy pictures of a Book of Hours, in which the Little Office of the Virgin is central liturgical text. This example comes from one of my favorite websites, that of the Bibliothèque nationale de France (Département des manuscrits. NAL 183), which however provides no information about it other than the fact that it was made in 15th century. (From the style of the pictures, I’d guess much closer to the end of the century than the beginning.) You can click each image to enlarge it.

The 1st part of calendar page for the month of September; each month has the sign of the zodiac that begins within it (Libra in this case), and the representation of an agricultural or domestic labor typical of that month (trodding the winepress here) at the bottom. Literally every page of this book has decorative borders like the two floral sections here, many of which also include birds and other animals (some real, some imaginary); the two seen here are typical of the rest of the book.

The rest of September. Books of Hours often have a Saint noted on every single day of the calendar, even though they were not all celebrated liturgically. The more important are written in gold letters, as here, Ss Matthew the Evangelist and Michael the Archangel.

Books of Hours commonly include a group of four Gospels, one from each of the Evangelists: John 1, 1-14, the Gospel of Christmas day; Luke 1, 26-38, the Annunciation; Matthew 2, 1-12, the Epiphany; and Mark 16, 14-20, the Ascension. This image introduces the Gospel from St John, who is shown in his exile on the island of Patmos.

The beginning of his gospel.

St Luke

Continue Reading this Article. . .

Arranging the Breviary for the Rest of the Liturgical Year

This is our annual posting on one of the discrepancies between the traditional arrangement of the Roman Breviary and the new rubrics of 1960; this year, the first such discrepancy appears at Vespers this coming Saturday. In some years, but not this one, there is also a discrepancy between the traditional placement of the September Ember Days, and their placement according to the new rubrics.

One of the changes made to the Breviary in the revision of 1960 regards the arrangement of the months from August to November.

The first Sunday of each of these months is the day on which the Church begins to read a new set of Scriptural books at Matins, with their accompanying responsories, and Magnificat antiphons at Saturday Vespers. These readings are part of a system which goes back to the sixth century: in August, the books of Wisdom are read; in September, Job, Tobias, Judith and Esther; in October the books of the Maccabees; in November, Ezekiel, Daniel, and the twelve minor Prophets. (September is actually divided into two sets of readings, Job having a different set of responsories from the other three books.)

Folio 99r of the antiphonary of Compiègne, 860-77 AD, with the responsories taken from the books of the Maccabees. (Bibliothèque nationale de France. Département des Manuscrits. Latin 17436)

The “first Sunday” of each of these months is traditionally that which occurs closest to the first calendar day of the month, even if that day occurs within the end of the previous month. This year, for example, the first Sunday “of October” is actually September 29th, the Sunday closest to the first day of October.

In the 1960 revision, however, the first Sunday of the months from August to November is always that which occurs first within the calendar month. According to this system, the first Sunday of October is the 6th this year.

This change also accounts for one of the many peculiarities of the 1960 Breviary, the fact that November has four weeks, which are called the First, Third, Fourth and Fifth. According to the older calculation, November has five weeks when the 5th of the month is a Sunday, as it was last year. (This is also the arrangement that has the shortest possible Advent of three weeks and one day.) According to the newer calculation, November may have three or four weeks, but never five. In order to accommodate the new system, one of the weeks had to be removed; the second week of November was chosen, to maintain the tradition that at least a bit of each of the Prophets would continue to be read in the Breviary. However, in some years, November only has three weeks, and the first one is also omitted, but this is not the case this year.

One further note regarding a major discrepancy between the Roman Rite and the post-Conciliar Rite. On September 29th, the Roman Rite celebrates the feast known as “the Dedication of St Michael”, since it originated with the dedication of a basilica titled to him off the via Salaria, about 7 miles from the gates of Rome. Despite this name, it is really a feast of all the angels, and already in the so-called Leonine Sacramentary, the oldest surviving collection of Roman liturgical texts, there are prayers that refer to this broader understanding of it.

The central panel of The Last Judgment, by Rogier van der Weyden, 1446-52, showing Christ above, and below, St Michael weighing the souls of the dead.

In 1917, Pope Benedict XV raised this feast to the highest grade; it remains so in the 1960 rubrics, and thus, when it falls on a Sunday after Pentecost, as it does this year, it takes precedence over it. In the post-Conciliar Rite, however, it has been downgraded to the second rank, and is impeded by an occurring Sunday of Ordinary Time. Since the post-Conciliar Rite also does not have commemorations, and almost never transfers impeded feasts, this year, it will have no general celebration of the angels at all. (In the many places where one of the three archangels is a principal patronal, it is raised to a solemnity, and takes precedence over the Sunday.)

The Sundays for the rest of the liturgical year, according to the traditional system:

September 29 – the 1st Sunday of October (XIX after Pentecost, commemorated on the feast of St Michael and All Angels)

October 6 – the 2nd Sunday of October (XX after Pentecost)
October 13 – the 3rd Sunday of October (XXI after Pentecost)
October 20 – the 4th Sunday of October (XXII after Pentecost)

October 27 – the 5th Sunday of October (XXIII after Pentecost, commemorated on the feast of Christ the King)

November 3 – the 1st Sunday of November (IV after Epiphany resumed)
November 10 – the 3rd Sunday of November (V after Epiphany resumed)
November 17 – the 4th Sunday of November (VI after Epiphany resumed)
November 24 – the 5th Sunday of November (XXIV and last after Pentecost)

The Sundays for the rest of the liturgical year, according to the 1960 system:

September 29 – the 5th Sunday of September (XIX after Pentecost, commemorated)

October 6 – the 1st Sunday of October (XX after Pentecost)
October 13 – the 2nd Sunday of October (XXI after Pentecost)
October 20 – the 3rd Sunday of October (XXII after Pentecost)
October 27 – the 4th Sunday of October (XXIII after Pentecost, omitted on the feast of Christ the King)

November 3 – the 1st Sunday of November (IV after Epiphany resumed)
November 10 – the 3rd Sunday of November (V after Epiphany resumed)
November 17 – the 4th Sunday of November (VI after Epiphany resumed)
November 24 – the 5th Sunday of November (XXIV and last after Pentecost)

The calculation of the Sundays after Pentecost also calls for a note here. (The discrepancies between the Missals of St Pius V and St John XXIII are very slight in this regard.)

The number of Sundays “after Pentecost” assigned to the Missal is 24, but the actual number varies between 23 and 28. The “24th” is always celebrated on the last Sunday before Advent. If there are more than 24, the gap between the 23rd and 24th is filled with the Sundays after Epiphany that had no place at the beginning of the year. The prayers and readings of those Sundays are inserted into the Mass of the 23rd Sunday (i.e., the set of Gregorian propers.) The Breviary homily on the Sunday Gospel and the concomitant antiphons of the Benedictus and Magnificat also carry over in the Office. This year, therefore, on November 12th, the Mass is that of the V Sunday after Epiphany resumed, and on November 19th, that of the VI Sunday after Epiphany resumed.

If this all seems a little complicated, bear in mind that the oldest arrangement of the Mass lectionary that we know of was even more so. The oldest lectionary of the Roman Rite, a manuscript now in Wurzburg, Germany, dates to ca. 700, and represents the system used at Rome about 50 years earlier. It has a very disorganized and incomplete set of readings for the period after Pentecost; the Sundays are counted as 2 after Pentecost, 7 after Ss Peter and Paul, 5 after St Lawrence, and 6 after St Cyprian, a total of only 20. There are also ten Sundays after Epiphany, even though Septuagesima is also noted in the manuscript, and the largest number of Sundays that can occur between Epiphany and Septuagesima is only six.

“Ten Years That Shook the Church”: Archbishop Dwyer’s 1973 Critique of the Reform and the Post-Council

Dwyer as a boy and as a bishop

Archbishop Robert Joseph Dwyer (1908-76), amidst his copious writings, penned not a few scathing critiques of the liturgical reform, at least two of which had not yet been made available online—a problem I sought and seek to remedy between last week and this. Last week, we published a newspaper column of his from July 1971 that pronounced a failing grade on the Bugnini Rite and, in particular, on the horrendously bad translations, music, and parochial balkanization that accompanied the roll-out of the Novus Ordo. Today, I publish the transcription of an article from the Twin Circle, which appears to have been launched in 1967, was sold to the Legionaries of Christ in 1995 (they bought the National Catholic Register at the same time), and was renamed Faith & Family in 2000, before folding in 2011.

Once again, it is nearly impossible to imagine a bishop writing this openly and bluntly in a Catholic newspaper today. To my mind, this suggests that the much-vaunted parrhesia is quite lacking, probably because knowledge of the traditional liturgy, of the Council, and of the details of the reform is quite lacking among those who did not personally experience all of it as Dwyer had done.

Ten Years That Shook the Church
Archbishop Robert Dwyer
Twin Circle
October 26, 1973

What happens when an institution, be it a religious body or a nation state or what you will, deliberately cuts itself off from its historical and cultural roots? Rarely according to the record have such institutions been able to survive, the shock being too great, the trauma too devastating.

They may seek in desperation to renew those roots, by some legerdemain to recover them, or to substitute some seeming equivalent, but unless any such an institution has some sort of divine guarantee, the chances of its success are, as the airline stewardesses never fail to assure us in soothing tones, exceedingly remote.

Toward the end of the Second Session of the Vatican Council, late in November 1963, the Constitution on the Sacred Liturgy was triumphantly voted in by an overwhelming majority of the assembled Fathers. As we trooped out of St. Peter’s basilica that day, spreading our amaranthine stain over the great parvis, a palpable euphoria thrilled through the entire body. Something at last had been accomplished, one item of the business which had called us to Rome had been nailed down.

The members of the Commission which had hammered out the Constitution and guided it through the grueling tests of debate and modification, were obviously elated, and the most prominent American member, the late Archbishop Paul Hallinan of Atlanta, was the glowing recipient of hearty and even gleeful congratulations.

Good Fun

It was all in good fun and no one, least of all perhaps the drafters and proponents of the Constitution in question had the slightest notion, not to say intent, of tampering with the cultural life-lines of the Roman Catholic Church.

Nor was there, on candid reading, anything in the text or in the spirit of the document which would suggest the least deviation from the historic past of the liturgy, its sacred traditions, its venerable usages.

There was, of course, a loosening of certain restrictions. The vernacular was to share with the Latin the role of liturgical communication, not by any means to replace it. Greater simplicity in ritual was to be introduced.

Though the term had not yet swung so prominently into orbit as it was to do a year or so later, the liturgy was to be made more “relevant” to contemporary man, with his increasingly secular preoccupations.

Who dreamed on that day that within a few years, far less than a decade, the Latin past of the Church would be all but expunged, that it would be reduced to a memory fading in the middle distance? The thought would have horrified us, but it seemed so far beyond the realm of the possible as to be ridiculous.

So we laughed it off.

As a personal footnote, we had been visited by some misgivings in regard to the vernacular, by way of certain apprehensions that it could lead to invidious comparisons between those prelates and priests who read well and have all the arts of elocution, who have the gift of acting their part with dignity and conviction, the Suenenses and the Sheens, and those not so happily endowed, all the way down to the poor fellows who can only mumble as unintelligible in English or Swahili as in the ancient language of the Church.

With the difference that nobody expected to understand them in Latin, whereas the whole point of the vernacular was to make the liturgy, once again, relevant. But having voiced this unworthy fear, and told to go to the corner and hide our head for very shame for entertaining such an anti­democratic notion, we lapsed into chastened silence.

And when the vote came round, like wise Sir Joseph Porter, KCB, “We always voted at our party’s call; W never thought of thinking for ourself at all.” That way you can save yourself a world of trouble.

Cultural Cut-off

Well, here we are 10 years later, and what results do we see? The result, plainly and bluntly, is that the Western Church has just about completely cut herself off from her cultural roots, the Latin tradition of the West.

Latin is practically banned from the liturgy and banned as well from the courses of study required of candidates for the priesthood.

Fewer and fewer Masses in Latin are sanctioned or approved by local ordinaries, and fewer and fewer seminarians and young priests have now more than a nodding acquaintance with the language which nourished the devotion of countless generations of Christians and gave to theology and the other sacred sciences a common tongue, so that, even though imperfectly, communication was possible.

The Church which so long had preserved Latin consciously as a bond of unity, had quite suddenly decided to discard it as a useless encumbrance.

New Tune

With this rejection, and as an almost inevitable consequence, went out the window also the whole magnificent musical heritage of the Church. For when you change your language you also change your song.

The Jewish exiles hanging their harps beside the waters of Babylon, so long ago, made that discovery.

Pope Paul VI, the other day, made an earnest plea for the revival of some parts of the Mass in Latin, the Kyrie, the Gloria, etc., with the obvious hope of salvaging something of our immense musical treasure, one of the glories of the Christian accomplishment; but whether his words will carry weight, whether his “cri de coeur” will be heard, is anyone’s guess.

Not, surely, until realization dawns on many minds how drastically we have robbed ourselves of our cultural wealth.

Less immediately cognate to the Latin past, yet in strict relationship, is the whole violent artistic rejection of the past. It is not a question of contemporary art being good or bad; it is a matter of its repudiating, often with contempt, those principles and traditions which gave art, visual or tactual, substance and meaning.

The creation of an anti-art, the sole pitiable boast of the contemporary schools, is mighty thin provender for souls hungering and thirsting for something greater than themselves, something of beauty and nobility. But we go along with the crowd, because we too have lost our way.

And the same rejection, not merely of our cultural and esthetic roots, but of our philosophical and theological foundations, is the reaction and reality of the moment. Who would be caught dead today citing a theologian older than Karl Rahner or a philosopher more antique than Bernard Lonergan?

The substitution of Teilhardism for Thomism, if not complete in our schools, our seminaries and universities, is within an ace of carrying the day. But only too insistently is it borne in on us that we are a cracked record, flawed by a fixation.

Is anything of this important? Does it matter that the Church has been led down the path of rejection, slowly at first and by imperceptible stages, then ever more rapidly and finally at breakneck speed?

Does it matter that we as Catholics have succeeded in cutting ourselves off from those cultural sources which nourished our fathers and gave support and assurance to their faith? Is it inevitable that in this last third of the 20th century the Catholic mind should seek a new milieu, new associations, new roots?

Doubtless Dr. Leslie Dewart [1] and his disciples would return a resounding yes to this.

But before we commit ourselves farther, and if there is still time for reflection, might we not do well to catch the echo of a great and now almost forgotten Father of the Council, the late Cardinal Michael Browne, who, at a decisive moment in the debate on the Constitution on the Church, raised his voice in warning with all the richness of the Irish brogue in Latin: Caveamus, Patres, caveamus! Let us take heed, Fathers, let us beware!

We thought it amusing then; we might take it a little more seriously now.

Illustration in the original newspaper article

NOTE

[1] “Leslie Dewart (1922–2009) was a Canadian philosopher and Professor Emeritus at the Graduate Department of Philosophy and the Centre for the Study of Religion at the University of Toronto…. Late in 1969 an investigation by the Vatican’s Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith was convened to examine the theological opinions in Dewart’s writings, particularly The Future of Belief. However, no condemnatory action was taken by the authorities…. While Dewart was not a theologian, his philosophy lays a new foundation for contemporary Catholic theology that does not rely on the traditional epistemological foundation of Hellenic philosophy. His philosophical insights are a conscious, reflective ‘transposition to another key’ of the experience of the Christian faith…. Although not widely recognized at the time, the revolutionary experience was, in fact, a process of ‘dehellenization,’ as Dewart understands the process throughout in his writings. Thinkers will conceive of God, in a dehellenized future of thought, as an existential reality…. Western philosophy, “come of age,” does not experience the world as hostile, as did the Hellenists, but rather, as stimulating and challenging and Western philosophy must dehellenize its interpretation of experience accordingly. This dehellenization requires the abandonment of scholasticism, with the subsequent development of a conscious re-conceptualization of experience.” (source)

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