Sacra Liturgia USA 2015 Conference . . . What Will The “Reform Of The Reform” Look Like?
By JAMES MONTI
His Eminence Raymond Cardinal Burke took a front row seat in the audience for the morning session of talks on Day Two (Tuesday, June 2) of the Sacra Liturgia USA 2015 conference in New York City.
The Tuesday proceedings began with a presentation by the accomplished author and liturgical scholar Fr. Thomas Kocik, a contributor to Dom Alcuin Reid’s forthcoming T&T Clark Companion to Liturgy.
Addressing the key concept of a “Reform of the Reform” in the sacred liturgy, Fr. Kocik outlined the diversity of opinions as to how such a reform should be carried out. He endorsed an approach that takes the 1962 Missale Romanum as its starting point.
Noting that the liturgical reform should address not only the missal but the other liturgical books and rites as well, he pointed out the deficient rewording of certain prayers and formulas that occurred in the postconciliar reform of blessings and exorcisms, eliciting a round of laughter when he observed that it is a problem “when some blessings don’t actually bless and some exorcisms don’t actually exorcise.”
As to what a “Reform of the Reform” might look like, he observed that certain positive features of the 1970 Missal could be retained (for example, the congregational responses to the celebrant), but that he would include among those postconciliar changes to be abrogated essentially all the additional concessions that were granted over and above the changes found in the 1970 Missal (Communion in the hand, additional eucharistic prayers, etc.).
Drawing upon her landmark 2013 comparative study of the differences between the Mass Collect prayer texts in the postconciliar Missale Romanum and the Missal of 1962, Dr. Lauren Pristas, a theology professor at Caldwell College (Caldwell, N.J.), noted several disturbing patterns in these changes, using examples from a number of important solemnities and feasts.
Alterations revealed a tendency to delete references to “sin and other sources of unpleasantness,” as well as the removal of some references to Christ as God, as King and as Lord. Petitions for God’s mercy and assistance were replaced by petitions for the faithful to act in some way or other.
Dr. Pristas spoke of her own dismay in finding that the collects of the 1970 Missale Romanum that had been presented as taken from the pristine early centuries of the Church were in fact in many cases arbitrarily reworded by the Concilium (the commission that compiled the 1970 Missal) according to whatever the commission members “liked.”
Utilizing her perspective as a philosophy professor at the College of Mount St. Vincent (Riverdale, N.Y.), Dr. Margaret Hughes explored the true meaning of seeking “ease” with regard to the sacred liturgy, a term used five times in the Vatican II liturgical document Sacrosanctum Concilium.
She explained that in this case what is meant is not the common notion of ease as merely freedom from effort, from exertion, but rather the “rest” of contemplating truth, the activity of contemplation, the perception of beauty: “gazing on reality for its own sake.”
And thus, she explained, “The way to make the liturgy easy is to adorn it with beauty.” When the celebration of Mass is endowed with beauty, it bestows a shared experience of beauty that unites the faithful, for “we cannot resist beauty.” She concluded by observing, “Mary shows us what beauty is.”
The luncheon that followed, hosted by the Cardinal Newman Society, was graced with the presence of Cardinal Burke for a panel discussion of the role of Catholic higher education in the liturgical renewal, moderated by the society’s president, Patrick Reilly.
His Eminence provided what was perhaps the most poignant observation of the day, declaring that if we are doing something “for the glory of God and the salvation of souls” we should not let ourselves be discouraged or dissuaded from carrying it out.
Speaking from his experience in teaching Protestant students at Baylor College (Waco, Texas), Dr. Michael Foley spoke of how “the otherness of Catholic liturgy” attracts Protestants to the Catholic Church.
In response to a question as to how Catholic colleges can foster the liturgical renewal at the parish level, Dr. Peter Kwasniewski of Wyoming Catholic College (Lander, Wyo.) told of receiving e-mails from several alumni who after being trained in Catholic choral music at the college were asked by their parish priests to direct their churches’ choirs.
Earlier that morning, during a coffee break, Cardinal Burke made himself readily accessible to the conference participants, conversing with the many who approached him. He carries his sacred office of cardinal with a genuine humility that has set a stellar example for all in the new liturgical movement.
The afternoon session brought to the podium the symposium’s co-organizer Dr. Jennifer Donelson, an associate professor of sacred music and choir director at St. Joseph’s Seminary in Yonkers, N.Y., and managing editor of the journal Sacred Music.
Describing her presentation as an “examination of conscience,” she outlined her premise that liturgical art, architecture, and music must satisfy a threefold criterion of being not only well-intentioned but also theologically sound in their conception and truly good in their artistic technique.
Noting how modern-day iconoclasm as manifested by the denuding of our churches “stunts our ability to draw souls to Christ,” she explained that the iconoclast mentality is refuted by the very nature of the Incarnation whereby the material world has been elevated through the Son of God uniting the matter of human flesh to His divinity.
In light of the role of matter in the conferral of the sacraments (water, blessed oil), an attack upon the use and veneration of images constitutes not only a direct attack upon God (what He has done in the Incarnation) but also an attack upon how grace is imparted in the Church, said Dr. Donelson.
The matter of each sacrament (wine and water for the Eucharist, water for Baptism) is not arbitrary, but rather a fitting sensible manifestation of what each particular sacrament effects, she said. Similarly, art cannot simply be an arbitrary representation according to an artist’s whims, but rather it must possess “fittingness.” An image must in some real way befit what it portrays, and a work of music must somehow point to what it is expressing. Genuine liturgical symbols, developed not arbitrarily but instead suitably over the course of time, possess this “fittingness.” For example, kneeling is an inherently fitting expression of humility, for there is a certain vulnerability to this posture that images our vulnerability before our all-powerful God.
Hence liturgical art must be fitting, it must be beautiful, for Dr. Donelson concluded: “God speaks to us through the physicality around us.”
At the end of Day Two Fr. Sean Connolly, a young newly ordained priest for the Archdiocese of New York, celebrated with the utmost reverence a solemn Mass in the Extraordinary Form of the Roman Rite. Most of the dozens of priests in attendance wore their birettas for this liturgy.
As a Vatican decree was read granting at the request of Fr. Connolly’s prior a plenary indulgence to all attending the Mass, at the pronouncement of the Roman Pontiff’s name (Francis), the priests in unison spontaneously doffed their birettas — a touching show of reverent fidelity to the Successor of St. Peter.
Nuptial Symbolism
As a welcome surprise, Archbishop Salvatore Cordileone, the ordinary of San Francisco, who was scheduled to make his first appearance at the conference on the following day, rushed from the airport to attend Fr. Connolly’s Mass.
The proceedings of Day Three (Wednesday, June 3) began with one of the most memorable presentations of the entire conference, a talk by His Grace Archbishop Cordileone that addressed the liturgical renewal in the context of contemporary battles to uphold the Church’s moral teachings on marriage in the face of a hostile “hyper-sexualized” culture.
Describing the sacraments and the liturgical rites by which they are conferred as “the invisible made visible through the physical,” he focused upon the rich nuptial symbolism of veils in the liturgy (the veiling of the chalice, the tabernacle, the altar) as imaging the veiling of the sacred with regard to the human body.
Stressing that we always veil what is sacred, he explained how the veiling of the inner sanctum of the Temple of Solomon, the Holy of Holies, was carried over into the Christian liturgy by the placement of veils or cloths round about the altar, a practice that early Christian theologians likened to the veiling of a bridal chamber.
In matrimony the husband and wife keep the sacred inner sanctum of their bodies veiled, a veiling that is only opened for the consummation of their marital union. In this context he cited St. Paul’s instruction concerning the veiling of women in church (1 Cor. 11:5-16 — a practice that many devout women continue to observe), noting that far from demeaning women, this observance is an affirmation that women possess “a special sacred status because they are the bearers of life.”
The unveiling of the sacred in the conjugal act of marriage is in turn an image of the consummation of the marriage between God and mankind wrought by the sacrifice of Christ on the cross, as evinced by the Latin rendering of our Lord’s words on Calvary, “Consummatum est” (John 19:30: “It is finished,” i.e., consummated), and the unveiling of the Holy of Holies in the Temple that immediately ensued (“And behold, the curtain of the temple was torn in two, from top to bottom” — Matt. 27:51).
The inherently and inviolably heterosexual nature of marital union images God taking as His bride the human race as “other than Himself” (hetero, Greek for “other,” “different”).
At a luncheon later that day hosted by the Cardinal Newman Society, Archbishop Cordileone, answering questions regarding K-12 education, stressed that the liturgy needs to be celebrated for students so fittingly that it will inspire them “to aspire to greatness.”
Noting that symbols teach even more powerfully than words, he observed that “a worthy, reverent, solemn, beautiful celebration of the Mass is itself a powerful catechesis.”
Raised In The Faith
Harvard graduate Matthew Menendez discussed his reasons for founding Juventutem Boston, an association of young people committed to the evangelization of their peers through the promotion of the Extraordinary Form of the Roman Rite Mass, accenting his presentation with both humor and moving anecdotes.
Recollecting the instructions his parents gave him regarding the Blessed Sacrament, he stressed the importance of parents training their children in the faith. He told of a dying 90-year-old woman who, despite the supplications of her family, adamantly refused to be reconciled with the Church.
But when a priest visiting her posed to her the traditional catechetical question, “Why did God make you?,” the woman, evidently recalling this question from her childhood, suddenly broke down in tears and immediately asked the priest to hear her Confession. She received the sacraments and died soon afterward fully reconciled with God.
In light of the theme of Archbishop Cordileone’s earlier talk, it was providentially fitting that the Ordinary Form Roman Rite Mass with which the day’s events concluded — with His Grace as the celebrant, and concelebrated by numerous priests attending the conference — was indeed that of St. Charles Lwanga and Companions, the Holy Martyrs of Uganda, who died in defense of chastity.
Holy Battle
The homily was given by one of America’s foremost contemporary preachers, Bishop Frank Caggiano, the ordinary of Bridgeport, Conn., a prelate whose passionately delivered exhortations are virtually a life-changing experience.
His sermon was nothing short of an utterly compelling call to holy battle in the spiritual realm, summoning those in attendance to bear an unshakable witness to Christ and His teachings without compromise, willing to undergo a slow, dry martyrdom at the hands of a culture hostile to our faith.
The celebration of this evening liturgy, with all but the readings in Latin, showed the Ordinary Form Mass at its very best, adorned with beautiful chants, magnificent polyphonic music, and splendid traditional vestments. The audible recitation of the Roman Canon highlighted a sacred text that is the crown jewel of both the Ordinary and Extraordinary Forms of the Roman liturgy.
