Daily Archives: January 29, 2009

Initial Theses on the Liturgy

Thesis 1: The liturgical cycles of Mass/Office/Liturgical Year as envisioned by the 7th century and enacted in various places by the 9th/10th is the single greatest system for Christian formation ever produced by the Western Church.

  • When I say “produced by the Western Church” it’s important that we realize that I do mean quite a lot of the Western Church was in on creating it. That is, the liturgy was not something created in Rome and exported out.  To quote a heavily underlined and starred passage in my copy of Vogel:

The period that extends from Gregory the Great [590-604] to Gregory VII [1073-1085] is characterized by the following facts regarding liturgy:

a) the systematization of the liturgy of the City of Rome and of the papal court (the Roman liturgy in the strict sense);
b) the spread of this liturgy into the Frankish kingdom through the initiatives of individual pilgrims and, after 754, with the support of the Carolingian kings;
c) the deliberate Romanization of the ancient liturgy of Northern Europe (Gallican) at the behest of Pepin III and Charlemagne
d) the progressive creation of a ‘mixed’ or ‘hybrid’ set of new rites in the Carolingian Empire through the amalgamation of the Roman liturgy with the indigenous ones;
e) The inevitable liturgical diversification resulting from these Romanizing and Gallicanizing thrusts;
f) the return of the adapted Romano-Frankish or Romano-Germanic liturgy to Rome under the Ottos of Germany, especially after the Renovatio Imperii of 962;
g) the permanent adoption of this liturgy at Rome because of the worship vacuum and the general state of cultural and religious decadence that prevailed in the City at the time. (Vogel, 61)

  • The gap between the 7th and 9th/10th centuries that I allude to refers to the gap between planning and execution.  I.e., here’s People’s Exhibit A of what I mean. This is a lectionary list from the late 9th century that shows that, while Masses from Wednesday and Friday in the time after Pentecost ought to have appointed Gospels, at that time the scribe couldn’t locate what they were… The gaps got filled in by a standardized system in the 10th century (Type 3 alt).
  • The Western Church has produced a lot of great writers, thinkers, and teachers. And yet I don’t believe any of them have ever surpassed this construction of the liturgical year as a method for forming Christians into the mind of Christ. Partly because so many Spiritual writers assume these liturgical cycles as the starting place—their works proceed from here.

Thesis 2: The full formative potential of the Western liturgical system, however, was rarely—if ever—fully realized due to the vocational and educational limiting factors placed upon it.

  • Engagement with the full liturgy was restricted to those who lived in intentional liturgical communities: only monastics (of both sexes) or canons ever got the “full experience”. The laity got the leavings.
  • Too, it required a fluent knowledge of Latin. Not only was this not open to most laity, but not all clergy and monastics had both the ability and the education necessary.

Thesis 3:  The formative power of the Western liturgical cycles was not due to its superiority in a single mode of instruction but due to its comprehensive character;  it integrated the intellectual, doctrinal, emotional,  affectional, aesthetic, kinetic, and dietary elements into a holistic system.

  • to poach a paragraph directly from chapter 3:

Within the life of the early medieval monastic establishment, a change of liturgical seasons signaled a change in life—liturgical and otherwise. The beginning of a season marked a change in the biblical texts that a community read, a change in the musical settings and the textual contents of the life of prayer, possibly changes in the colors of vestments in the oratory, even changes in what the monastics ate and wore. The changes of seasons affected life around the monastery; as a result, they affected thinking around the monastery. The seasons were comprehensive periods of formation, mimetic modeling of an aspect of Israel, her Christ, or his Church that engaged the mind with doctrines, the heart with religious affections, and the body with acts of penance, ascesis, or holy joy. Reading the gospels within these contexts foregrounded either primary or latent meanings in the text that accorded with these doctrines, affections, and acts…

These are the initial historical theses that seek to a lay a foundation before moving to the contemporary issue.

More Rumors from Rome

Technically, from Australia—but pertaining to Roman doings…

NLM is passing along a report from The Record that:

The Vatican’s Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith has decided to recommend the Traditional Anglican Communion be accorded a personal prelature akin to Opus Dei, if talks between the TAC and the Vatican aimed at unity succeed, it is understood.

This isn’t the first time that we’ve heard this, of course, and it may well not be the last, but hearing this in such close proximity to action in regard to the SSPX is intriguing.

Let’s be clear on what the whole SSPX thing is about. It’s not fundamentally about 4 bishops. Yes, the bishops are the key to it, but I think it’s more about the people. B16, it seems to me, is doing part of what the church ought to be doing—engaging in the ministry of reconciliation—and is working to repair rifts.  (And, of course, I’m sincerely hoping that he exercises his episcopal role to discipline at least one if not more of the said 4 bishops if and when full reconciliation occurs.)

Looking at it from this perspective, it’s not hard to see the TAC in the same way.

If these rumors were to be true, if this were to be accomplished, it might well open the door for a mass (npi…) return of traditional Anglo-Catholics from outside the TAC. As we’ve noted in the past, while American Anglo-Catholics have grabbed on to this Gafcon/FOCA thing, that’s not the case in England and elsewhere. Even now there are rumblings that even within those Americans who drafted documentation for Gafcon, there are some who may choose to swim the Tiber and return to Rome rather than remain in the FOCA.