Dr. Kwasniewski's Principles Applied

Divine Worship: the Missal, St. John the Evangelist Ordinariate Parish, Calgary, Alberta.

Dr. Kwasniewski at the NLM has put forth yet another stimulating celebration of traditional liturgy.

Below is Dr. Kwasniewski's excellent article beginning at his "principles", with commentary (in blue) that draws attention to a few key points of resonance between Divine Worship and the liturgical forms that Dr. Kwasniewski highlights in his article.

(Remember—this blogger does not speak for the Ordinariate! The following reflections are intended to draw attention to obvious points of convergence between liturgical forms. I am always happy to defer to higher and better informed authorities.)

N.B. The Missal of the Ordinariate includes front and centre the GIRM, and the Rubrical Directory which applies specifically to Divine Worship.

http://www.newliturgicalmovement.org/2018/06/the-byzantine-liturgy-traditional-latin.html#.WxdEWSMrLpQ

1. The principle of tradition;
2. the principle of mystery;
3. the principle of elevated mode;
4. the principle of ritual integrity or stability;
5. the principle of density;
6. the principle of adequate and repeated preparation;
7. the principle of truthfulness;
8. the principle of hierarchy;
9. the principle of parallelism; and
10. the principle of separation.

1. The Principle of Tradition. Both (the Byzantine liturgy and the traditional Latin liturgy) are the result of an organic development of an ancient apostolic core, transmitted through centuries of living faith; in spite of attributions of this or that liturgy to a famous saint such as St. John Chrysostom or St. Basil, in fact the rite is the work of many whom we cannot name. No Byzantine liturgy or classic Roman liturgy is the product of a committee of avant-garde experts out of touch with the people and captive to fashionable theories long since exploded. We may call this the principle of tradition, of receiving what is handed down. Put simply: it is not the case that a liturgy is good because the authority of the Church deems it to be good; rather, the Church knows it to be good because she has received it. Here we strike at the root of that bizarre ultramontanism in the West that considers liturgy to be nothing other than what papal authority has promulgated — as if liturgy is an infinitely malleable clay whose shape is wholly left to the sculptor’s will. Prior to Paul VI, papal authority promulgated that which was already known and loved as traditional in the Latin Church.

The Church has acted prudently on occasion to determine exactly that which is liturgically good for a given time. The Council of Trent, for example, weighed in on forms of the Mass and gave preference to a modestly modified liturgy many today call the Usus Antiquior.

It may very well take a committee of faithful periti, at the direction of the higher authority, i.e., the Pope, to restore and/or renew the Liturgy. A council of fathers steeped in Tradition may be called upon by a pope to assist him to adjust the Mass: "The Council also desires that, where necessary, the rites be revised carefully in the light of sound tradition, and that they be given new vigor to meet the circumstances and needs of modern times." SC Introduction 4. To the minds of many, including Pope Benedict XVI, the renewal sought by the fathers of the Second Vatican Council was not handled with the utmost care by the Consilium entrusted with said task. Given developments in the wake of the Council, the revision or renewal process appears to have been hijacked, or postponed.

By admitting orthodox elements of the Anglican patrimony, the Church has recovered, or perhaps rediscovered, elements of the Catholic Faith tucked away at the margins of the Church. A commission of wise elders and their assistants, free of the anarchy penetrating the Church in the 1960s and 1970s, got it right, and have brought back into prominence that measure of the Church's heritage given attention in Anglicanism. 'It', as in the renewal the Second Vatican Council sought.

Divine Worship: The Missal was developed by the interdicasterial commission Anglicanae Traditiones of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith and the Congregation for Divine Worship and the Discipline of the Sacraments to be the liturgy for all Ordinariate parishes worldwide. Advisers to the commission included Archbishop Joseph Augustine Di Noia, Msgr. Steven J. Lopes, Msgr. Andrew Burnham, Auxiliary Bishop Peter J. Elliott, Archbishop Salvatore J. Cordileone, Fr. Uwe Michael Lang, Dr. Hans-Jürgen Feulner, Dr. Clinton A. Brand, Fr. Andrew Menke, and Msgr. Peter Wilkinson.—Wikipedia.

- - -

It may be too strong to suggest that a "bizarre ultramontanism in the West that considers liturgy to be nothing other than what papal authority has promulgated" is part of the problem. It goes without saying that Papal authority is as Jesus established it, providing a necessary corrective when ecclesiastical democrats (and historical revisionists) seek to impose their will over and above Tradition, i.e., that which is handed down.

2. The Principle of Mystery. Each of these liturgies exhibits the principle of mystery: the liturgy is palpably sacred, a work and a wonder that God does in our midst, to which man is permitted to unite himself in fear and trembling. (Yep, that describes Divine Worship: the Missal.) Traditional liturgy is like a cloud in which God dwells, and unto which Moses dares to approach. There is no sense of a meeting with an agenda, conducted by company managers, characterized by a lot of reading of texts and sharing out of tasks. We lie prostrate on holy ground before the burning bush of divine self-revelation.

3. The Principle of Elevated Mode. The prayers and lessons of traditional Eastern and Western liturgies are either chanted by cantors, deacons, subdeacons, and choirs, or whispered in the sanctuary by the priest, but never merely recited like the daily news or a school lesson. Part of this elevation is the use of what we might call “high language.” In the East it takes the form of exquisite poetic compositions; in the West, of venerable Latin locutions. Latin is as truly, properly, and definitively the language of the Roman Catholic Church as the vernaculars are the languages of Eastern rites. Something that has endured for 1,600 years in the West is not a random accident but a constitutive principle, as none other than Pope John XXIII declared in his Apostolic Constitution Veterum Sapientia, signed on the altar in St. Peter’s in 1962. Those who attend the usus antiquior are well aware of the powerful effect on the faithful of the ceremonial use of an ancient language that has acquired a numinous force with the passage of time. The very fact that this language is specially set apart, consecrated as it were for the public worship of God, objectively represents and subjectively induces that separation of sacred from profane that is at the heart of sacrificial religion. (To which this IA responds: Hieratic English! The Prayer Book English of Divine Worship is most certainly a "high language", making Divine Worship: the Missal a very capable vehicle for worship, certainly as much as Church Slavonic is for those Eastern Orthodox liturgies that employ it.)

4. The Principle of Ritual Integrity. Both the Divine Liturgy and the traditional Latin Mass pre-exist any given celebration as determinate, fully-articulated rites that clergy and people follow with humble obedience. The prayers, antiphons, readings, gestures, and chants are fixed and prescribed; above all, the most holy prayer, the anaphora, is either unchanging (in the West) or determined by the liturgical calendar (in the East). In this way, the celebrant’s personal preferences or choices are never driving the action. We may also call this the principle of stability, since the ritual integrity guarantees to the clergy and the people an immovable rock on which they may build their spiritual lives. (Amen!)

5. The Principle of Density. The old Roman liturgy, and likewise the old Byzantine, is shot through with dogmatic, moral, ascetical-mystical content. The prayers are thick and rich and full of religion. They are a poetic tapestry of Scripture and other devout utterances. [...] Think of the various troparia of the Byzantine tradition, or the wealth of proper antiphons in the Roman Rite, and the collects, secrets, and postcommunions, almost none of which survived intact the bowdlerizing scalpel of the Consilium. (Again, this passage describes Divine Worship. True to its Sarum roots, the prayers found in Divine Worship: the Missal are "thick and rich and full of religion"! One of my many favourites is the Collect for Purity. The Prayer of Humble Access, equally full of religion, is a moving prayer with ancient origins, East and West. Another principle might also apply: the principle of transparency. Divine Worship is transparent to the action of the Holy Spirit. The ritual, like a beautiful stained glass window, permits the Light to pass through it.)

6. The Principle of Preparation. Closely connected with the foregoing is the principle of adequate and repeated preparation. In both East and West, the clergy and ministers prepare themselves thoroughly before the liturgy for their work, whether it be at a side table preparing the offerings with abundant prayers, or at the foot of the altar reciting Psalm 42, the Confiteor, and prayers of ascent. How could anyone imagine just sauntering out of the sacristy and walking right up to the altar, as if it’s no big deal? As if one were going to a fundraising luncheon? (The Prayers at the Foot of the Altar are prayed in the sacristy or at the Foot depending on local custom.)

As Catherine Pickstock noted so well, the repetition of prayers in all genuine liturgies is deliberate and of immense spiritual importance. The Byzantine liturgy has the priest frequently praying secretly from start to finish as he prepares himself again and again for the next wondrous step that has to be taken into the mysteries of Christ. The authentic Roman liturgy is no different, with its ample Offertory, its three prayers of preparation for communion, prayers of ablution, Placeat, and Last Gospel. Famously, we find much repetition of certain prayers in the Divine Liturgy and the Roman usus antiquior — in the former, litanies of “Lord, have mercy” or “Grant it, O Lord”; in the latter, the ninefold Kyrie, the triple Confiteor, the triple “Domine, non sum dignus” (done twice to indicate the distinction between the priest’s communion and the faithful’s). (In the Ordinariate Liturgy, you will hear the ninefold Kyrie, the Confiteor first prayed by the priest followed by the congregation and ministers, and the Prayer of Humble Access, said by priest and people together, becomes a third confiteor. Divine Worship presents a series of respirations that repeatedly return the worshipper to a posture of humility before the living God: the Collect for Purity; the Summary of the Law; the Kyrie; the Penitential Rite with the General Confession before the Offertory. These repetitions breathe forth a litany, or rondo, embedded within the Liturgy of the Word, and point to the summit of the Mass. Furthermore, within Divine Worship there are definite distinctions between "voices". That is, the priest prays sotto voce, and prays using the full voice (vox clara), and prays silently.)

7. The Principle of Truthfulness. The whole of the Gospel message is present in the traditional lectionaries — the so-called “difficult” parts, too, as well as the easier ones. In the Novus Ordo, as is well known, Scripture is heavily edited to conform to modern prejudices. More broadly, the traditional lex orandi contains and transmits with apostolic vigor the full lex credendi of the Catholic Church, without any editing for contemporary sensibilities or sensitivities. Thus, to take one example from a thousand, the damnation of Judas, and the real possibility of hell for any of us, is taught unflinchingly, while the cursing psalms directed against our spiritual enemies are made use of plentifully. This kind of thing is excised from or heavily reduced in the Novus Ordo. In this regard, it fails to pass on the fullness of the Faith as we find it in Scripture, the Fathers, the Councils, and the Doctors of the Church. In this way it fails in its role as lex orandi of the orthodox Church. (Anyone who has regularly attended the Ordinariate Liturgy will have encountered the "difficult parts", as Dr. Kwasniewski calls them. Hearing those powerful passages in the hieratic vernacular—in the minor propers: the Introit, Gradual, Offertory and Communion chants—is particularly moving, unsettling, inspiring, etc. Arguably, anyone attending the Ordinariate Mass, Matins and Evensong, and hearing those challenging passages is probably moved all the more, perhaps even shocked, by hearing those passages in the (hieratic) vernacular, their native tongue.)

In fact, many doctrines of the faith are seen and heard in the old liturgies, whereas they have to be studied and blindly accepted in the context of the neo-Roman liturgy, because the rite itself does not make them evident. As examples, consider the veneration that ought to be paid to the saints, or the adoration of latreia that ought to be shown to the Blessed Sacrament. One who attends either the Byzantine or the traditional Roman liturgy will have a visceral experience of the venerability of the saints and the adorableness of the Eucharist. In contrast, the Novus Ordo has systematically pared down the focus on the saints as well as the signs of reverence to be paid to the awesome mysteries of Christ. (At the elevation of the Host and the Chalice in Divine Worship, it is customary to make the Sign of the Cross upon oneself in adoration of the Body and Blood of Christ. In fact, every time the Eucharist is shown to the people, we make the Sign of the Cross.)

8. The Principle of Hierarchy is manifest in the clear division of roles for priest, deacon, subdeacon, acolyte, cantor, etc. This non-interchangeable diversity of roles is grossly confused and diluted in the Novus Ordo, with its loose regulations on laypeople functioning in the sanctuary. Neither Byzantine nor authentic Roman liturgy allows unvested laymen to enter willy-nilly into the sanctuary and perform works proper to the clergy, above all the handling of the Most Holy Eucharist. Rather, the identity of the priest as a mediator between God and man is thoroughly respected and demonstrated in action — and the identity of the layman as actively present to the sacrifice is likewise respected and demonstrated in action. (The Ordinariate in North America, probably better than anywhere else, save the Diocese of Lincoln, has enacted the teaching of Pope (soon-to-be Saint) Paul VI in Ministeria Quaedam that restores the subdiaconal roles to the instituted layman. There is nothing willy nilly about the role of Instituted Acolyte in the Ordinariate regarding the proper role of the laity in the Liturgy. Where there is a verger—i.e., the MC of the nave—you can be certain order and discipline is well maintained! Furthermore, the Instituted Acolyte is tasked by the Church, as set forth in Ministeria Quaedam, to bear the Body of Christ to shut-ins.)

The liturgy is a true embodiment of ecclesiology instead of an imaginary alternative to it. One would never be able to derive a coherent and consistent account of the hierarchical nature of the Mystical Body from the Novus Ordo, whereas it is easy to do so from either the Divine Liturgy or the traditional Roman Mass (and Divine Worship). Participation, therefore, is understood in a fundamentally different way in the traditional liturgies and in the neo-Roman rite. The correct view is that participation should befit the distinct roles of various parts of the body, and that this should be visible to all in the dress, bearing, location, and tasks assigned — and not assigned — to participants. (Agreed!)

9. The Principle of Parallelism, which is in keeping with that of hierarchy. In any authentic Eastern or Western liturgy, we find that several things are often happening simultaneously (or to use the technical term, there is “parallel liturgy”). The deacon is leading a litany when the priest is reciting his own prayers; the people are singing the Sanctus while the priest has started the Canon. Those who attend either Byzantine or traditional Latin liturgies come to see the liturgy as a multi-layered action made up of many individual actions converging on a common goal. It is most definitely not a logical sequence of discrete acts, where only one thing is allowed to take place at a time (as in “sequential” or “modular” liturgy, exemplified in the Novus Ordo). (Parallelism is preserved in Divine Worship. It may be more useful to describe this principle in musical terms. For example, the many voices of a symphony are not separate but interdependent, and harmonious, rising to that common goal or climax described by Dr. Kwasniewski. The counterpoint of Divine Worship is particularly enticing and freeing, given the poetry, lyricism, density and transparency of the language and gestures of the Ordinariate Liturgy. There is a harmony of complementary gestures and activities that are like subjects in a fugue.)

10. The Principle of Separation. All authentic Christian liturgies preserve and make ritual use of the theology inscribed in the architecture of the Old Covenant temple, which, as the Epistle to the Hebrews teaches, is recapitulated in Christ and therefore symbolized forever in our Eucharistic sacrifice. In the East, the separation of the sanctuary or holy of holies from the nave is more obvious due to the presence of an iconostasis through which only certain clergy may enter. In the West, curtains gave way to the rood screen, which in most places diminished into the communion rail, but always the sanctuary remained distinct, elevated, and off limits to the laity. Moreover, in the Western liturgy the visual iconostasis has yielded to a “sonic iconostasis” of Latin alternating with silence. Both the hieratic language and the enveloping absence of sound lower a veil over the holy of holies and shield the sacred mysteries from the profanation of casual treatment. Thus, while Eastern and Western liturgies accomplish this “veiling of our faces to the Presence” in different ways, both are highly effective in achieving it, powerfully drawing the worshiper’s attention to the hidden glory of God. (Rood screen—check! Communion or altar rail—check! Distinction between the sanctuary and nave—check! Mind you, many Ordinariate communities are hosted by/in diocesan parishes that lack the appropriate architectural distinctions or nuances. In the meantime, Ordinariate parishes are doing just fine. Perhaps a few wealthy donors might consider assisting an Ordinariate community of their choosing by helping them to build a church in which Divine Worship: the Missal can be fully realized.)