Author: Revd Fr Christopher Smith

Posted on by Revd Fr Christopher Smith

Benedict XVI and the Mustard Seed



On 19 April 2005 I made it into Piazza San Pietro just as smoke was coming out of the chimney of the Sistine Chapel.  It was a grey cloudy day, so it was hard to make out whether the smoke was white or black.  The bells were supposed to ring to announce the election of the successor to John Paul II, but nothing happened, so we were all confused.  The Piazza began to fill with more and more people, seminarians, sisters and laypeople running down the Via della Conciliazione as fast as they could.  The atmosphere was electric, because we all knew that we were going to participate in something historic.
Rome had been my home for almost seven years by that point.  I had moved there after graduating from Christendom College because I wanted to live in the heart of Christendom, close to the Holy Father.  I also was desperate to find my place in the Church, to find my vocation. When I entered seminary a year after my move to the Eternal City, I passed through the portals of the Roman Major Seminary, the house of formation for the Diocese of Rome.  I was bonded to Rome, to Peter and to the Church, and began to find my place in the Church and in the world.
Those were the declining years of John Paul II’s reign.  I had several opportunities to meet and serve the Pope, and I was always awed in his presence.  To see him so sick and suffering, but carrying on as he did, was amazing.  But there was another figure who had always been close to me: Joseph Ratzinger.  Even as I was always close to John Paul II, it was Ratzinger who inspired me from an early age.  I had read Vittorio Messori’s The Ratzinger Report when I was in high school, and at college read deeply from the rich canon of Ratzinger’s theological works.  I knew that to be steeped in Ratzinger’s thought was not always to make oneself appreciated.
Shortly after I entered the seminary, Ratzinger’s long awaited The Spirit of the Liturgy came out.  I had devoured all of his other writings on the liturgy, and longed to see how his teaching on the sacred liturgy and music could be lived in the heart of the Church.  But the other seminarians warned me that to identify myself too closely with Ratzinger was “career suicide.”  All I had ever wanted to be was a parish priest anyway, so I was not worried about that.  Yet I was a New Man at the seminary and so I exchanged the Ignatius Press cover of that seminal work for a 1970s bookcover of the encyclicals of Paul VI.  Needless to say, I fooled no one.  That book sparked endless discussion at the seminary, in favor and against, and I increasingly began to imbibe the Ratzingerian view of the world, the Church and theology.  A professor at the Gregorian nicknamed me Ratzinger because I always invoked his name, a moniker of which I was humbled and proud, even if it was meant as a light-hearted jab.
For a seminarian in Rome in the early years of the Third Millennium, Ratzinger was a formidable personage.  I heard him speak several times, and wanted so much to spend hours in a room picking his brain on so many things.  The only regret that I take with me from those years in Rome is that I was so struck by his humility I could never bring myself to crowd around him like the others did.  But my devotion was total.  From time to time, I would serve the early Masses at St Peter’s Basilica, and come across the Prefect for the Congregation of the Doctrine of the Faith as he ambled across the Piazza to go to to work.  And I always shouted out, Buon giorno, Eminenza! hoping one day to serve him in some capacity.
After John Paul II’s death, Ratzinger’s presence, quiet, serene and hopeful, dominated the Roman scene.  I participated in so many Masses both for the mourning for the passing of the only Pope I had never known and the election of the next Peter.  As the cardinals filed by, there were sounds of enthusiasm from the faithful.  But whenever Ratzinger walked by, the sound was deafening.  If vox populi, vox Dei had any weight with the porporati at all, they could not have ignored the visible and audible response of the People of God to the Bavarian theologian.
He is a theologian of incomparable stature.  When the Bishop of Charleston assigned me to study dogmatic theology for my license, it was not my first choice. I had never thought of it before; I wanted to be a liturgist.  But in Ratzinger I uncovered the fact that liturgy, and its reform and restoration, finds its deepest meaning in the Christ which dogmatic theology encounters in awe and wonder.  Dogma became the academic road ecclesiastical obedience laid out for me, and it bound me even more to the man who would be elected as the Successor to St Peter.
I cannot adequately describe what I felt to hear the word Joseph as the Dean proclaimed the new Pope.  I knew it had to be him.  I knew for weeks it had to be him.  I count the day of his election as one of the happiest of my life, because it was so personally significant to me.  A man who had inspired me to be a priest, a theologian and a Christian engaged with both the Tradition and the modern world at the same time now reigned from the Throne of the Fisherman. 
The Mass of the Inauguration of the Petrine Ministry and his Enseatment at the Lateran Basilica were moments of pure joy for me.  I wanted to call them coronation and enthronement, they were so glorious.  But more impressive than the ceremonies surrounding these historical events I was privileged to take a part in, was listening to him teach as Peter.  Clear, distinct, and poetic all at the same time.  A master class with one of the greatest professors in human history was being offered to all of humanity, if we would just listen and learn.
During the Mass at the Lateran Basilica, I was given the great honor to distribute Holy Communion.  I was upset, however, to discover that I was to go all the way outside of the Basilica and down the Piazza and out into the streets to perform my appointed task.  Selfishly, I balked at the idea of not being able to participate in the end of a liturgy which meant so much for me.  But as I looked back at the grand doors of the Mother and Head of all the Churches of the City and the World, carrying Jesus Christ in the Blessed Sacrament in my hands, I was flooded with a sense of completion.  Formed close to the heart of the Church, I was imbued with spirit of Eternal Rome, the vision of Pope Benedict XVI and the mission of the fishermen.  It would not do for me to tarry around Rome while the man I revered as my greatest Teacher made the world into his classroom.  Like any good student, I had to go back into my mission field to hand on what I had received. 
The only Pope I have ever named in the Canon has been Benedict.  Today, the day on which he announces his resignation, I offered the Ordinary Form in English and said his name like I have every day of my priesthood.  I offered that Mass, on the Feast of Our Lady of Lourdes, and prayed for him, knowing he was sick, and all the sick on this World Day dedicated to them.  After Mass, I discovered the news by text message from a friend I had called from the Piazza on Election Day.  Later that day, I offered the Extraordinary Form in Latin.  I’m not sure if what I did was rubrically correct, but to the prayers of this day’s feast I added the prayers for the Pope.  And I freely admit how hard it was for me to say that name that I have pronounced every day since my Ordination shortly after his election with such gratitude. 
I am a priest of the Benedict XVI Generation. 
The way that I approach theology, liturgy, preaching, pastoral life, everything, has been profoundly influenced by this amazing man.  I will always thank God for his constant presence in my life, and in the lives of those I touch because of his example to me.  I have enough sentiment in me to want to write the Holy Father personally to tell him all this, but I know that he will never receive it.  But even in that he continues to teach me.
Few understood the rich symbolism involved when Benedict XVI visited the grave of the oft misunderstood Celestine V and placed his pallium upon it in 2009.  Now, in hindsight, it comes across as a prophetic moment.  As the Sovereign Pontiff, our sweet Christ on Earth, transitions into a life of prayer and penance, in a hidden Nazareth within the walls of the Vatican, he shows us that the Church belongs to Christ.  The sign of the mustard seed becomes a reality in the 265th successor to St Peter.
In 1996, in his famous interview with Peter Seewald, he said, Maybe we are facing a new and different kind of epoch in the church’s history, where Christianity will again be characterized more by the mustard seed, where it will exist in small, seemingly insignificant groups that nonetheless live an intense struggle against evil and bring good into the world – that let God in.  
It is the hallmark of a man who practices what he preaches.  Pope Benedict XVI shows us the way by example of how to live as a Christian in a world increasingly hostile to the Gospel and the Church: as mustard seeds of faith.  He may not know it until the Final Judgment, but Joseph Ratzinger has inspired countless young men and women, priests, religious and laypeople to be just like those mustard seeds.  We are privileged that he has shown us the way.   Viva il Papa!       

Posted on by Revd Fr Christopher Smith

Vespers and Compline in a Southern City

My first assignment as a priest was at St Mary’s in Greenville, SC, the parish that was mentioned in George Weigel’s book Letters to a Young Catholic.  One of the first projects the pastor, Fr Jay Scott Newman, and I had was to find ways to introduce the Divine Office to the people there.  So we decided for Advent and Lent to start Vespers and Benediction of the Most Blessed Sacrament.  I have to admit that it took some time just to get everything together in order to do it.  We had to create our own worship aid that was easy enough for someone to follow who had never seen Evening Prayer before.  We enlisted the Choir’s help, and thus started a new phase in the life of a parish whose liturgical life was exemplary, and also had formed me as a young man to think liturgically.
It is now several years later, and Advent and Lent Vespers is a fixed event of the area’s Church year.  One of my old altar boys called me last night to tell me that the church, which seats about 450, was comfortably full.  I paused to think how many more people were at Vespers in my home parish than there would be at St Peter’s in Rome or Notre Dame in Paris, places where I often attended Sunday Vespers when I lived in those amazing cities.


your humble scribe at St Mary’s during Advent Vespers 2006

St Mary’s uses the Liturgy of the Hours in English for the service, with one of the Hymns from the Solemn Mass celebrated earlier in the day and with the Psalmody according to the St Meinrad tones.  The Choir supplies an Anthem after the sung Reading and often the Magnificat, in settings either according to the Roman School of Palestrina or the Anglican tradition.  Vespers has become a bit of an ecumenical event, as well, with Episcopalians and Lutherans and even the stray Presbyterian making Vespers at St Mary’s a usual part of their Kalendar.
Of course, anyone who knows the parish likes to tease that it puts Canterbury Cathedral to shame in how Anglican it feels.  It is no surprise then, that after Vespers the Anglican Ordinariate Community celebrates Mass there.  But it is a place which is Catholic to the core, and the celebration of Vespers has been the source of numerous graces for many people in Upstate South Carolina.
I am now across town at the daughter parish, Prince of Peace.  St Mary’s, in its neo-Gothic Anglican-ish splendor, represents the best of the Reform of the Reform.  Prince of Peace is one of the most interesting churches I have ever seen. It is a postmodern take on Romanesque, and combines everything from steel and concrete to marble and wood.  There, the ethos of the Roman Basilicas prevails, with both the Ordinary and Extraordinary Forms of the Roman Rite celebrated every day. 
We already recite Night Prayer often during the week according to the Liturgy of the Hours, and POP is the kind of place where you see 20 and 30-somethings sitting in our Perpetual Adoration Chapel reading the Divine Office of John XXIII on their IPad Minis.
During Eastertide of last year, we decided to do Sunday Vespers and Benediction in Latin according to the Liber usualis.  We did several Sundays where the Curate, Fr Richard Tomlinson, taught about the spirituality and history of the Divine Office and the Latin of the Office, and I taught the chant.  I knew that, when the time came to do it, it would not be quite as polished as what goes on at the Mother Church down town, but I wanted to get the people to have the confidence to tackle such a difficult thing as Sunday Vespers in the traditional form.  They did quite well, but it was a big thing to accomplish.  Entirely a cappella, the Curate and the Servers did a fine job of carrying off the ceremonies while we capably sang the services those Sundays, even though there were a few hiccups here and there.


Prince of Peace during Assumption Solemn High EF Mass 2012
I did not want to compete with the Mother Church for Advent and Lent, and by chance I came upon a booklet of Sunday Compline in English and Latin, with music for both, from Collegeville’s Popular Liturgical Library from way back in the day.  Our excellent Director of Music, Mr Alan Reed, who also directs the Chicora Voices choir for young people in the city, set about producing something similar for us at Prince of Peace. 
We decided to do Compline in the traditional form in English, to get more of the parish involved.  Last night we had our first go at it.  I was a little worried, because I was the only person in the church who had ever seen this done before, in English or in Latin, and I wondered how it would go.  We had the people in the two choirs in opposite transepts, and we set about doing it. 
I was so proud of my little parish!  People came from both the OF and EF parts of the parish, and the two choirs went back and forth with the Gregorian psalmody like they had done this all their life.  It was not perfect, but it was beautiful.  The simplicity of the rite itself, the darkened church, the plainsong without the organ: we all had the confidence to pray in this form, although it was entirely new to everyone there. 
So if you happen to be in Upstate South Carolina on a Sunday in the tempi forti, check out Vespers at 5pm at St Mary’s downtown and then truck out to the suburb of Taylors at 7.30pm for Compline.  Both are very different experiences of the Liturgy of the Hours, but beautiful ones.  It is a great grace to live in the buckle of the Bible Belt and have such an embarrassment of riches to have to say, “Where can I go for beautiful liturgy in two forms of the Roman Rite?  There are too many choices!”       

Posted on by Revd Fr Christopher Smith

Léon Gromier: Liturgical Reform Between Rupture and Continuity

Msgr Léon Gromier (1879-1965)
Up until a few years ago, any peep of concern about the 1970 Missal of Paul VI was adduced as evidence of schism and obscurantism.  Klaus Gamber’s The Reform of the Liturgy, first published in 1981 in Germany and in English translation in 1993, changed all that.  Likewise, in traditionalist circles, peeps of concern about the 1962 Missal of John XXIII were squelched.  Today, however, searching questions about the Pauline Reform are being asked out loud from the halls of the Vatican to blogs with a readership of 2, and questions about the liturgical reforms of both John XXIII and Pius XII are beginning to be taken seriously.  Now, there are still some quarters where the very mention of such criticism is laughed at.  Those who suggest a closer analysis of the pre-Vatican II liturgical reform are often accused of wanting to found a Society of Pope Pius II.5, since X and V already exist, and they are rejected as hopelessly wedded to “older is better” in the face of scholarship and common sense.
Yet, there are thinkers in the Church who are earnestly trying to understand where a hermeneutic of rupture has been applied to various aspects of the Church’s life, and just how continuity is or is not reform.  The only approved form of the Extraordinary Form of the Roman Rite is the 1962 Missal and its associated books.  But the provision in Universae ecclesiae 52 allowing religious orders to use their proper rites may give hope to some that a further liberalization to employ previous editions of the Roman Missal, such as those pre-dating the 1955 Pian Reform of Holy Week, is possible. 
But why should we even bother looking at the pre-Vatican II liturgical reform?  The Church’s current liturgical law only allows the 1962 Missal and most EF enthusiasts seem perfectly content using it.  But if we are to discern, under the Church’s authority, where a hermeneutic of rupture has been applied to the liturgical life of the Church, it seems nonsensical to stop at an arbitrary date or edition of the Missal such as 1970, 1962, 1955, or even 1570.  Is every abridgement, replacement or omission evidence of rupture, or can they be seen as little pieces of thread in the larger tapestry of liturgical reform?  I should like to argue that a closer look needs to be paid to the pre-Vatican II liturgical reform.
Recently I came across a name that I had never heard before, and I would bet that even the most seasoned of Chant Café readers are unlikely to be familiar with him either.  Léon Gromier (1879-1965) is best known as one of the Ceremonieri of Pius XII’s papal liturgy.   But this priest of Autun had been in Rome since his ordination in 1902 and was a consultor on matters liturgical from the time of St Pius X.  As early as 1936, he expressed loud reservations about the trajectory of liturgical discussions, such as that of restoring the Easter Vigil to celebration during the night.  With characteristic aplomb, he made his opinions loud and clear, and did not rise in an ecclesiastical career, but his knowledge was such that even those who disagreed with him still respected him. 
You can find some information on Gromier and excerpts of his works in Italian and French here.  He is best known for his commentary on the old Caeremoniale Episcoporum, which I have tried in vain to obtain.  But what struck me as the most interesting was a conference Gromier gave in Paris in 1960.  You can read it in its original French or in its English translation by the always interesting-to-read Anthony Chadwick. 
This conference makes for interesting, if difficult, reading.  As the transcription of a talk, it often reads, especially in its translation, not very linearly.  One must be patient with editorializing and the occasional shot across the bow at his liturgical adversaries.  But there is also much here that I find fascinating.
An impression that I have gotten from studying the successive series of texts of the Holy Week ceremonies, as well as their accompanying rubrics, is of a certain amount of “cut and paste.”  Anyone who is familiar with the Breviary of St Pius X who has then switched to that of John XXIII knows of those awkward moments where et reliqua is preceded by a mental ma da dov’é abbiamo cominciato qua?  Gromier in this talk often points out where the “cut and paste” mentality has produced some very difficult to explain things in the liturgical reform up to 1960.  One wonders if these were things which Evelyn Waugh found so irksome in his letters to Cardinal Heenan.
But before we look at what some of those things are, there is an observation in order.  Before we cut anything, it behooves us to really understand why what was there, was there in the first place.  Often, we invent a reason why something should be changed or removed, which does not respect the reason for its existence and also does not foresee unintended consequences.  This is true in many aspects of our life, and, as Gromier points out, is also true in the liturgy. 
Gromier makes a distinction between what he sees as the true Roman liturgical spirit embodied in the texts, rubrics and ceremonial traditions of the Roman liturgical books, and a very different spirit animating those he calls les pastoraux, what we might call the “pastoral liturgists” one assumes were imbued with Liturgical Movement ideas more akin to Guardini than Guéranger. 
He begins his talk with the indication that the proposed restoration of Holy Week was to commence with the timing of the service.  Fifty years out from Sacrosanctum concilium, many priests and lay faithful are shocked to hear that, up until the middle of the last century, centuries had gone by with the Triduum services celebrated in the morning.  The usual quips about the “Mass of the Lord’s Breakfast” and the flame of the paschal candle not being able to be seen because of light bathing the church usually come up.  Most liturgists just dismissed the idea of having services at those times as an inexplicable anachronism tied to some idea that Mass was not supposed to be celebrated after noon.  But Gromier points out that the timing was intimately connected with the Church’s ancient discipline of fasting, which of course had been significantly relaxed. 
He talks about the renaming of the services.  He asks why the ancient name of Good Friday as In Parasceve had to be replaced by the Passion and Death of the Lord, when passion as a concept included death, and if so, why not call the Passion Gospel the Passion and Death Gospel?  He talks about why the Passion and the Gospel were two distinct things, which were then in 1955 melded into one history.   Gromier also complains of the fact that in the 1955 Holy Week, Vespers is omitted in Holy Thursday and Good Friday and Compline on each day of the Triduum. 
One of the more interesting parts of the talk is when he takes issue with the adjective solemn as applied in the 1955 Reform.  He writes, “The solemnity of liturgical services is not an optional decoration; it is of the nature of the service . . . Outside of this, so-called solemnity is not an amplifying enticement, to impress and score the goal .  . . we made a prodigious use of the word solemn even for necessarily or intrinsically solemn acts.  We use words, believing that we can put more solemnity into the Procession of Palms than into that of Candlemas, more solemnity into the Procession of Maundy Thursday than that of Good Friday (abolished as we shall see).  Always on the same slippery slope, we learn that the Passion of Good Friday is sung solemnly, as if it could be sung in another fashion.”
Here Gromier identifies a crucial characteristic of the Reformed Liturgy that I had never been able to put into words.  Theologians often talk about the svolta antropologica, a man-centered volte-face of theology after Rahner.  Here we have a clear liturgical complement.  Solemnity no longer arises from the nature of the Christological mystery being celebrated, but of how we go about celebrating it, and what we do to celebrate it.  The Eucharistic Processions of Maundy Thursday and Good Friday were solemn before because of their reference to Christ being carried to and from the Sepulchre.  After 1955, Maundy Thursday remains solemn because incense and song and candles accompany the Procession.  Good Friday ceases to be so because those things that we do are omitted.  I think this is a point worthy of further reflection.  How often in our parishes, basilicas and papal liturgies have we seen attempts at solemnization of the liturgy interpreted as our use of Latin, candles and incense rather than the solemn nature of certain ceremonies rising from their intrinsic Christological import? 
Our French liturgist here also speaks at length about blessings being done no longer on the altar or as close to the altar as possible (ashes, palms, candles, oils) but on a table in front of the people.  He also points out that, after placing these blessings in front of the people so they could ostensibly see what was going on, the rites were so drastically simplified so that there was not much left to see.     
He blames the pastoral liturgists for creating a situation which introduced several ambiguities and contradictions within the ceremonies themselves.  He points out the fact that the clergy are instructed to no longer hold palms on Palm Sunday during the Passion, forgetting that the reason the clergy held the palms was in deference to a reference to St Augustine, whose homily was read that day in Matins.
Often the changes in rubrics belie confusion as to their origin.  The change of color in the Palm Sunday liturgy is an example.  In the pre-Pian liturgy, Gromier, claims the Roman color was always purple (and black in Paris and red in Milan).  In 1955, the Procession is in red and the Mass is in purple, stemming from the introduction of the idea of red and triumphant, and downplaying the predominant theme of Passion in the Palm Sunday liturgy.  Now, of course, Palm Sunday and Good Friday in the Ordinary Form of the Roman Rite are entirely in red, a sign of the capitulation of the Roman liturgy to the idea of triumph which, arguably for Gromier at least, is not a properly Roman liturgical idea.
While Gromier derides the symbolic and liturgical value of the changes, he also indicates the practical ramifications of the changes.  The celebrant having to walk around sprinkling palms everywhere in the church, introducing laymen into the sanctuary for the Mandatum, the lack of instructions as to the veiling of the processional cross or the altar for Palm Sunday, the removal of the Cross from the altar just to be brought back to it on Good Friday, the changes of the vestments on Good Friday, carrying a large and heavy paschal candle, etc. 
It is common nowadays to hear that the central focus of the liturgical action is the altar.  Some argue that the tabernacle should not even reside on or near the altar because it “distracts” from the Action during Mass.  Everyone is taught that the altar is the symbol of Christ and is worthy of respect with a bow.  But Gromier states, “The Roman Pontifical teaches us that we do not greet a new altar before having placed its cross.  The altar itself is not the object of veneration, but the cross that dominates it, and to which all prayers are addressed.  The altar without a cross, if it is worthy of being kissed, has no right to a bow or genuflection . . . for an altar is not invoked.”  Common practice today is for the Cross to not be on the altar at all, and for the altar as table to occupy much of the attention in reverence.  One wonders what Gromier would say about the later rubric which directs the Celebrant at the Oremus for the collects to bow towards the book and no longer towards the cross.  Today, the altar and the cross have been separated as if they no longer belong together, much as altar and tabernacle have been separated (malgré Pius XII’s admonition against it).  Pope Benedict XVI’s custom of having the Cross on the Altar, referred to as the Benedictine arrangementalthough it is perhaps more accurately referred to as the Roman basilica arrangement, has restored the unity between Cross and Altar and re-oriented liturgical prayer towards the Cross and away from the Celebrant at the Altar.  I have no idea if Josef Ratzinger, developing this idea in The Spirit of the Liturgy was aware of Gromier’s critique on this point or not, but it is a happy phenomenon that clergy are imitating the papal liturgy in this fashion and giving priority to the cross as a focus of liturgical action, no longer separated from the altar. 
The confusion of symbolism in the 1955 Holy Week led to some oddities that Gromier criticizes.  “The procession of Maundy Thursday, definitively instituted by Sixtus IV (+1484), and that of Good Friday, instituted by John XXII (+1334), therefore by the same authority, have the same object, same purpose, same solemnity, except the festive character of the first and the mourning of the second.  Why abolish one and keep the other?”  He asks why, when fonts, baptismal water and baptisms go together, they are separated out during the Vigil: “the pastorals make baptismal water and baptize in a basin, and in this container they carry it to the font, singing the song of a thirsty deer, which has already drunk, and which is going towards a dry font.”  Why is the renewal of baptismal vows from the custom of First Communion of children inserted into the Vigil after baptisms have already been done, and if so, why not renew the marriage vows of all present at a wedding?
It may be easy to surmise in reading Gromier’s talk that the man was just a curmudgeon opposed in principle to all novelty.  Yet he does not argue entirely against the reform of the times of the Triduum, even as he protests against the removal of them from the context of their fasting discipline and Breviary accompaniment.  He does not argue against the distribution of Communion at the Good Friday Liturgy of the Presanctified, even as he lambastes the rubric of eating the Host without also drinking the ablutions associated with it, as if anyone ever ate without drinking.  The impression that comes across is that Gromier issues a pointed challenge to the pastorals to provide better theological, historical and practical rationales for all they accomplished during the reform.               
As Gromier declares, “Certain modifications of tradition, so well-known, are just as dishonest as they are daring.”  It is a lapidary statement, meant to provoke.  Fifty-two years after he made it, these words still provoke strong reactions.  If we are to explore how Vatican II is an exercise in continuity with the tradition, and to see how the liturgy can be reformed and still be in conformity with the tradition, we must go back to the sources.  Far from accepting tout court the accepted history of the liturgical reform and Vatican II as proffered by the Bologna School and the Liturgical Establishment, we have an opportunity for true ressourcement.  We need not discard the words of criticism of the liturgical reform, whether it be Léon Gromier’s often acerbic analysis of the changes in the liturgy in the pre-Vatican II period, or the linguistic observations of those who express reservations against the new English translation of the third editio typica of the Pauline Missale Romanum.  All of these critiques should be entertained, not out of a sense of ideological protest or loyal dissent, but in an effort to serenely ascertain what has happened, why it happened, and how to recover the spirit of the liturgy, ever ancient and ever new, for today and tomorrow.   

Posted on by Revd Fr Christopher Smith

Pontificia Academia Latinitatis

Latina lingua, Pope Benedict XVI’s recent motu proprio establishing the Pontifical Latin Academy, is a great gift to the entire Church.  It recalls that almost unknown document of Blessed John XXIII, Veterum sapientia , a document many people in the Church had given over for dead.  But it also plans for the future.  Now, of course, those who are unfamiliar with Pontifical Academies may not entirely be sure what they do.  Often they serve as high-level think-tanks for scholars in the Church.  One thinks of the prestigious Real Academia Española or the Academie française, and posits that the Church may, with this new initiative, have a decisive rôle in the preservation and propagation of Latin.

The establishment of the Pontifical Latin Academy complements the work already being done in the Secretariat of State and the Institute for Higher Latin Studies at the Salesianum in Rome.  But it also ups the ante, so to speak, in giving a forum for scholars.  I also think that it has the opportunity to be a part, not only of the New Evangelization, but of the outreach the Holy Father has so adroitly encouraged among non-believers, such as the Courts of the Gentiles.

Catholic intellectuals have often bemoaned their increasing isolation in academia.  As many abandoned Latin as a force of energy in the life of the Church, in many places the only people who kept Latin alive were academics in classics departments in institutions of higher learning.  While there have always been some Catholics among them, Classics is now often a discipline where to be an orthodox Catholic is frowned upon.  Yet the Catholic Church, more than any other grouping in society, is poised for a renaissance of Latin learning, language and scholarship.  This encouragement from the Magisterium of the Church is a clear indication that classics studies are important to the Church, that vibrant intellectual scholarship (as opposed to ideologized hack “scholarship”) is part of the Church’s understanding of her role in promoting the artistic and intellectual patrimony of humanity.

But there are still far too many quarters in the Church where Latin is still derided, not just in the celebration of the sacred liturgy, but even in attempts to study it.  How many parochial schools and colleges require any Latin at all any more?  Even in Italy, where the famed liceo classico turned out generations of top-notch Catholic classicists, pressures increase to move away from classical instruction in schools.  In many Catholic seminaries, even after repeated requests from the Holy See, seminarians are lucky to get two years of Latin at the most.  In many American seminaries, lip service is paid to the idea that Latin is part of the curriculum, but ask a third year theologian to translate an easy passage from the Liturgia horarum, even with a dictionary, and the results are often less than adequate.

In the meantime, Reformed seminaries spend much of their time teaching their future pastors Greek and Hebrew, so that they can all read the Scriptures in their “original languages” (although that description is itself open to debate).  Classics departments all over the world continue to churn out competent researchers and teachers.  But how many Bishops demand that their seminarians know Greek, Hebrew and Latin at the level to do serious reading?  How many Bishops have sent young priests to study theology and canon law, only to discover that they do not have the tools in classical languages to do their work properly?  How many departments of theology have to water down their requirements because more and more students, and even professors, cannot read Latin?  How many Bishops send their young priests to do advanced work in the classical languages, to teach in seminaries, colleges and high schools?

Like many other young priests, I feel like I am spending a lot of time catching up.  I had two years of Latin, a year of Greek and a semester of Hebrew as an undergraduate.  But when I went off to the seminary, I was constantly dispensed based on the fact that I did well in those classes.  But I knew that I was woefully unprepared to do the work that I needed to do.  I was fortunate enough to do two years with the famous Reginald Foster in Rome, but when I wanted to do more, I was told by my seminary superiors that it conflicted with my house job as architriclinus, so I had to abandon my Latin studies to keep the kitchen going.  Now, while I do not regret all the time I spent in the kitchen during my seminary years, a skill for which I am eternally grateful, I always felt like, had I been able to complete Foster’s five year cycle, I would be in much better shape to do my studies.  When I went off to do my doctoral studies, I had to do my work in modern theology, because my grasp of modern languages was much better than my classical languages.  But it still limits me.  I am reading Augustine’s De civitate Dei in the Loeb edition now, and constantly refer to the English.  Would I even have been allowed to be ordained years ago without being able to read Augustine without translation, much less be granted a licentiate and doctorate in sacred theology?

I mention all of this, because I have talked with many young clergy and laity who are theologians who feel this lack of tools to do serious work.  I am now a parish priest, so my Latin is sufficient to celebrate the Extraordinary Form and teach the school kids (who have 4 years of Latin) how to sing Gregorian chant for Mass.  But what about my friends who want to be theologians in the heart of the Church?  What about my priest confreres who want to be able to serve the Church, and need a better level of classical languages in order to do so?

I am very excited about the possibilities of the Pontifical Latin Academy.  But I also hope, maybe against hope, that it might be the beginning of a movement to train classicists to serve in dioceses, schools, universities and seminaries.  Will it be just another team of scholars who engage in purely academic discussions about Latinity (as wonderful as that is), or will the Church be able to use it to restore Latin’s rightful place to the Roman Church, something that cannot be done without addressing the real and practical issue of having enough clerical and lay leaders in the world who actually know Latin?
   

Posted on by Revd Fr Christopher Smith

A Priest On Using All of these Musical Resources!

The CMAA has so many projects going on, I can hardly keep up with them all.  I know that most of the people who read this blog are musicians or ordinary Catholics who appreciate the Church’s treasury of sacred music.  I also know that many of my brother priests are out there who love Chant Café, but they are at a loss as to how to figure out how to use all of this embarrassment of riches on the ground in their parishes.  So, reverend and dear Fathers, and the lay faithful who love you and want you to be successful in your efforts to restore the sacred, let me share some thoughts about how we can go about using all of this wonderfulness CMAA is putting out there.
I know a lot of parishes have a hymnal in the pews.  Sometimes two, as the Worship/Gather combination has become standard at least in my part of the world.  I grew up with the Baptist Hymnal and learned to love the Episcopal Hymnal.  But in those churches, we knew how to use them!  The Minister of Music would lead us to find the right hymn, whose title and number were already on our Order of Worship.  Sometimes there was even a screen we could find the name and number, and sometimes even lyrics and music!  In the Anglican Church, we had an Order of Worship, and I could set out my Book of Common Prayer and Hymnal on the pew with that perfect ridge in it so I could set the books out and mark them with the bulletin or ribbons according to the numbers proudly displayed on the hymn board which was visible to me no matter where I sat.
As I found out very quickly after I started to go to the Catholic church, such preparedness or enthusiastic alacrity in finding the right hymn in the right book was rare to find.  When I became a cantor, I was instructed in how to try to prepare the people for those moments in the Mass where people had to find their page in Worship or Gather.  At least we only used one hymnal and each Mass.  Good morning and welcome to St Mary’s!  Today is the Solemnity of the Assumption.  Let us stand and greet our celebrant with number (whatever it was) Hail Holy Queen, number (whatever it was).  (Pause for facepalm.)  Some of you may still be doing this routine.  Cantor at a stand near the altar, coaching the people.  It may sound like a good way of encouraging the faithful to actively participate, but I am still convinced that we need to get away from it and ring the bell and get on with things, and see the cantor as less of a protagonist in the celebration. 
But how then, should we go about communicating to the people what to sing?  My first parish and my current parish use music sheets that are designed to be one-stop shopping for all the music you will need to sing at Mass.  With the introduction of the new translation of the Roman Missal, there is the pew card and the music sheet, which complicates things a bit.  In my second parish, I bought the St Michael Hymnal, the fruit of the tireless labor of the indomitable Linda Schaefer from St Boniface in Lafayette, Indiana.  Especially at the time, it was the only hymnal I felt that provided original hymn texts and a plethora of music for a Catholic parish on its way to restoring the sacred.  I have not seen the new edition of the hymnal, but I am sure it is a very good product indeed.  When there is no hymnal, the music sheet is a useful tool.
If a music sheet is printed on nice paper, has beautiful clip art, nice fonts, and a good layout, it is a pleasure to sing from.  But it has its limits.  It is time consuming: if the Music Director does not have a volunteer assistant or the Pastor has a staff member do them, Music Directors can spend a lot of time doing them.  But, it is also a way to introduce the Propers as well as Hymns into the Mass. 
But why would we want do that?  The CMAA speaks very much about the Paradigm for liturgical worship: a fully sung Latin liturgy with the proper chants.  The Graduale Romanum really is one-stop shopping for all your musical needs.  The only place where I have ever seen it used outside of monasteries by laypeople in the pews is Saint Nicholas-du-Chardonnet, in Paris, where the faithful bring their own copies of the Liber usualis to Mass and Vespers and sing from them as if it were the most normal thing in the world, and, as far as singing congregations go, they do a pretty nice job of it! 
I don’t know about your parish, dear readers, but I know none of the parishes I have blessed to serve are quite at the level of that lovely SSPX church in the Cité des Lumières.  But the Propers are there.  They are in the Roman Missal, begging to be used.  And so we print them in the music sheet.  At our 10a Solemn English Mass every Sunday, the Proper Entrance, Offertory and Communion Antiphon are sung from the Simple English Propers.  The cantor sings them before the Entrance and Offertory Hymns, and at the beginning of the distribution of Holy Communion.  One day, I hope we can encourage everyone to sing them.  At the other sung OF Masses, we do not sing the Propers, but they are printed, and from time to time I call attention to the people to meditate upon those texts.  In my parish, we have the EF every day, so we have read and sung Propers there, and every Sunday we have a nicely produced sheet.  For Low Mass (which is during the summer), we use the Una Voce Orange County sheets, and for Sung Masses, we produce a beautiful music sheet with everything in English and Latin.
Music sheet vs. hymnal is a difficult question.  I continue to remind people that hymns are not a part of the Roman Eucharistic Liturgy.  But the 4-Hymn Sandwich, originating in a Low Mass mentality, is unfortunately ingrained in many of our faithful, so I think it is important that, for some parishes, there be a “safety valve” Mass where hymns and propers can co-exist.  One way to introduce Propers is the way we do it at my current parish, by pairing Propers and Hymns.  Advent and Lent are good times to introduce Introits, in English and then in Latin, and encourage congregational participation in the Simple English Propers.  Of course, doing that means that a hymnal is of limited use.  Many congregations are not up to the task of switching back and forth between music sheet with propers and hymnal with hymns. 
This is where the Vatican II Hymnal can be useful.  If the Choir sings the Propers in Latin or in English, or even if the Congregation is urged to sing the Propers in simple English tones that are accessible, the Vatican II Hymnal is a great resource, because it has the texts for those Propers.  I am not aware of any other hymnal on the market that includes those texts.  Because the Propers and not Hymns, are integral to the Roman liturgy, a wise pastor seeking to inch towards the Paradigm, will find the Vatican II Hymnal a great resource.
The Vatican II Hymnal is also a great resource for another very practical reason.  It does not only offer good hymns and non-bawdlerized texts.  It also presents the readings for Sunday.  Now, I used to love going to the Traditional Latin Mass with my Missal with the Latin and English.  It was a great way to prepare for Mass, and a good way to follow the Mass, especially as I was learning Latin.  I cannot, for the life of me, understand why people would want to follow along in a book the readings at Mass while they are being proclaimed in a vernacular they understand.  It is entirely non-sensical to me.  But many do.  And, in any given congregation, there will be people for whom English is not their mother tongue.  And there are those who, thanks be to God for them, like to prepare for Mass by reading through the readings before Mass.  In my parish, we have a congregation with Tagalog, Vietnamese, French, German, and of course, Spanish speakers.  It is helpful for them, as well as those who like to pray over the lectionary as part of their spiritual life.
But how do you do that?  The disposable Missalettes from OCP and Liturgical Press and other companies fill a need.  Many of them are well produced and they sit nicely in pew racks.  They are easy to handle and people like to take them home.  But they always give a sense of transience, of tenuousness, to the liturgy.  A beautiful and well-produced book like the Vatican II Hymnal provides all of the texts for the liturgy, without the connotation of a liturgy made in loose-leaf.  It can be a serious investment for a parish, but a very good one for parishes which want to introduce Propers, still have hymns and also provide for the lectionary readings.
So why have I not bought the Vatican II Hymnal for my parish?  Well, good question. We have a large Hispanic population in my area, and so the bilingual missalettes are the only resource around for a bilingual congregation, let alone a congregation like mine, which has many cultures and languages.  Also, we have the Ordinary and the Extraordinary Form every day.  We do not have Low Mass with Hymns, so the Vatican II Hymnal is not as helpful as it would be for congregations which have OF and EF with hymns.  Also, I like the flexibility of the music sheets even as it is not very green! 
Another thing I like about the music sheet as opposed to hymnal is that we can pick and choose from the numerous good offerings CMAA is putting out for the Responsorial Psalm.  Now, of course, I am all in favor of the Graduale Romanum for that, too, but many parishes are still wedded to the Responsorial Psalm.  So, as long as we are going to continue to use them, we might as well have dignified settings of them.  The Vatican II Hymnal has very good options, but those options are in the text of lectionary.  The other settings, which are not in the readings themselves, are good but entail a greater complication in how the faithful are supposed to get to them.  Are they announced, are they written in a music sheet or in a hymn board?
At my parish we have been using the Chabanel Psalms for nearly a year, replacing the Guimont compositions.  We have a schola do the proper Gradual, Alleluia or Tract on certain occasions, but the faithful have taken to the easily accessible Chabanel Psalms very well. 
Now that Arlene Oost-Zinner’s Parish Book of Psalms is out, there is yet another wonderful resource of good, accessible music for the Psalms.  For parishes that employ a music sheet and do not want to be tied down to what is in the Vatican II Hymnalin the Lectionary section, this is a great way to have some variety in selections for the Psalms, and the nicely produced book will also be a great boon for any choir loft.
Another CMAA resource that is coming out soon that I am very excited about is the Lumen Christi Missal.  This beautiful tome can have a home in just about any Catholic parish.  For the pastor who wants to be rid once and for all of the disposable missalettes, then this is the best way to replace just that and at the same time have music which can be used to introduce the Propers.  In the hands of a competent liturgist and musician, it can even lead to the singing of Propers and other texts at Daily Mass, which could create an amazing liturgical culture in a parish.  You can use those psalms directly within their lectionary context, psalms which are easily singable and noble compositions.  If you continue to use a music sheet, you don’t clog up the pew racks but still provide a nice book for the readings as well as Mass Ordinaries.  Because it also has a wealth of devotional material, it is also a great spiritual resource for the people in the pew.  If a parish is already at the point of doing the switchover from hymns to propers, or even if it is the early stages of introducing propers, then this is a phenomenal book.
Of course, no review of good CMAA material is complete without a glance at the Parish Book of Chant.  I know several priests, liturgists and musicians who rave about this book.  If Gregorian chant is the music of the Church, parishes need something which provides the repertoire that every Catholic should have in his treasure chest.  This book is excellent for parish and school choirs, obviating the need for photocopies or several books of Gregorian chant.  If a choir does the propers at Mass, then they can have the Graduale Romanum and the Parish Book of Chant.  While it is nice to have the Kyriale, the Offertorium, the Graduale Triplex, the Cantus Selecti, the Processionale Monasticum, and the Liber cantualis all at your fingertips, the reality is that, for most choirs, and certainly for most congregations, that is a lot of books and a lot of money.  The Parish Book of Chant is great for choir and pews, especially if the parish uses a lot of Latin chant.  In many ways, it is the new “useful book,” the Liber usualis of our times.  The fact that is equally valid for the Ordinary and the Extraordinary Forms makes it helpful for those places, which have either or both.
I know that this has been a long commercial for CMAA-related materials.  Here is a summary of my recommendations to pastors and to the musicians who get the job done:
– If you are in a parish that uses lots of Latin chant, at the Ordinary and/or Extraordinary Form, buy the Parish Book of Chant, first for your choirs, then for your school, and then for your pews.
– If you are in a parish that has an English Mass that uses hymns and you want a hymnal that has the benefit of the readings in it, the texts of the propers, good music and traditional texts, buy the Vatican II Hymnal for choir, school and pews.
– If you still use music sheets but can’t fit in either readings, ordinary or texts for the propers, or you want something with those things in it to supplement a hymnal that is not the Vatican II Hymnal, then start the campaign to put the Lumen Christi Missal in the pews.
– if you just want to get rid of disposable missalettes, then buy the Lumen Christi Missal.     
– pastors, buy your choir director a copy of the Simple English Propers and the Parish Book of Psalms and give them the link to the Chabanel Psalms website.  Throw out the dated materials from the music publishers that come out new and not always improved from the usual editing houses, and go for something more permanent.
– pastors, but your choir director and choir copies of the Graduale Romanum and the Parish Book of Chant and send as many as you can to the CMAA Chant Workshops and the annual Colloquium.  Even if you are not able right now to move towards the Paradigm, get into the hands and consciousness of your people that there is more out there!
At my parish, we have both the Ordinary and the Extraordinary Form, so we have a lot of Latin and a lot of English.  I hope to equip music director, choirs and faithful with the best the treasury of sacred music has to offer.  Seven years ago when I was ordained, I despaired for lack of truly usable materials to assist in the propagation of the Extraordinary Form and the Reform of the Reform.  Now, we have almost too many resources at our fingertips.  Hopefully this will help us wade through all of this loveliness and put in the hands of the People of God the tools with which they can praise God in beauty and truth!  
 
  
   

Posted on by Revd Fr Christopher Smith

Some Thoughts on the Transparency of Sign and Symbol

The liturgists have been telling us for years now, “If you have to explain it, it isn’t a symbol.”  The argument runs like this: a symbol should be immediately apparent.  If the reality which it signifies is not immediately accessible to human understanding via the sign or symbol, it obfuscates rather than clarifies the reality to which it points.  When applied to the sacred liturgy, this argument is used to put certain rites, ceremonies and symbols in abeyance.  Better to have a few things understood well rather than many things which just seem odd and out of touch with contemporary sensibilities.
In that vein, there are many things which have virtually disappeared from Catholic life which, up until forty years ago, were stable fixtures in Catholic worship.  Black vestments and catafalques for Requiem Masses, Gregorian water at the consecration of churches, the “baptism and chrismation” of bells, incense, the papal tiara, the vesting of the Bishop for a Pontifical Mass at the throne.  These have all been either expunged from the Ordinary Form or just rarely or not used at all in its celebration at many places. 
But there are things which still hang on.  Ashes on Ash Wednesday are still so popular that people who never come to church any other day come to receive the mark of penance and conversion from sin.  Bishops still carry pastoral staffs called crosiers, even though Annibale Bugnini campaigned hard to get rid of all episcopal insignia.  Cardinals still receive a red hat, if not that big red hat called the galero.  We still have candles in church, and even when they are electrified, they mimic the scatty flame of a real candle.  And we still use water, for baptism, for blessings, and even to wash the priest’s usually clean hands at the Lavabo (although that rite is being replaced by the squirting of Purel into the palms of the presider, which means that we should probably change the name of the rite to a neologism offered by the new Academia Pontificia Latinitatis).
Liturgists assure us that these signs and symbols, the ones they permit to stay in the modern liturgy, are accessible to modern man and can actually be rich vehicles for catechesis.  They are self-explanatory, and hence more powerful.  At the same time, though some signs and symbols have been invested with an almost political significance that would arguably be alien to the interpretation of the same symbol just a few years ago. 
For example, kneeling is one of those symbols.  Historians tell us that kneeling was a symbol of penitence in the ancient Church, and not a symbol of adoration; thus, the proper posture for the Eucharistic Prayer and for Holy Communion is standing.  Somehow it is more proper because it is more ancient.  But the same people who argue for the restoration of this symbol fail to recognize that, for many people, kneeling means humility, submission and adoration, which is why they want to kneel, and why Catholics did kneel for the Canon and Communion for many centuries.  Even though the Magisterium has clarified that no one may denied Communion for kneeling, there are still priests who refuse to give Holy Communion to faithful who kneel.  They are accused of being retrograde, disobedient and attention-seeking.  People who kneel are accused of being “holier than thou”, and people who stand are in turn accused of being “liberal and heretical.”  A posture has had its sign value deconstructed by ideology, and invested with a significance that has more to do with the culture wars within the Church than what it meant in the first place.
But, all of these signs and symbols: are they really as transparent and immediately accessible as the liturgists claim that they have to be, in order to be effective? 
When I go to do an Anointing of the Sick or a Baptism, whenever children are present, I often do a catechesis about the oil itself.  Oil may have had an association with athletes limbering themselves up for sport competition, recalling perseverance in spiritual battle.  But nowadays we use it for cooking, and in motor oil to run our cars.  The direct(ish) correspondence has been lost in modern life.  The symbolism has to be explained according to its historical significance.  And when that symbolism is explained, and the kids get to smell the chrism and see the anointing, it makes a profound impact on how they see the sacrament.  It all of a sudden has more meaning that it did before, had I not explained it.  I could argue that the sign was self-explanatory.  I mean, after all, it is the matter of a sacrament, which effects the grace that it signifies, right?
Sign and symbol, I would like to propose, are part of a language of faith that must be decoded, translated and meditated upon by the announcement of evangelization, mystagogical catechesis and contemplation of the Mystery and mysteries of faith if they are to have an effect beyond the ex opere operato: if they are to continue to nourish the daily life of the believer.  They are in no case immediately accessible, anymore than a newborn babe can immediately understand, process and speak in her native tongue or learn a second one.
I was raised as a fundamentalist Baptist, in a church just about as iconoclastic and removed from sacramental economy as one can get and still be a Christian.  I discovered Catholicism through books, and read a lot about signs and symbols which are part of art and rite.  But none of my extensive reading prepared me for my first time in a Catholic church.
The first time I went into a Catholic Church, after having read about its beliefs and practices, I noticed something for which I had no explanation.  I saw people putting one knee to the ground.  The words of Scripture came to mind, At the Name of Jesus, every knee shall bow, from Philippians 2.10.  I was eager to “when in Rome do as the Romans do,” so I got out of my pew, and touched my knee to the ground before trying to enter it again.  Now, the problem was, that I was facing the door of the church, and not the altar area of the church, and a woman coming in the door next to the pew tripped over me and said, “What the hell are you doing?”  Such was my welcome to the Catholic church.  I was all flustered and embarrassed and said, “I don’t know!”  It took time for me to realize that everyone bent their knee in the same direction.  And it was not until RCIA that someone went through the whole explanation of people kneeling before feudal lords which then crept into the church as people gave the same sign of obeisance to their Heavenly King.  It was only later that I learned the connection between genuflection and the reserved Blessed Sacrament.  And it was in graduate school that I read that the genuflection to the Altar was actually older than the genuflection to the Blessed Sacrament, and that bowing vs. genuflecting before Altar and Sacrament have a very complicated history. 
I had no frame of reference for bowing or genuflecting.  I had once seen a Japanese tea ceremony on a field trip and saw how my friends who did Karate bowed to each other before engaging in their sport, but I could hardly see how that had anything to do with anything in church.  There was nothing natural in learning to bow and genuflect.  It was all explained to me as part of that Catholic language of ritual which organically grew over time and which I learned to love.
There were lots of other things I immediately came to recognize.  The first time I saw the Sprinkling Rite, immediately the words of Scripture (Ezekiel 47.1) came to mind: I saw water flowing from the right side of the temple.  I knew the symbolism immediately: it was a re-enactment of something from the Old Testament in the vision of Ezekiel.  Later, in RCIA, I was told that it was a symbol of Baptism.  “Why did we need a symbol to remind us of Baptism?” I thought to myself.  The priest throwing water from a dogwood branch on Easter Sunday did not remind me of being plunged by a guy in a dark suit and tie into a warm pool of water behind the pulpit of my local Baptist church. 
I mention all of these things because it is important to realize that sign and symbol are not always as transparent as Catholics who have already been instructed in their faith think they are or should be.  I was already a Christian, and had a decent command of the Bible for a 12 year old.  But, as I discovered Catholic worship, I decoded what I was seeing against the backdrop of my knowledge of the Bible, and not what a Catholic family member had taught me to do without explaining to me why we were doing it.  That was the only language I had, and so some things I understood, particularly with reference to the Tabernacle and Temple liturgy.  Then there were other things which were just lost on me, until I bugged someone into giving the answer for why we did the things we did the way we did them.
One of the things I love to do is teach children about the liturgy.  I often start by exploring the Old Testament with them, by teaching them about Tabernacle and Temple, and then reading Hebrews with them, and talking about the synagogue.  As I do so, a lot of my kids make the connections between the Scriptures and the actions they had witnessed and done themselves since their Baptism without knowing the why behind it.  I have to add some post-Scriptural history for them to understand some things, but they develop a frame of reference in which to understand the language of the liturgy in a way which Scripture and Tradition come alive to them.
Whenever I hear of a minimalism with respect to sign and symbol, or an ideological push to recontextualize, deconstruct and ridicule the rich symbolism of the past, I get very sad.  While not all signs and symbols are possessed of the same value, and some are more relevant to faith or useful for instruction than others, I think the time has come to stop dumbing down the liturgy by stripping it of whatever we do not like or do not want to teach about.  It is time to receive the liturgy in all of its richness as a gift, and find appropriate ways for the faithful to add to their already deep language of faith a wider vocabulary and more sophisticated grammar so that the poetry of divine worship can penetrate the daily prosaic.      
    

Posted on by Revd Fr Christopher Smith

San Fermines, Bullfights and Popular Piety


My parish has had Corpus Christi processions almost every year for several years now.  This year, we decided to have it after the Solemn Mass at 10am, in the hopes that more people would come, even though the showing was always respectable when it was held after Vespers.  And, to the credit of my good people, a very large number stayed for the Procession, which I take as a good sign of their spiritual health!  (Of course, we also had the First Communion kids in their dresses and suits and a cookout afterwards!)  We had to move it indoors because of a torrential downpour, but that did not dampen the spirits of the faithful.  Yet, as any good shepherd is always solicitous for those of the fold who wander away, I was not unaware of the much smaller number of disgruntled parishioners who moaned, “Oh my God, Mass is going to be longer and why all this pre-Vatican II crap” as they slithered out of the doors anxious to get to the breakfast buffet to beat the Baptists.
I have to confess that such an attitude I find incomprehensible, if for no other reason than my experience in Spain has been so different.  In South Carolina, there are those who will go to Mass and not go to a Procession, and in Spain, there are those who will go to a Procession but not to Mass.  In South Carolina, pretty much no one but Catholics, and then just the pious ones, are going to be found taking part in a Procession, while in Spain, the most diehard atheist is still going to take part, because, well, it’s a party, isn’t it? 
Pamplona is gearing up for the biggest party in the world, the Sanfermines.  It starts on the evening of 6 July and goes for, well, you guessed it, 8 days.  How Catholic!  The last day of the festival is called the Octave, and the beginning and the end are marked by religious ceremonies.  The festival used to start, at least since the 13th century, with Vespers, until 1946, when someone threw a firecracker off City Hall right before Vespers in the church of San Saturnino across from it.  So, since then, this primitive Lucernarium has announced the start of the festival.  A great example of tradition being able to integrate innovation!  Organic development, anyone?
San Fermín was the son of a Roman senator, a native of Pamplona, who converted with his whole family to Catholicism.  Saint Saturninus baptized them with water from a well, which is now covered with a beautiful medallion that you can still see and venerate in the middle of the street outside the elegant church of San Saturnino.  Fermín went to Toulouse, where he was ordained a priest, and then he was made the first Bishop of Pamplona at the age of 24 and sent off to France, where he was beheaded at Amiens in 303. 
The city had always had a kind of summer fair, but when some important relics came to town in the 14th century, devotion to San Fermín grew to a fever pitch, and with an entire Octave to celebrate him, the people grew the feast that has become one of the most famous Events in the world.  The first bullfight to mark the feast also dates from around the same time. 
What makes San Fermín interesting is the role of tradition in it.  There is a definite way of doing things, an order of events, during the festival, and it has grown and changed over the years, but always substantially remaining the same.  Everyone, and I mean, everyone, wears the iconic uniform of white shirts and white trousers, with the red sash and bandana, red for the blood of San Fermín and white for sanctity.  No one has to be reminded.  In fact, when you go to the department store, El Corte Inglés, it is hard to forget, when every floor for two months before the feast has displays where you can buy t-shirts, trousers, and even white shoes with red stripes.  That, and the big posters reminding you to check the box for the Catholic Church on your tax forms!  (Can you imagine this at Wal-Mart or Macy’s?)   
There are so many events during San Fermín it is hard to describe them all.  One of the most interesting ones is the presence of the gigantes.  There is no way to describe it other than these really, really huge puppets, kind of like those fun Call to Action puppets but made of wood and beautiful and much larger and without the self-hating Catholic edge to them.  They dance around through the streets of Pamplona to the delight of children of all ages, and of course, they get very excited and twirly as they approach the Cathedral, reminding me of David dancing before the Ark. 
Now, of course, this is a music blog, so there has to be some mention of that.  Besides the large volunteer choirs of men and women who sing religious and folkloric music at events in Pamplona all year long, there are smaller and larger bands and ensembles that play music around the city.  While the gigantes dance their way through the city, recorders, flutes and tambourines play music which goes back to the Renaissance.  Megachoirs come out of nowhere and fill the streets and churches and public squares with cascades of sound.  And of course, we all know it’s all about dressing up, so no one is surprised to see ensembles dressed in anything from formal evening wear to costumes that look like they have been rented from a Society for Creative Anachronism conference.  And, what is better, is that there is no schedule like the book that comes out for our Spoleto event in Charleston every year, but the music just happens, and it always comes at the right time!
The famous corrida, or running of the bulls, is of course the most well known part of the festival.  The link between the religious festival and the bullfight goes back seven centuries, and I am sure that the link is little more than, “Let’s do something fun during all this praying stuff!”  Of course, when you’re Spanish, fun has elements of spectacle, daring and just plain crazy.  These are the people who throw tons of tomatoes at each other in Palencia, who create towers of flowers in Zaragoza for Our Lady del Pilar, and let wild bulls run through the streets in the silliest game of hide, seek and gore ever invented. 
Of course, not everyone in modern Spain goes in for all this.  Native Pamplonese often leave the city for the week, because, well, no one can sleep.  It is hard to imagine incredibly conservative, elegant, tiny Pamplona (remember the world epicenter of Opus Dei is here, and the Navarre region of Spain is home to perhaps the highest level of practice of the faith in Western Europe) convulsed with wall to wall people sleeping on the sidewalks and green spaces of the city, in a party that makes Woodstock look like child’s play.  Well, Woodstock without the drug abuse and the music that you have to be high to appreciate.  Many of the post-Vatican II clergy types, the ones who like to give 40 minute homilies on liberation theology and wear grey clerical shirts without the collar, rail against the procession.  I once had a conversation with a priest from another part of Spain, who when I mentioned I was a convert from Protestantism, groaned, “We need a Reformation here in Spain.”  He was convinced that the Spanish really are statue-worshippers, and that the whole of Spain should be evangelized properly after 1800 years of Catholicism.  Of course, somehow I think that his boring sermonizing on liberal politics from the pulpit is less likely to get people to the faith than large puppets dancing through the streets during a procession/parade/unclassifiable action were sacred and profane have mixed for so many centuries no one knows where the one ends and the other begins.

But if the statues and the puppets and the saint veneration were not enough to give a die hard Calvinist a stroke in Pamplona, the alcohol might.  The teetotaler prude that is a genetic inheritance somewhere deep inside me (I have tried very hard to repress him as much as possible) could not help but notice that, no one seemed to find it odd to pause in the middle of a religious event, pop into a bar with a buddy, grab a to-go cup of beer, and bring it in Procession.  No one goes into church with their Mahou, but they do go down the street with it.  And no one seems to mind.  In fact, I can imagine the canons of the cathedral, vested in red copes, lace rochets and concave birettas with the purple pompon, taking a caña offered by a well-meaning pious old lady during hour number six of the first Procession. 
All of this to say that, in Pamplona, I have seen how the sacred elevates and permeates the profane without trying to get rid of it.  I am sure that, through the centuries, there have been very well-meaning clergy and laity who have sought to “purify” the Procession of what they perceived to be its excesses. (I don’t want to paint too devoted a picture.  All of the religious fervor is mixed in with behavior that makes New Orleans Mardi Gras and Rio’s Carnival look tame.  But isn’t that at least more interesting than doing nothing at all?)

I don’t think that, at Prince of Peace, I could ever sell a march downtown with giant puppets, relics, beer and fireworks.  But there is something about a deeply inculturated Catholicism which sees the liturgical cycle as an opportunity for great fun.  I am disconsolate that, as I defend my dissertation next week and leave Europe, I will never get to participate in these festivals again (at least as a resident).  Now is the time to get to the business of making that sense of fun and faith come alive in my part of the vineyard, so our manifestations of faith may be attended by believer and non-believer alike (after they stay for the High Mass, of course)!