The Old Tradition Buffet

 

As a last Advent preparation, I took my family to a Pauline Mass this morning, the Vigil of the Nativity. The parish is my wife’s old parish, near a relative with whom we’re staying. The parking lot was crowded for a daily Mass and there were likely 60 or so folks at this 9 am Mass. 

Highlights:

-New altar, ambo, and tabernacle, now moved behind the altar. Each is inscribed with Latin Scripture verses

-Vested altar boy pulled a string to ring a bell at the opening of Mass

-Attendees recited the propers (including the Introit) out of their Magnificat booklets

-Father (the parochial vicar) left out “Communion of the Holy Spirit” at the opening salutation

-No confiteor

-Predictably, the “Instant Jesus” Eucharistic Prayer II was used (Lord you are holy, the font of all holiness, let your Spirit come upon these gifts…). 

-The altar boy knelt to the left of the altar facing the altar and tabernacle, ringing bells at the consecration and again at the priest’s communion. 

-At which point my focus was ruined by an Extraordinary Minister trooping up to the altar. 

-The priest decided ad libitum to say that as God keeps his promises, so He promises that those who receive His body and blood will receive eternal life. This matches his Balthasarian rhetoric to my wife in Confession three years ago. 

Following Mass, the pastor entered the church and informed the people queueing for confession that there were five priests available. 

This parish stunted my growth in tradition for years. 

I have always felt that their attitude and praxis turn tradition into a buffet, rather than humbly receiving and guarding the richness that has been handed down. It also turns tradition into a trivial matter of taste for anyone who doesn’t share the precise preferences of the parish. 

If women can distribute Communion then the parish’s insistence on all male altar servers isn’t important. If basically no one goes to Hell then why follow the signs in their parking lot and show up to the March for Life? If we can deck out altars with Latin then opt out of the Roman Canon, ever using Latin in the liturgy, or singing chant, then traditional liturgy isn’t important. 

And the people at this parish just seem like uptight folks who need a beer, given the “Revoke Biden’s citizenship” bumper sticker I saw in the parking lot. Doesn’t Biden receive Communion and in doing so receive surety of eternal life?

We don’t like altar boys, but we don’t want to tell adults that it’s not appropriate to use extraordinary ministers at a daily Mass when there are five priests in the building. We want our tabernacle behind the altar but don’t want to deal with complaints and the slow catechesis that come with celebrating Mass ad orientem. We like John Paul II’s moral teaching but we don’t like the discomfort involved with confronting the faithful about the reality of Hell and the fact that people do choose it. We like the aesthetics of Latin inscriptions but don’t want to teach the faithful and clergy how to use the ancient liturgical language regularly. 

Catholics who accept Church moral teaching complain of cafeteria catholics, but why is that a surprising stance when the source and summit of our faith has become a buffet? For many, even those strong in faith, the Mass is the priest offering a communal meal to the people using one of many prayer combinations chosen to make the people feel comfortable. 

We returned to find my relative amping the church buffet up to 11. She had her Episcopal church’s service on her phone in the background while wrapping gifts, and I heard Joy to the World resounding at 10 AM on the Vigil of the Nativity. 

There is something humbling and spiritually edifying in placing oneself under a tradition that is not custom built. Tradition stands on its own merits and invites us to let go of the limits of our own opinions, culture, and time. 

And so I look forward to midnight, where I will hear my pastor chant the opening sequence of the Roman Martyrology for Christmas Day, singing the specific amount of years after creation, after the Deluge, after King David, and after the founding of Rome that Christ was born. Grating to my modern ears, but balm to the soul. 

—-

O God, thou Who gladden us year after year with the expectation of our redemption, grant that we, who now welcome with joy thy only-begotten Son as our Redeemer, may also gaze upon Him without fear when He comes as our judge, our Lord Jesus Christ

O Radix Belli

 

This is not the first time Rome has suppressed ancient liturgy. I’ll dive into that later to get to the roots of the current liturgy war. 

But first, in the face of hit pieces on traditionalists while they’re down, such as this, this, this, and the one alluded to here; we must first say a few things. 

1. In response to the “it’s not about the liturgy” pieces, just putting this out there, maybe a sharp disagreement over access to liturgy is mainly about the liturgy. The public prayer of the Church. The setting in which we receive the Eucharist, the “source and summit of our faith” (Lumen Gentium, Second Vatican Council). About which the Council also said: “Something more is required than the mere observation of the laws governing valid and licit celebration” (Sacrosanctum Concilium 11). About which Saint Teresa of Avila said she would die to preserve the smallest ceremonies of the Church. The liturgy that guided the formation of all recent saints and the current Pontiff. 

Understood correctly, it is the liturgy that is the foundation and shapes everything else, not the other way round. 

2. The behavior of traditionalists is not relevant to the conversation surrounding restrictions to traditional liturgy. 

That conversation must focus on the legitimacy and merit of the restrictions in themselves. Per Aquinas, law is an ordinance of reason, that is just, that is issued by legitimate authority, and appropriately promulgated. Can we say that Traditionis Custodes and the responsa meet these conditions? That is what matters. 

There is no text in Ecclesia Dei, nor in Summorum Pontificum, that renders access to traditional Roman liturgy subject to universal good behavior. Summorum Pontificum states that the 1962 Missal was never abrogated and was (and is) always permitted, a claim which the latest motu proprio and responsa do not refute. 

I would be outraged were the Ukrainian Catholic liturgy down the street suppressed if some loudmouths at the parish began promoting ethnocentic, anti Russian, and antisemitic views. 

Bad behavior and extremist beliefs of individual traditionalists are a pastoral matter to be dealt with by parish priests, pastors, and local bishops. There is no article of canon law or historical precedent for canceling a whole liturgical rite because the parishioner down the pew can’t understand nuance or keep off of social media. 

Moreover, it is bad manners to take private conversations with traditionalists regarding their knowledge of Latin, views on women’s suffrage, or whatever else and use them in public attacks. 

3. The stated concern surrounds traditionalists’ disrespect for ecumenical councils, the authority of the Pope and bishops, and upholding legitimate modern political norms. 

Do you think cutting them off from access to traditional liturgy celebrated by ministers with full canonical status will improve or worsen those issues?

4. Online hit pieces on traditionalists commit the same error they censure among traditionalists: blasting blanket venomous, ill-informed comments about a large group of people in an improper forum. 

I am an American Catholic traditionalist and have never posted anything negative about the Pope on social media, disputed the validity and legitimacy of the 1970 Missal, rejected the legitimacy of the Second Vatican Council, voted for Donald Trump, read a book authored by Taylor Marshall, idolized the 1950s, or venerated Monsignor Marcel Lefebvre. 

And I’m rather tired of mainstream figures playing pop psychology, diagnosing me with the above pathologies, and celebrating my cure. 

Why the compulsive need to pile on about “rad trads” given the dozens of more urgent issues in today’s church? I would urge such writers to read Father Cipolla’s letter to Bishop Barron. 

This is doubly true for ex-traditionalists who a priori declare any restrictions legitimate because “they know what it’s like out there.” That you felt uncomfortable with some aspects of the surrounding culture in your particular parish and no longer feel a strong attachment to traditional liturgy is a personal matter. It does not legitimize a wholesale restriction. 

5. You cannot write a public piece or make a public comment supporting Traditionis Custodes and the responsa without honestly addressing the sloppy writing, outright mistakes, and lack of pastoral charity chronicled here, here, here, and here. 

Issuing the responsa the week before Christmas with no vacatio legis? On a Saturday, forcing all priests celebrating traditional liturgy to come up with a speech to talk an angry mob off a ledge in less than 24 hours? 

6. When arguing against amateur theologian traditionalists who argue for jettisoning everything in the Church after 1965, it undermines your argument when you immediately declare that the Church needs to jettison everything from Constantine in 315 to just before Vatican II in 1962. If trads can’t play amateur theologian and dismiss the last 60 years, you certainly can’t play amateur theologian and dismiss 1,650 years. 

How about we stop blanket condemning the Church of any era? 

—

It is unseemly how quickly mainstream voices veer from the real topic of liturgy to “it must be about politics and signaling.” I wonder if this is because these people think primarily in terms of politics and positioning that they cannot understand a genuine interest in traditional liturgy for its own sake. 

But there is a larger picture here, that both traditionalists and their detractors should recognize. 

Traditional liturgy has been suppressed before. What lessons can we learn?

When the Normans took over Byzantine areas of southern Italy and Sicily, they suppressed the Byzantine Greek liturgy. Famous Greek Patriarch Michael Cerularius responded by suppressing the Latin rite in and around Constantinople. Liturgical standardizers also tried suppressing the Ambrosian and Mozarabic rites in the West, and elements of the Ethiopian Orthodox liturgy also came under fire from time to time. Then there are the forced changes of the “Sacristan Emperor” Joseph II in his attempts to modernize the Church in Austria in the 1780s. 

It was wrong then, and it is wrong now. 

The “it’s not about the liturgy” crowd of today has it backwards. Then and now, the suppressers of liturgy are the politicians. 

Suppression of traditional liturgy has no theological or canonical merits. It is a sign of an egotistic and politically motivated establishment overreaching its bounds and imposing its non-theological vision on the faithful. Two days ago it was western monarchical absolutism, yesterday it was western imperialism, now it’s western socialism and relativism. They are all branches from the same tree: a society that as a unit has lost its faith, and which confide in principibus, in filiis hominum in quibus non est salus. 

You can tell. The hierarchical knives really come out when priests (yes sometimes overstepping and intemperate) come out swinging and condemn voting for the democratic party under pain of damnation. A cratering of belief in the real presence, ongoing influence by clerics close to those who must have known about sexual and financial abuse, and public advocacy for taxpayer funded abortion are acceptable. They must be, because they have drawn forth no action from the hierarchy anywhere approaching Traditionis Custodes and the responsa. But a growing traditionalist movement willing to viscerally attack the democratic party in Biblical language must be stopped with removal of pastors and minute papal restrictions. 

The root of the problem is an egotistical hierarchy, enabled by a profound lack of subsidiarity, competing blocks of power within the Church, and lack of knowledge and zeal among the faithful. 

Reading Isaiah this Advent, it is profound how accurately he diagnoses our present crisis. “From the sole of the foot even to the head there is no soundness in it.” “My people perish for lack of knowledge.” 

The political crises of the last five centuries have eliminated the traditional upholders of the faith: Catholic emperors and monarchs, strong Catholic orders with powerful abbots, Catholic aristocratic families, and Catholic guilds. 

The technological revolution and resulting material wealth has shifted the trust and attention of the people from God, the Church, and the faith to machines, retirement plans, passive entertainment, and political organizing. 

The destruction of the family has salted the once fertile soil from which faithful priests, religious, and other leaders were drawn. 

Bit by bit, subsidiarity broke down. The faith ceased to be handed down proactively by families in the home, in the liturgy, and in the community. It became dictated by papal documents or centrally prepared education programs. Bishops ceased to exercise full care and discipline over their flocks and outsourced much of their work to Rome, then hid behind the anonymity of national bishop’s conferences and regional synods. 

With no check to their power, over the last century or so the Roman Curia became a self perpetuating den of thieves. The early 1900s Curia trained a series of future popes primed to push their intended reforms by hook or by crook. Later, they took much of the logistically and politically challenging work of Church government off the Pope’s hands to enable him to become a public media personality. They then ensured that power continued to be ever more centralized, usually appointing bishops either like themselves or those unlikely to rock the boat. The vicious cycle continued at the diocesan level, with bishops either enthusiastically enforcing the Curia’s latest wish list or at least failing to blunt its excesses. 

Orthodox and traditionally minded men were harassed out of seminary, creating a typical Church experience of few priests who mainly give generic hallmark-style homilies rather than teaching the apostolic faith. 

What frightens the current hierarchy most is the growth of a genuine center of Catholic power opposed to their worldview and reforms. This is why a papacy mired in sexual and financial scandal is spending its time restricting religious life and strangling the growth of traditional liturgy among seminarians. It is also why Vatican Foreign Policy discouraged the growth of traditionally Catholic political movements like Action Française, the Cristeros in Mexico, and was so antagonistic to Salvini in Italy. 

Even the appearance of association with a traditional Catholic political movement must be avoided. Shades of this are also seen in Cardinal Gregory’s denunciation of Trump’s planned appearance at the National Shrine as “reprehensible” while advocating for understanding and dialog with Biden. 

In the Sherlock Holmes story The Valley of Fear, the detective Birdie Edwards infiltrates a gang of criminals who had violently taken over a series of mining towns, dramatically declaring “It took a man to get between you and the poor devils of men and women that you held under your grip” as he hands them over to the police. 

And so it will. At some point a man is going to have to be willing to make legitimate compromises and avoid the luxury of purism taken by the SSPX and those who would leave seminary in reaction to Traditionis Custodes. He will have to build the necessary speaking, scholarly, and political skills to inspire with his homilies and advance within the institutional Church. 

And unlike recent popes who have diagnosed the problems but been too faint of heart to pursue the solution, he must put his shoulder to the plow. He must speak seldom like Saint Joseph, eschew the usual appearances, unnecessary writings, media appearances, political entanglements, and his own preferred projects. He must do the work of clearing out the rat’s nest of the Roman Curia and the episcopacy. He must make Rome again the center of the Church’s liturgical life, daily offering praise to God with the fullness of the Church’s tradition and beauty. 

From where will this man come? More than likely a family who has rejected trust in modern politics, finance, and passive entertainment to grow in knowledge of God and boldly share the apostolic faith. 

“Now when these things begin to take place, look up and raise your heads, because your redemption is drawing near.” (Luke 21:28)

—-

Appendix:

Ecclesia Dei:

“Respect must everywhere be shown for the feelings of all those who are attached to the Latin liturgical tradition, by a wide and generous application of the directives already issued some time ago by bthe Apostolic See for the use of the Roman Missal according to the typical edition of 1962.”

Summorum Pontificum accompanying letter:

As for the use of the 1962 Missal as a Forma extraordinaria of the liturgy of the Mass, I would like to draw attention to the fact that this Missal was never juridically abrogated and, consequently, in principle, was always permitted. Many people who clearly accepted the binding character of the Second Vatican Council, and were faithful to the Pope and the Bishops, nonetheless also desired to recover the form of the sacred liturgy that was dear to them. This occurred above all because in many places celebrations were not faithful to the prescriptions of the new Missal, but the latter actually was understood as authorizing or even requiring creativity, which frequently led to deformations of the liturgy which were hard to bear. I am speaking from experience, since I too lived through that period with all its hopes and its confusion. And I have seen how arbitrary deformations of the liturgy caused deep pain to individuals totally rooted in the faith of the Church…

The present Norms are also meant to free Bishops from constantly having to evaluate anew how they are to respond to various situations.

It is true that there have been exaggerations and at times social aspects unduly linked to the attitude of the faithful attached to the ancient Latin liturgical tradition. Your charity and pastoral prudence will be an incentive and guide for improving these.

I now come to the positive reason which motivated my decision to issue this Motu Proprio updating that of 1988. It is a matter of coming to an interior reconciliation in the heart of the Church. Looking back over the past, to the divisions which in the course of the centuries have rent the Body of Christ, one continually has the impression that, at critical moments when divisions were coming about, not enough was done by the Church’s leaders to maintain or regain reconciliation and unity. One has the impression that omissions on the part of the Church have had their share of blame for the fact that these divisions were able to harden. This glance at the past imposes an obligation on us today: to make every effort to enable for all those who truly desire unity to remain in that unity or to attain it anew. I think of a sentence in the Second Letter to the Corinthians, where Paul writes: “Our mouth is open to you, Corinthians; our heart is wide. You are not restricted by us, but you are restricted in your own affections. In return … widen your hearts also!” (2 Cor 6:11-13). Paul was certainly speaking in another context, but his exhortation can and must touch us too, precisely on this subject. Let us generously open our hearts and make room for everything that the faith itself allows.

There is no contradiction between the two editions of the Roman Missal. In the history of the liturgy there is growth and progress, but no rupture. What earlier generations held as sacred, remains sacred and great for us too, and it cannot be all of a sudden entirely forbidden or even considered harmful. It behooves all of us to preserve the riches which have developed in the Church’s faith and prayer, and to give them their proper place. 

Supreme Illegitimacy

 

Much is made of Chief Justice John Roberts’ efforts to defend the institutional integrity of the Supreme Court. All that the Chief Justice is defending is a broken norm of elite appeasement that has killed, polarized, and indebted the American people. The history of the Supreme Court for the last 80 years is one in which liberal judges make indefensible rulings and then hold conservatives hostage to those precedents under pain of violating their oath to uphold the Constitution. And Roberts has made clear his intention to ensure that this system continues unchallenged. 

The Supreme Court lost its legitimacy as an impartial upholder of well defined constitutional principles in 1942. That year, the Court decided unanimously in Wickard v. Filburn that the federal government could fine Ohio farmer Roscoe Filburn for growing wheat on his own farm to feed his own animals. Roscoe had grown more than was permitted for his acreage and that could depress interstate wheat prices.

Article 1, Section 8, Clause 3 of the US constitution gives Congress the power “to regulate commerce… among the several states.” But the Court essentially said that the Commerce Clause doesn’t matter and that the feds can do what they want as long as they keep getting elected. The sitting President at the time was halfway through his third term, the Senate was 70% democratic and the House 60% democratic.

This is clearly unreasonable. But it is the status quo, with “conservative” justices Kennedy and Scalia happily using it to allow the feds to regulate homegrown marijuana in 2005, and the liberal justices and Roberts using it to uphold the Affordable Care Act in 2012. 

In case anyone missed the point, the Court followed up that gem with the 1944 decision Korematsu v. United States in which they decided, 6-3, that American citizens who had never been to Japan and shown no sign of disloyalty could be forced out of their homes into internment camps. 

Amidst recent handwringing about newer justices’ qualifications, no one remembers that Earl Warren had never been a judge at all before being nominated for Chief Justice while serving as the Governor of California. Warren is one of the most underrated men in American history and went on to serve as Chief Justice (while really remaining a politician) from 1953 to 1969. 

Following Brown v. Board, he led the Court in handing down Cooper v. Aaron in 1958, which struck down Arkansas’ attempts to delay desegregation. Desegregation was necessary but the means chosen were to declare that any state legislator, judge, or executive who refused to uphold each and every Supreme Court ruling had violated their oath to uphold the Constitution. 

In 1962 came Engel v. Vitale in which the Court invented the idea that “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion or prohibiting the free establishment thereof” banned voluntary, nondenominational prayer in public schools, a constant in American life until that time. As is common, the Court proceedings lied in identifying plaintiff Lawrence Roth as an atheist. 

The year after Engel, the Court decided that “penumbras, formed by emanations” of the Constitution banned states from prohibiting birth control for married couples. In 1972 Eisenstadt v. Baird expanded this to the unwed, saying: “If the right of privacy means anything, it is the right of the individual, married or single, to be free from unwarranted governmental intrusion into matters so fundamentally affecting a person as the decision whether to bear or beget a child.”

What about matters so fundamentally affecting a person as growing food on their own farm? What makes sex more fundamental and sacred to the Supreme Court than food?

I shouldn’t have to tell you what happened in 1973.

In 1977, Carey v. Population Services International struck down a New York law banning distributing contraceptives to those under 16. This was 10 years before the Court decided that the feds could coerce states into enforcing a drinking age of 21. 

Again, why can a state prohibit a 20 year old from drinking a beer but not a 15 year old from receiving contraceptives? 

One lesser known decision more “conservative” than “liberal” came in 1978, when the Court in Marquette National Bank of Minneapolis v. First of Omaha Service Corp unanimously neutered state usury laws by allowing any bank that was national in reach to ignore state interest rate limits, as long as their HQ was in a state without limits. This is the reason that many Americans today are trapped in a cycle of materialism and credit card debt. It is also a reason for the enormous power of big banks who swelled their financial statements on interest rate charges and related financial shenanigans. 

What we have here is a Supreme Court that within just over 35 years granted the federal government unlimited authority over the economy, declared itself to be the American Constitution, enforced atheism in public schools, and blocked all states from enforcing most restrictions on contraception, abortion, and usury. 

That was the ballgame. Beyond Korematsu (which if we’re being honest could easily recur in a future war) not a single one of those precedents has been seriously threatened. Nor has the general trend of appeasing federal economic micromanagement and banning social conservatism been reversed. 

Ever since, Republicans have handcuffed traditionalists and social conservatives into voting for them while entrenching the established liberal order through cowardice and opportunism. 

In case you were wondering, a 1985 case called Wallace v. Jaffree banned a school from informing students that prayer was allowed during a period of “meditation.” And in Santa Fe Independent School District v. Doe in 2000, the Court banned students from voting in favor of leading a prayer at the beginning of a school football game. And yes, two appointees from Prince Reagan voted in favor of that last one. 

This is a broken system that makes 5 Supreme Court judges, usually from the same handful of law schools, able to dictate economic orders and novel social norms to every community in the country with no possibility of conscientious objection or later appeal. 

It’s not the Chief Justice’s job to ensure broad popularity for the Supreme Court in an era so accustomed to leftism that any disagreement is flagged as bigotry. It’s his job to uphold his oath, which strangely survived Engel. We may pray that the Chief Justice one day realizes that the opinions of those with ivy league law school degrees and popular media careers is less important than obeying sound reason and being truthful in his promises to almighty God, whatever the costs. 

“I do solemnly swear (or affirm) that I will support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic; that I will bear true faith and allegiance to the same; that I take this obligation freely, without any mental reservation or purpose of evasion; and that I will well and faithfully discharge the duties of the office on which I am about to enter. So help me God.”

An Irrational Climate

 “I’d like to talk to you about climate change sometime. I’m not sure we agree,” said a friend at this morning’s Bible study. 

Indeed, we probably don’t, I say as I just returned from a walk without a coat in northern Delaware the day before the start of the Great Antiphons. 

Pope Francis impeccably diagnosed the true cause of climate change, which is human sin and alienation from God, leading to idolization of earthly comfort and the exclusion of care for fellow man and for God’s creation. This is common sense, as is the solution: repentance from mindless consumption and a willingness to sacrifice comfort and sloth in favor of a more ascetic and dare I say traditional way of living. 

It doesn’t matter if Al Gore is lying, the hype behind recent wildfires and hurricanes is exaggerated, and climate models are fudged. 

What about fossil fueled suburban mediocrity is worth fighting for? 

If climate change is not real, it doesn’t matter. I still want to live in a walkable neighborhood where I don’t need to sit in an uncomfortable metal death trap and strap my kids into harnesses to access basic amenities or see my friends and family. When I do drive, I’d rather not release enough Carbon Monoxide to kill someone. I’d like to power basic amenities without releasing at least five well known toxins. I’d prefer to get most of my food from local farms rather than factories halfway across the country (or the world). We should all want decentralized energy sources so we don’t have to depend on utilities run by teamsters or suppliers like Enron. And what is so objectionable about, say, cutting payroll taxes (which are unavoidable) and shifting those taxes to carbon emissions (which are far more avoidable)? Or cutting the massive government subsidies handed out to oil and coal companies? 

What about the current energy infrastructure is in harmony with tradition? Which looks healthier and more traditional? When are we going to understand that the modern idolization of technology is precisely what destroyed traditional culture and ways of life? 

A German parish near me asserts that it was given a death blow when I-95 destroyed a chunk of its neighborhood and sliced the rest in half. This had to be extremely common and responsible for a huge share of the decay of the once proud jewels of urban church architecture and art. It did not help that this came right around the time of the liturgical reform. The ancient Israelites organized their tents around the tabernacle. We organize our tents around highways, garages, and parking lots. 

King Edward I banned the burning of coal in England, and for good reason, given that more people die from air pollution than from the covid bugaboo. Pope Gregory XVI banned trains in the Papal States, and the experience of ruined families, dispossessed natives, and runaway government expansion following the US railroads would seem to back him up. 

I know the typical arguments contra, from the deranged to the most compelling. They are not good arguments. Al Gore, Greta Thunberg, and climate scientists may lie. Melting ice caps do not. And it’s adorable when American conservatives pretend to care about poor Americans’ energy bills, miners’ livelihoods, and economic development in poor countries as an excuse to block action on climate change.

At a certain point, it’s time to move past the personal dislike for folks visibly identified with action on climate change and be cunning as serpents. Take the proffered opportunity to strike a blow at secular industrialism. Build up local agriculture and businesses especially those of the faith, find a walkable neighborhood with a strong parish if you can, get your energy from someone other than the state or a multinational corporation, and encourage your environmentalist friends to read the Pope’s encyclical. Maybe a short version that skips the awkward forays into climate science and rants about air conditioning. If you like that, you may also like other greatest hits such as Rerum Novarum, Humanae Vitae, and Quanta Cura. 

I can’t drive (pre)55

 

This morning I attended a beautiful Rorate Mass: a votive Mass in honor of Our Lady, lit only by candlelight, beginning before dawn. It also happens to be the feast day of Pope Saint Damasus I (in the old and new calendars!). Now I get this was a Mass in honor of the Blessed Mother, but there was no collect or even mention of the good Pope. 

Why care? Well it turns out he proclaimed a canon of the New Testament, commissioned Saint Jerome to begin work on the Vulgate Bible, fought heavily against multiple heresies, especially the often triumphant Arianism, pushed the Roman Emperor to remove the altar of victory from the Senate, and dealt with clerics being corrupted by the Church’s sudden increase in wealth and political standing. 

Hearing about this saint seems rather important if one wants to share the beauty of how the Church gave us the Scriptures with Protestant brethren and how to deal charitably but firmly with politicians and clerics tending toward heresy and corrupted by worldly concerns. 

So why no mention of Saint Damasus today? I suspect it’s because of the limits placed on Collects in a Mass in 1955 and 1960. There were already two during our Mass: one for Our Lady and one for the Advent feria. 

Before 1955, the limit to Collects in a Low Mass could be five or seven. By the 60s that was heavily reduced, and in the Novus Ordo it’s just one. This explains why none of these saints whose feast days (old calendar) fell on Sundays in the last year were commemorated: Saint John the Evangelist, Saint Mark, Saint James the Greater, Saint Anthony of Padua, the Passion of Saint John the Baptist, Saint Margaret Mary Alacoque, Saint Therese of Lisieux. 

These changes to the Collects coincided with chucking most of the Octaves in the liturgical calendar (such as Corpus Christi, Sacred Heart, Assumption, Holy Innocents). And trimming the number of Old Testament readings in Easter Vigil by about half. As well as losing Last Gospels, for example when a major feast (like the Assumption this year) overrides a Sunday, the Assumption Gospel is proclaimed, and the Last Gospel is the Gospel for the Sunday. The Communion Confiteor was also dropped, removing the communal confession of sins directly before receiving the Eucharist. And all of these changes were before the Second Vatican Council. 

What’s the big deal?

First, I would flip the question. The changes are imposing mandatory limits to Collects per Mass, mandatory eliminations of centuries-old octaves and, for six decades, mandatory reductions in Scripture readings during Easter Vigil. Why is it necessary to mandate these things? Surely a pastoral approach at most allows rather than demands lightening of Collects, Octaves, and Vigil readings.

The bottom line is that Mass is the main setting where the faithful interact with the Church. Everything that happens or doesn’t happen at Mass matters. If prayers invoking the saints are removed, if Scripture readings are cut, if feasts are cut or removed, if a confessional rite is removed, it matters. It tells the faithful that those things are less important than making the liturgy go faster and reducing the need to contemplate what is proclaimed at Mass. 

It is sobering to realize that there is no parish where Mass is said according to the centuries-old traditional rites of my British and German ancestors. The few traditional Masses available are by-the-book 1962 Missal Masses, a Missal which leaves behind all the richness I just mentioned and more besides. 

I pray that as time and divine providence give us greater clarity, we move away from rigid legalism and toward the Church’s traditional understanding of handing down a received liturgy that grows organically through the centuries under the guidance of the Holy Spirit. 

—-

Then turning toward the woman he said to Simon, "Do you see this woman? I entered your house, you gave me no water for my feet, but she has wet my feet with her tears and wiped them with her hair. You gave me no kiss, but from the time I came in she has not ceased to kiss my feet. You did not anoint my head with oil, but she has anointed my feet with ointment. Therefore I tell you, her sins, which are many, are forgiven, for she loved much; but he who is forgiven little, loves little." And he said to her, "Your sins are forgiven." 

Ex Ore Infantium

 

This bulletin announcement greeted me when I looked to find traditional Mass times at a nearby parish for Immaculate Conception and the Circumcision of the Lord. 

Where to start?

Scriptural

This is an inflammatory misuse of Scripture. 

Our Lord spoke these words in reference to swindlers using the court of the gentiles of the Jerusalem temple to cheat the people on currency exchanges, not parents bringing young children to liturgy. Our Lord spoke these words just after cleansing the temple. It is dreadful to conflate removing children from the nave to cleansing the temple in a church often bereft of children and a society fond of abortion and contraception. 

I know we’re Catholic, but are we supposed to pretend we don’t know the far more relevant passages from the Synoptics with the opposite message? I’m sure the children being shooed away from Christ by the disciples were “noisy and misbehaving”. Children are almost never quiet or perfectly behaved, why else would the disciples turn them away? Nevertheless, Christ demands that they be brought to him without preconditions, for to them belongs the kingdom of God and he who receives a child in Christ’s name receives Christ. Christ’s words apply broadly, not just to the narrow question of contraception. 

Logistical/Prudential

Define noisy children. If my six-month old is learning to babble, does that cross the line? What about my five year old asking me about the different parts of the Mass and following along in his missal? The proper word here is “disruptive.” No parent should be told to leave the room during liturgy because of a curious or excited child. 

Pastoral

Do you want Catholics to follow the Church’s teaching on openness to life and to catechize their children by bringing them to liturgy, or not? It is unbearable that we still have this attitude among orthodox elements of the modern church. 

The challenges parents now face with childrearing are unnatural and at times unlivable. Parents of the past generally benefitted from parents or other family living close by, stronger neighborhoods that watched out for children, morally and intellectually healthier schools, children who spent most leisure time playing outside, reasonable limits on technology, and more affordable housing and healthcare costs. 

Most Catholic parents I know have few to none of these advantages. Now, many such parents can expect to have their children on top of them 24/7 under threat of a CPS call, with alternatives being hiring a nanny, daycare, cringeworthy schools, or relocation to an area tolerant of free ranging children. I know many families who have gone with this latter option. 

Visits from family often trigger friction because most family members do not come from large, orthodox Catholic families and find the life of a large household, complete with family rosary, to be weird, overwhelming, and frustrating. 

In this environment, I have seen exactly one parish put together a parents’ night of any kind, with childcare. I have seen no parish mom’s groups. Our previous parish, the one with the all are welcome sign in front, refused to help us set up a mom’s group then refused to baptize our third child until we provided a state issued birth certificate. 

At my college town’s local Oratory (which hosted all manner of talks on the importance of following Church teaching on sexuality), a friend felt excluded from the congregation when he and his wife started having kids as they were pressured to hear Mass from a conference room outside the chapel. Within a few years they had left the Church for Eastern Orthodoxy and now appear to be secular liberals. 

I have heard exactly one priest, my current pastor, state that liturgy is open to all baptized Catholics and that children have as much right to be there as anyone else. 

If older Catholics find it difficult to maintain a focused and prayerful attitude in an environment with lots of children, it’s worth pondering why that is. There were no “cry rooms” in the 50s when 75% of Catholics, kids and all, piled into church every Sunday and yet somehow we made it work. Most parents are hypersensitive already and will remove truly disruptive children without secret police disguised as ushers kicking them out. 

“They bind heavy burdens, hard to bear, and lay them on men’s shoulders; but they themselves will not move them with their finger.” 

That’s sadducaic!

 

I’m confident you have never heard the word “sadducaic”, but I wish you heard it often. It is fashionable for modern Catholics to rail against pharisaism. By pharisaism, they mean doctrinaire, spiritual arrogance that is hypocritical and drives people away from the faith. 

This line of thinking is trendy because it is deeply unpopular to be a Pharisee. But it is very popular to be a Sadducee. 

Quickly: the Sadducees were the rich, “chief priest” class in Judea at the time of Christ. The name comes from the high priest Zadok (Sadoc) from the time of Kings David and Solomon. They lurk throughout the NT but show up clearly a few times: in the crowds coming to Saint John the Baptist, asking Christ a mocking question about the resurrection of a woman and her seven deceased husbands during Holy Week, arresting Saints Peter and John in Acts 4, and at Saint Paul’s trial in Acts 23. 

The Sadducees:

-Occupied the high priestly positions and temple worship. 

-Colluded with the Roman authorities for money and power. The high priests were appointed by the Romans. 

-Rejected widely accepted Jewish doctrine, including the immorality of the soul, the afterlife, the resurrection, the existence of angels and spirits, and (to a degree) Scripture outside of the Pentateuch (Gen, Ex, Lev, Num, Deut).

-Opposed oral traditions outside of that narrow canon of Scripture

So the Sadducees were a clique of high ranking priests and rich politicos who did the bidding of the secular authorities and rejected both sound doctrine and tradition behind a facade of religious authority. 

If that sounds awfully familiar, you can understand why you’re unlikely to hear a clear description of who the Sadducees were and a thorough denunciation of Judean and modern sadducaic behavior in a Sunday homily or interview with a high ranking cleric. 

The Sadducees were mortal enemies of the Pharisees, and it’s always easy to denounce people in the opposing camp. 

However, Christ urged the disciples to beware of the leaven of the Pharisees and the Sadducees. It’s not enough for us to reject the separatist, legalist, and arrogant tendencies of the Pharisees. We must also oppose the theological ignorance, unbelief, and careerism of the Sadducees. Our Lord answered the insolent question about the resurrection by proving wrong every assumption the Sadducees had using their own source material (Exodus). 

“Is this not why you are wrong, that you know neither the Scriptures, nor the power of God?” This, just after he had decked the Sadducees’ power base by cleansing the temple, and just before he proclaimed “Your house is forsaken” and prophesied the temple’s final destruction. 

What devastating words to hear out of the mouth of God himself. Privilege built on betrayal and apostasy does not last. 

So if you find yourself in a conversation where someone scorns true doctrine, lazily bows to the secular establishment, or compromises their beliefs to get ahead; don’t be afraid to point out: Jesus said don’t be sadducaic.