Dr. K’s Weekly Roundup, January 17 Edition

Bishops struggle to uphold the 1970s; "Hope"?; mitre kicks; turning tides; good news; liturgical lessons; and more

Let’s dive right in!

In my latest at OnePeterFive, I dare to ask, with trepidation, trust in God, and the tenets of Thomism, “Can the ‘Theology of the Body’ Be Reconciled with the Traditional ‘Ends of Marriage’?” — and answer in the affirmative.

News Analysis

Unintended consequences

Cardinal Cupich has, perhaps unintentionally, opened a giant can of worms with his comments on receiving Communion standing in a line vs. kneeling at an altar rail. Turns out, as Nico Fassino carefully reports at The Pillar, the standing posture for Communion has always generated discontent and dismay among the faithful; resistance to it has never ceased, nor has the desire of Catholics to kneel before their Lord as they receive Him. This decades-long resistance led to a gradual softening in the official policy (really, a relativism: do whatever you want…), which under Benedict XVI was looking like the germ of a reversal. Fassino’s backstory makes the recent statements of Cupich and others look even more tone-deaf.

Kevin Tierney astutely writes, in a piece called “Bishops Swimming Against the Tide”:

In Chicago, Cardinal Blase Cupich wrote a pastoral letter discouraging kneeling, attacking the reason Catholics kneel for communion as a sign of deficient theology. In the diocese of Wheeling Charleston (the one diocese for West Virginia), Bishop Brennan attacked the reasons the majority of Catholics in the country kneel after the Lamb of God as inconsistent with the liturgical reforms of Vatican II, demanded obedience, and then told those who questioned his decision to stop caring, as there were far more important things to care about. (Which raises the question why he himself so clearly cares if nobody should care.) Finally, in the Archdiocese of New York, Cardinal Dolan (through his diocesan infrastructure) sent out a mailing to priests warning them not to reintroduce altar rails in liturgical renovations, as their restoration would call into question the liturgical reforms of the Council, and norms within the United States. By their own admission, the requests for altar rails are “gathering steam.” What are we to make of these increasingly hostile bishops adopting increasingly hostile rhetoric towards their flocks and pastors? I think the first thing to note is that these actions come not from strength, but weakness.

I especially appreciated the humor of Kevin’s remark on his Facebook page:

Today I take a moment to pay homage and celebrate three bishops in particular who are doing the good work of fighting their priests and flock in an uphill battle to preserve the spirit of 1970 in the Catholic Church. I salute thee, O Bishops!

(Though “salute you” would be more proper.)

J.D. Flynn, for his part, writes at The Pillar about the way in which Traditionis Custodes has created an environment hostile even to the “reverent Novus Ordo.” Indeed, TC has harmed everyone, and has brought out the worst in some bishops. But this isn’t exactly “new news”; I published a piece at Crisis Magazine back in August 2021 called “Why Restricting the TLM Harms Every Parish Mass,” which makes the same argument, in more detail.

With marvelous sarcasm, Robert Keim writes, concerning the great medieval abbot Suger of Saint-Denis:

[Suger] shows himself woefully ignorant of the immense dignity of man, who ought not kneel or otherwise abase himself — frankly, ought not inconvenience himself in any way — when approaching the sacramental Flesh, and with it the true and infinitely sacred presence, of his divine Savior: “Surely neither we nor our possessions suffice for this service. If, by a new creation, our substance were re-formed from that of the holy Cherubim and Seraphim, it would still offer an insufficient and unworthy service for so great and so ineffable a victim.”

I’m with Abbot Suger on this one. (By the way, in a paper written for an art history course I taught at Wyoming Catholic College, a student kept referring to “Abbey Sugar.” I suspect it was an autocorrect accident during spellcheck, but ever since, it’s been a household joke of ours.)

Stuart Chessman likewise correctly points out:

If I were in a Novus Ordo parish yet desperately seeking to preserve traditional practices of piety, I would be worried. For it seems that some hierarchs would welcome revisiting and overturning the compromise regarding the posture when receiving communion established in 2004. Cardinal Cupich, after all, has also effectively banned celebrations ad orientem in the Novus Ordo, which seems to contradict the liturgical books (if not the [prevailing] liturgical practice). And this time there would be no resistance from the Vatican, for Cardinal Cupich enjoys the best of relations with the bishop of Rome. The war of Pope Francis and the progressive establishment against Catholic Tradition is by no means limited to the Traditional Mass!... The endless ideological conflict that defines the post-Conciliar church continues. Catholic Traditionalists, however, long ago concluded there is a better way.

Yes. If there is anything the wily prelate of the Windy City has taught us, it is not to look for coherence or reform in the modern Church. Rather, we must take our bearings entirely from tradition and work for its restoration, no matter how difficult the uphill climb.

To aid this effort, I have a book coming out soon from Angelico Press: Close the Workshop: Why the Old Mass Isn’t Broken and the New Mass Can’t Be Fixed, with a Foreword by reform-of-the-reform expert Fr. Thomas M. Kocik. Stay posted for further news of its release!

Inverting hierarchy

Last week I mentioned Sr. Simona Brambilla as the new Prefect (!) of the Vatican’s Dicastery for Religious (to give it the more succinct casual name that many call it by). Since then, Rorate has published a good overview, by Michael Charlier, of the issues this appointment raises. It’s not about women (pace the tendentious media coverage) It’s about laity governing clergy. I’m all in favor of the secular arm (bring it back, give the Church some checks and balances). But that’s not the same as governance within strictly spiritual affairs, as we are looking at in the dicastery in question.

Cardinal Pell

On the second anniversary of Cardinal Pell’s death, we are seeing a fair amount of attention paid to him (as he deserves). If anyone wants a detailed account of how Pell was framed and scapegoated, look no further that this new series at Rorate. Along the same lines, Edward Pentin, over at The National Catholic Register, interviews Tess Livingstone, author of a new full-length biography of Pell just released by Ignatius Press.

“Hope, hope, when there is no hope” (cf. Jer 6:14)

Pope Francis has been much in the news, too: he released his testament of humility in the form of a much-hyped autobiography, with the simple, Obamalike title Hope. Of course, it says nothing about the dozens of scandals to which his name is linked, both in Argentina and during his papacy, while devoting many purple passages to the incorrigible traditionalists, whom he accuses of preoccupation with lace (yawn) and mental imbalance. When journalist Michael Haynes asked me for comments, I said:

Pope Francis is hopelessly out of touch with the growing desire for reverence, sacredness, and beauty. It’s not about window-dressing. It’s about a meaningful spiritual encounter with the Lord of glory in a world gone mad with utilitarianism and materialism. The rationalism of the 1970s is on full display when he admits he can’t understand why anyone would want a form of worship that can’t be fully or immediately understood. One wonders whether he believes God is incomprehensible; one wonders if there is any room for mystery in Bergoglio’s worldview.

For her part, Leila Marie Lawler offers an excellent analysis, taking her cue from C. S. Lewis’s analysis of the phenomenon of “Bulverism,” which means, “a particular modern strategy of assuming the conclusion of a controversy and then going on to describe the motives for holding the opposing view.” She concludes:

“Do you question my mental balance? What gives you the right? How’s yours? What are your motives?” Let’s be clear: the motives of someone who surrounds himself — and us — with known sodomites, abusers, and abuser-adjacent men should be questioned a lot sooner than those of people defending tradition, that is to say, the Catholic Faith.

As Leila points out, the autobiography discloses a pretty boring “rinse-wash-repeat” process by this time. If it has any importance at all, it will be simply as grist for the research of future historians analyzing the third pornocracy, as Timothy Flanders calls it. They will note that the book is a whitewashing propaganda exercise.

(Speaking of which… the Italian bishops have just approved criteria for admission of seminarians that would allow the possibility of admitting men with a homosexual disposition as long as they were not active homosexuals. Have we not learned a single darn thing over the past decades of clerical abuse and scandal? Or is it just that the lavender mafia still runs the show in most places, and they don’t really care about the divine law or the good of the laity anyhow? I think the question answers itself.)

(And one more note: at Catholic World Report, J.J. Ziegler has published a damning exposé of the little-known and rather sickening spiritual theology of Marco Rupnik as found in his published writings, as well as a useful — and frankly, frightening — overview of his prominence in the Catholic Church of the past several decades.)

Right as Hope was hitting the news, President (thankfully, soon-to-be-former-president) Biden made haste to award the nation’s highest honor on the pope:

Today, President Biden spoke with His Holiness Pope Francis and named him as a recipient of the Presidential Medal of Freedom with Distinction. The Presidential Medal of Freedom is the Nation’s highest civilian honor, presented to individuals who have made exemplary contributions to the prosperity, values, or security of the United States, world peace, or other significant societal, public or private endeavors. This is the first time that President Biden has awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom with Distinction.

Citation:

As a young man, Jorge Bergoglio sought a career in science before faith led him to a life with the Jesuits. For decades, he served the voiceless and vulnerable across Argentina. As Pope Francis, his mission of serving the poor has never ceased. A loving pastor, he joyfully answers children’s questions about God. A challenging teacher, he commands us to fight for peace and protect the planet. A welcoming leader, he reaches out to different faiths. The first pope from the Southern Hemisphere, Pope Francis is unlike any who came before. Above all, he is the People’s Pope — a light of faith, hope, and love that shines brightly across the world.

When I hear the word “citation,” I think about running afoul of the law; and in a way, that meaning seems to be the one ironically operative here.

Cut from the pope’s cloth

I’ve been receiving dire intelligence about the new bishop of Charlotte, a Franciscan cut from the cloth of Francis (not the real one, but Bergoglio). Here’s a little vignette for you: when “preaching” at a Catholic high school there, he talks about how he borrowed a hat from a cheerleader at a football game, and then called her up from the audience and asked her if she was jealous of his hat, and put his mitre on her head while everyone clapped.

When, O Lord, will we have recognizably Catholic bishops again? Even just... unassumingly normal ones? (The link to the video is here.)

Good News

The tides are turning

A priest sent me the following:

It’s said that a picture tells a thousand words. As I was looking over my library, it occurred to me that I have almost two entire shelves of critical studies of the postconciliar liturgical revolution.

In my seminary years (1990-95) only a handful of such works existed (in English, at least): Michael Davies’ Liturgical Revolution (Angelus, 1980) and several booklets of his (TAN, Angelus Press, Neumann Press), Una Voce’s edition of Msgr. Gamber’s The Reform of the Roman Liturgy (1993), Fr. Cekada’s Problems with the Prayers of the Modern Mass (TAN, 1991), and The Ottaviani Intervention (TAN, 1992). These few items are circled in the attached photo of those two shelves.

All the rest of it is from the three decades since I left seminary. Today’s traditional Catholics have so much more at their disposal compared to back then, thanks in no small part to you. In addition to your vast output, I have the conference proceedings of Fontgombault; Beyond the Prosaic (Oxford 1996); Fota (since 2008); Sacra Liturgia (since 2013); and CIEL (since 1995); the short-lived journal Usus Antiquior (2010-12), and titles by Nichols, Mosebach, Crouan (ex-ROTR’er, like myself), Pristas, Hazell, et al., etc. Laus Deo!

Remember: the difference between activism and scholarship is that activism throws brickbats and maybe gets something done immediately, but usually fizzles out; whereas scholarship slowly permeates the ranks and wins over minds, preparing for a sea change in mentality, which spills over into the everyday world. We are in this battle for the long haul.

New at TradiVox

Our friends over at TradiVox, “your source for Catholic catechisms of every century,” have just released a wonderful free download with all sorts of good advice about learning styles and discriminating among books and catechisms. Download “Info Kit: Learn the Faith” here.

Monastic self-reliance

Monks for centuries have been masters of living with and from the natural world. I was happy to read this about the monks of Norcia:

As winter blanketed the landscape outside, the monks and guests were kept warm inside thanks to a massive Swiss-built wood heating system. Many visitors ask us about the technical aspects of the monastery, and how we stay warm is one of them. During the design phase of the monastery, a wood heating system was chosen as a fitting option for monks, as it requires manual labor to operate. Thanks to the generosity of many benefactors over the years, we have been able to purchase tracts of forest near the monastery. With careful forest management, we hope to heat the monastery from our own resources in the years to come.

Catholic entrepreneurs, take note!

Mateusz Klosek, owner of Eco-Windows, built an adoration chapel at the business site so that employees who sign up to pray during the day can pray… even during working hours. A new twist on ora et labora!

A fresh fresco

A chapel in Virginia, at Seton High School in Manassas, Virginia, boasts a newly completed fresco, “Sancta Maria Regina Angelorum.”

I classify this as good news because can you even imagine a project like this being done not so very long ago? I’m not saying we don’t have a very long way to go before our churches are everywhere beautiful and worthy of the sacred acts and the Real Presence they are privileged to house, but I think it is fair to say that a corner has definitely been turned. (You can find more photos of this project over at Liturgical Arts Journal.)

Liturgical Lessons

Put to shame by Episcopalians

Fr. Richard Cipolla comments on how the funeral of Jimmy Carter (apart from the bizarre Lennon swerve) showed a higher sense of rituality than most Catholic funerals. His conclusion (remember, Fr. Cipolla was himself a convert from Episcopalianism):

As a Catholic priest, as I watched this service, I could not help but be saddened by the abandonment and non-understanding of ritual in the Catholic Church today. A case could be made that the Catholic Church invented ritual in the West from the Mass and other Church services, but she also extended ritual to affairs of state and even to the family. Much of the art and music of Western culture finds its origin in the Catholic Mass. The deliberate de-ritualization of the Mass after the Second Vatican Council, an act which has no basis in the Council document on the Sacred Liturgy, has had a profound effect on the faith of the Catholic faithful, one result of which is that seventy percent of Catholics do not believe in the Real Presence of Christ in Holy Communion, and that many Catholics in their thirties and forties have drifted away from the Church entirely. There is little to be done about this situation of the secularization of the Church at the present time. Sitting around talking to each other with the amazing assumption that the Holy Spirit must be present at things called the Synod on Synodality is not helpful in the current situation. But the time will come when new generations of clergy and laity will recall the Tradition of the Church and will rediscover the power of ritual in saying what cannot be said. My generation will not see this, nor the generation below me. But the Holy Spirit is in charge of the Church, and it is He who is in charge of the handing down of the Tradition and the traditions.

A surprising appointment

If only this article were from the Babylon Bee... but I’m afraid it’s not: “Pope appoints Sacred Heart's Mary Healy to Vatican Dicastery for Divine Worship.” You may recall Mary Healy as one of the authors (with John Cavadini and Fr. Thomas Weinandy) of the atrocious series on the liturgy published September-November 2022 by Church Life Journal. Although dozens of errors, some of them stupendous in magnitude, were pointed out to the CLJ editors, they would not run any response to it. Intellectual integrity, much The series had as its theme that the Second Vatican Council as well as the ensuing liturgical reform were inspired works of the Holy Spirit, and the preconciliar Roman Rite needs to be phased out once and for all.

In response, nine authors came together to publish a book called Illusions of Reform: Responses to Cavadini, Healy, and Weinandy in Defense of the Traditional Mass (Os Justi Press, 2023), which thoroughly dismantles their arguments.

Well, on January 11, Pope Francis appointed the same Mary Healy a member of the Vatican’s Dicastery on Divine Worship and the Discipline of the Sacraments. My initial take-away: it seems like a qualification for being part of any Dicastery nowadays is either being ignorant or being in error concerning the Dicastery’s competencies.

Frescos everywhere

I think the experience of most Roman Catholics when they enter a well-decorated Byzantine church is about the same: they are overwhelmed by the decoration of every wall surface with iconography, floor to ceiling, front to back, everywhere the eye rests. We wonder why our churches should be generally so bare, if not barren?

This is when it’s helpful to learn that it wasn’t always this way. In the Romanesque period, Western churches were covered with iconography in just the same way. At NLM, you can see what a Romanesque church from ca. AD 1200 looked like inside. I would love to see a neo-Romanesque revival that painted the interior walls and ceilings like this. Of course, it would have to be executed well!

Images of a lost era

For fans of Grace Kelly and former pontifical splendor: “The Solemn Ceremony of Homage of Sovereigns at the Tomb of the Blessed Apostle Peter,” showing historic photos of the visit of the Prince and Princess of Monaco, on their official state visit on April 30, 1957, and then of their visit two years later. It is hard to believe, sometimes, that the Vatican represents the same institution.

The need for elitism

In this democratic age, the charge of “elitism” is a smear if ever there was one. But maybe we need more elitism, if by that we mean discrimination in favor of that which is better—not simply thinking that we are better for choosing it.

Thus writes Emily Finley, in a fine article at her Substack The Christian Imagination, “Are TLM Catholics Elitists?” Her observations put into words what countless souls have experienced:

The prayers, genuflections, bows, kisses, chants, crossing of oneself, kneeling and then standing and then kneeling again, the sprinkling of holy water, the incensing, the washing of hands, not to mention the aesthetic of the church and the altar, the dress of the laity, the vestments of the priest—all of it conveys to the imagination what is going on. There is no other way to show it to our finite human minds. We are imaginative creatures. Reason can tell it to us, but imagination persuades us.

The liturgy of the Mass (or Divine Liturgy if you are in the Eastern Rite) sets the tone for civilization. It is the highest and most perfect expression of “liturgical living” and ought to act as a model for liturgical living in the broader sense. Whether we like it or not, the liturgy we attend impacts our imaginations. Therefore, I argue, we ought to be attending a liturgy in which the symbolism reflects the divine reality that is behind it. Most Novus Ordo parishes do not well convey this divine reality, I argue.

What can be passed on is not faith, but traditions

This is so true! From Unam Sanctam Catholicam:

I can’t give my children belief, but I can give them traditions which have a profound connection to faith — they point to it, give expression to it, reinforce it, instantiate it, provide structure for it, explore implicit lessons of it, make it part of daily life. In other words, these pious traditions can add a depth of meaning to faith that vivifies it and helps it take root in the soil of our lives. This is wonderful. This is what we all want for ourselves and for our children.

It becomes even crazier, then, to think how much of this stuff the progressives wanted to ax in the years after the Council. Pious traditions as venerable as Eucharistic Adoration and the Holy Rosary were ridiculed and discared, to say nothing of some of the lesser customs, many of which have gone almost entirely extinct outside of traditional parishes. It's a miracle any traditions at all survived the 1970s, and the only reason they did so is because Catholic families continued to practice them despite the mockery and condescension of the theologians....

I can't give my belief to my children; but I can give them traditions which play a vital role in nourishing faith. If we eviscerate our customs, if we throw out our venerable traditions, are we surprised that people find the faith increasingly irrelevant? Can we feign surprise that it no longer speaks to them? Theological propositions are great, but it is not the abstract principles of theology which engage the common man...much less children! Having your daughter place a wreath of flowers upon the brow of a statue of Our Lady will speak much more eloquently than five sermons. Visiting a cemetery by night and leaving candles upon the graves of the dead instills belief about the Holy Souls much more effectively than reading a Catholic Answers tract or listening to a podcast.

Yes. And the reason they hated all these things is that they had already lost the Faith. They sneered at the certitudes of the Baltimore Catechism, the pieties of the laity, the convictions of the saints, the monuments of tradition. They were, quite simply, not Catholics any more. How long will it take until this is frankly acknowledged?

Little Office of the Holy Ghost

This week at NLM, I share a very special and unusual devotion:

The Bridgettine nuns once prayed, every Sunday, a specialized Office in honor of the Holy Ghost. Its arrangement is more complete than that of most Little Offices, but less complete than that of the most famous and widely used, the Little Office of the Virgin Mary. All the Hours are present, with most their constitutive parts (antiphon, psalm, chapter, hymn, versicle, oration, etc.), but Matins has neither readings nor responsories. Presumably both for ease of memorization and for intensity of devotion, the “Veni Creator Spiritus” is used as the hymn for every hour, and the same chapter, from Romans 5, is also repeated. The other parts vary, and all are in service of highlighting the mystery of the Holy Spirit’s presence, operation, and fecundity in the Church.

John Sonnen reviews Turned Around

Over at Liturgical Arts Journal, John Sonnen talks about my latest from TAN Books:

Our good friend and unmissable liturgical scholar, Dr. Peter Kwasniewski, has produced yet another masterwork on the subject of the Classical Roman Rite. Entitled Turned Around (TAN Books, 2024), the subtitle reads: Replying to Common Objections Against the Traditional Latin Mass....

Most readers are familiar with common objections to the Traditional Rite. With clarity and in everyday language, the author catalogues them in a succinct order and responds in undaunted clarity of language.

The book also gives people the chance to hear from a true theologian who has dedicated years of study to these important and oft ignored themes in question. The bibliography alone highlights the vast storehouse of thought and debate. As the author points out, learning about the Traditional Mass involves a “treasury” that is vast and intricate and takes time and even a lifetime to digest. I have no doubt the benefits will be made clear by all who read the book....

One wonders if things would have been different if the liturgical reformers (and outright revolutionaries) could have read this book in about the year 1962. We must not be afraid to assert boldly that it is good and fitting and optimal to heed the traditions of the Church, especially when it involves the sensitive question of how people pray.

Thank you, John. Turned Around may be purchased from its publisher and from the ubiquitous Amazon (but if you get it there, please leave a rating or review as your “penance”!). But if you buy it from Os Justi Press, you will receive a signed copy!

Para los lectores españoles...

Other Articles Enjoyed

Robert Keim, on “The Medieval Art of Living an Epic Life”:

The Aeneid is the foundational epic poem of Western Civilization, and Dryden had some strong words on the value of epic poetry: "An heroic poem, truly such, is undoubtedly the greatest work which the soul of man is capable to perform." This sentence alone should be enough to make us feel uneasy—how much emphasis does modern education, Christian or otherwise, place on the great epics of the European literary tradition? Not enough. In many cases, not nearly enough.... Let’s take a look at four venerable conventions of epic literature: a narrative that begins in medias res, the aristeia, the katabasis, and the proem.

Robert Keim, “The Queen of the Middle Ages”:

The medieval world is absolutely integral to the momentous project that we call Western Civilization. Anyone who identifies with or sympathizes with or participates in or is attracted to the Western cultural tradition, which includes Western Christianity, must confront the fact that this tradition cannot exist, cannot even be conceived of, without the one thousand years of extraordinary human flourishing that followed Antiquity and preceded Modernity. To recover the real Middle Ages is, in crucially important ways, to recover our real selves.

A very good piece was published at Rorate on the feast of St. Paul of Thebes, the first hermit, on what hermits are and why the eremitical vocation exists in the Church (and is still important).

At the European Conservative, Nina Power gives us a profound essay on modern forms of iconoclasm and iconophilia.

Hilary White’s latest: “Mystery of Sacred Images: Understanding the Visual Language of Faith.”

Thank you for reading, and may God bless you!