Dr. K’s Weekly Roundup, August 29th Edition

Greetings and welcome to this week’s edition!

Last week, I skipped the usual roundup, as I was splending time with family in Wyoming. Here’s what I saw along my street… it gives the verb “fawning” a more vivid meaning:

At the same time, I hope at least some of these deer will end up in stew pots, for the reasons explained by Sebastian Morello in “How Bambi Dies: On the Evil of Sentimentalism.”

So, today we’ll play catchup with two week’s worth of reading. Remember: I read voraciously so that you don’t have to! You will find here a culling of the best of the best, with particular attention paid to liturgy and culture.

Before that, a little reflection on…

Wonder and mystery

In Wyoming, I had the great privilege and blessing of attending a Byzantine baptism of an infant, which also included chrismation and first holy communion. Of the many things I could say, here’s just one observation.

The Byzantine rite of baptism is about ten times longer than the traditional Roman rite of baptism; and that, in turn, is about ten times longer than Paul VI’s rite of baptism. I can understand some difference between East and West; but why, oh why, did there come to be such an unseemly haste, such an absurd abbreviation, in the “reformed” rite? There is no justification for what Paul VI did. None whatsoever.

We entered while Matins was being chanted, and lost track of time till almost three hours later when everything wrapped up. The experience reminded me again of how the seven and a half years I spent praying in the Byzantine rite (1998-2006) awakened me, as it has many others, to the analogous riches of the traditional Roman rite, truly a common heritage. For example, the massive prayers of exorcism in Byzantine baptism have their exact parallel in the traditional Roman baptism, whereas Paul VI’s has one effete quasi-exorcism that is more accurately seen as Rahnerian reminder that Christ’s coming has made individual exorcisms unnecessary.

Similarly, in the Byzantine and Roman rites, the godparents do all the heavy lifting, while the parents “tag along,” in a potent reminder that baptism is a supernatural grace that lifts us out of the natural order into the kingdom of heaven: the regeneration is by the spirit, not from the flesh. But Paul VI’s rite sidelines the godparents (and thus, it’s hardly a surprise that some places have even gotten rid of godparents).

In any case, as I once put it, Byzantine and Tridentine are brothers, while the Montinian is a stranger to both — and indeed, to all apostolic rites.

It clicked for me one day, a long time ago, that the liturgy should be somewhat incomprehensible, as God is, and at the same time should become more familiar through its unchangingness, so that you end up with the wonderful paradox of something that feels very different from everyday life (maximally sacred and transcendent) yet consoles by its repetitive timelessness. It is both beyond you and totally within you.

This combination is possible, however, only on a triple condition. First, the liturgy must be thick and rich and full of religion, ancient, complex, not brief or “logical” or “adapted for modern man.” Second, it must be textually and rubrically totally definite, without amorphous option points and impromptu blather. You can’t become familiar with something that is always changing. And third, you have to apprentice yourself to this rite for a long time, patiently, receptively.

A medieval cathedral took a century to build; so, in a way, does a man’s spiritual life. But moderns want to build a church in a year and “get on with it,” and likewise, they want their spiritual life to be like an instant drink: “just add water and it’s ready!” But this is a false conception, and one with deeply damaging consequences.

A parish priest in St. Louis published a moving reflection, “How to gain spiritual knowledge,” as a sort of review and recommendation of Guardini’s Sacred Signs. His words correspond exactly to my experiences:

We are meant to experience liturgy as a pure and undefiled manifestation, with no prior theories or preconceptions by which we attempt to wrangle it into a comfortable shape. Sometimes Latin and incense and chant cohere into an overwhelming theophany. It feels foreign and strange. It’s too much. Maybe the visitors won’t understand it. Good. That’s what it’s supposed to be, somewhere in and through the rational into the super-rational, somewhere beyond understanding. That’s why God gave it to us. We are meant to contemplate it, to suffer with it, be challenged, and join ourselves to it....

It was amusing that the people who complained to me about the imaginative qualities of Holy Mass - the incense, chant, vestments, holy water, traditional use of architecture, and so on, were all adults. They disliked it because they’d become habituated to a purely intellectual, auditory approach to worship (an approach that was essentially created by the reformers in a great revolt of arrogant academics against popular piety, but I digress).

One of their charges against me was that I was driving children away from church by dragging it back to the bad old days of irrelevant, out-of-touch worship.... Children, it turns out, love a Holy Mass that honors the imagination and the recognition of things as signs. Young children don’t particularly love sitting in a pew quiet and still, trying to focus on lectures and reading, but they do love learning about God. The way they learn is by attending to sacred signs, because the signs themselves convey essential knowledge.

This is the purpose of Guardini’s book. He desires, in a simple manner, to point out the sign value of every little detail of the liturgy, the way the liturgy teaches us in simple, everyday things.

Amen. May we immerse ourselves, with wonder, into the divine mystery unfolded before us by the traditional apostolic rites in all their richness and variety.

Tools for Immersion

Two powerful tools that can help us to do exactly that have just been published by Os Justi Press. I would count these among the most momentous books we’ve ever released:

Originally published over the course of eleven years (1840–1851) in three volumes exceeding 2,000 pages in toto, Dom Prosper Guéranger’s Liturgical Institutions sets forth an erudite and impassioned history of the Roman Rite and of the depredations it has suffered over the centuries at the hands of “anti-liturgical heretics” whose lineage is by no means exhausted. Astonishing in breadth and penetration, the Institutions remains a masterpiece of analysis and synthesis, with striking relevance to our times. In this English translation of Jean Vaquié's one-volume abridgement of the French, the reader will find the finest passages of Guéranger’s life’s work, defining and defending the rites — and rights — of sacred tradition.

The Roman rite, once the serene inheritance of countless saints, was not abruptly overturned in the late 1960s; instead, it was subjected to a process of gradual dismantling in the twentieth century. Hence, the 1962 liturgical books bear the wounds of earlier deformations and anticipate wounds yet to come. Lumen Christi: Defending the Use of the Pre-1955 Roman Rite confronts these uncomfortable truths with a panoply of historical, liturgical, canonical, and theological arguments, showing readers what is at stake in the restoration of the once and future Roman Rite and providing practical guidance in accomplishing it. Includes discussion of permissions needed (or not needed) for the use of earlier liturgical books (missal, breviary, etc.); charts of all changes made to the missal and breviary between 1955 and 1962; a step-by-step plan for transitioning at the parish level from the 1962 to the pre-1955; and translations of key liturgical documents.

The table of contents, forewords, and opening pages of each book can be viewed as PDFs here and here. Get a 10% discount on both books with the code RITESTUFF. (These books are also available on Amazon.)

Epicenter: Charlotte

The situation in Charlotte continues to look bleak.

REGINA Magazine has released a masterful film, Bread Not Stones, chronicling the events in that diocese. It is one of the first films to document the drastic impact of Traditionis Custodes upon a faith community. It removes the polemics and simply shows real people, with real names and faces who are suffering from a lack of pastoral sensitivity and misplaced Church policy. This poignant film needs to be spread far and wide.

Bishop Martin wants to discontinue a form of worship that attracts thousands of his sheep. That sparks conversions and reversions. That draws young people and families. A Mass that, in the words of a recent article, “brings Gen Z to Christ.” He wants to smash parish communities that have found unity in the midst of liturgical diversity.

Only a heretic or an apostate could do such a thing. There is no other explanation. “Obedience” (putatively, to the lie-saturated policy of a now-defunct pope) does not cut it, since obedience is in service of truth and charity, and not the other way around.

If you want to know the kind of milieu out of which a man like +Martin comes, I recommend James Green’s eye-opening piece: “The Crisis in the Church Is an LSD Trip: The Drug-Fueled CIA to Jesuit to Homosexual Mafia Pipeline.” Does it sound crazy? Truth is very often stranger than fiction. Folks, we are looking at the final bitter fruits of DECADES of moral corruption and theological rot. That’s how you get a +Martin. They don’t pop out of nowhere.

You can understand why people are increasingly drawn to the SSPX.

Thousands of clergy, religious, and faithful connected to the Society recently prayed in St. Peter’s Basilica for the Jubilee (their visit had been officially scheduled by the Vatican as part of the Jubilee’s events).

Many are talking about when the SSPX will consecrate new bishops. They will certainly need to do so.

SSPX clergy processing to St Peter’s on August 21, 2025

SSPX faithful in Rome for their Jubilee pilgrimage

The Silence of Leo

In a post here on May 16, I explained why I would not be following Pope Leo XIV’s every word and move, attempting to read the daily tea-leaves, who’s in, who’s out, which meeting took place, what vestment did he wear, how telling is it that he’s moving back into the Apostolic Palace, etc.

I find the papolatry of both the Bergoglians and the sedevacantists to be nauseating; both of them desperately cling to the infallibility of the non-infallible and the definitiveness of the non-definitive, both of them fall prey to a cult of personality (well depicted by Austin Ruse in his “The Pope’s Breathless Fanboys”) that is far removed from a profound and proper respect for the primacy of the Divine Revelation in Scripture and Tradition to which the Magisterium is always and only a servant.

Nevertheless, it seems important to me to address a few points here, since we who are members of the Mystical Body are all in this Barque of Peter with Peter’s Successor at the helm, and we are all wondering why Leo is not intervening more decisively in places like Detroit and Charlotte.

In my opinion, Pope Leo XIV is manifestly not a “Francis 2.0” — not by a long shot. He believes that he can give most of Francis’s initiatives a Catholic (or more specifically, Augustinian) meaning, which in many cases will involve evacuating them of Bergoglian radicality and investing them with Catholic content. One sees this with the concept of synodality, from which already the most bizarre elements have vanished like smoke. One can trace this purgative process in speech after speech, as Leo utilizes his predecessors’ language but roots it in St. Augustine and other authorities, reorienting it to the truth.

On the practical or prudential side, it seems that Leo XIV is courteous, gentle, patient, slow-moving, deliberate, and tentative, in a way that reminds me of certain weaknesses of the professor emeritus Joseph Ratzinger. Almost, if you’ll pardon the expression, as if he’s “too good” a man for such a job, a dolphin plunged into a shark tank.

Gaetano Masciullo helped crystallize my thoughts in an article in which he notes that Leo is being pressed by his handlers into an endless stream of meetings and activities for which he seems ill-suited, choking off the contemplative leisure he needs for praying about larger problems and decisions. According to Masciullo, this is a deliberate strategy that feeds upon Prevost’s good-naturedness, his unwillingness to let people down or impose hard limits.

In short, I see Leo XIV as a man of great kindness, open to all voices, basically orthodox but not passionately committed to reform, and lacking a clear vision or a commitment to the executive power needed to implement it. This, and not some kind of closet Modernism, is why he has not overturned Amoris Laetitia, Fiducia Supplicans, Traditionis Custodes, etc. in the first 100+ days of his reign (not a particularly notable “time sample,” except in this hyperaccelerated internet age). This is why he has not gone out of his way to intervene in Detroit or Charlotte.

Put it this way: as a religious superior accustomed to consulting everyone and pondering carefully, and as a canon lawyer who respects precedent and wishes to avoid sudden course changes and micromanagement, Leo XIV is, paradoxically, acting more traditionally than Francis did, who was in the grip of his ego and exercised power autocratically and arbitrarily.

And yet… the even more traditional thing Leo could do would be to exercise his God-given authority to expel the Lavendar Mafia and the anti-liturgical heretics from the temple of God. The reason is, error has no rights, and so it does not deserve the same kind of respect as truth. No one should run roughshod over legitimate custom, but brazen badness should be swept out.

If he takes too much time to do this, or if he never does it at all, I would chalk this up to character flaws and/or to a misconceived conservatism, not to heretical leanings or liberal sympathies (his August 25th comments to altar servers are worlds removed from his predecessor’s talking points). At least, this will be my “read” of the situation until there is considerably more and better evidence than the anti-Leo brigade has so far been able to grasp at.

Moreover, we just have to recognize that Leo will have particular topics that grip him, such as the technological revolution, and others that interest him less, based on his education and life experiences. That is only human.

Of course, I could be entirely mistaken; I have no special information, only the same data everyone else has. Time will tell. In any case, to me it seems both impossible and uncharitable to package Leo XIV into a tiny box and write him off after 100 days. We have not seen his full measure, his full program, priorities, efforts, initiatives. He will not rule with an iron fist (whether that pleases or saddens us); he will not move quickly and solve everyone’s problems overnight.

That doesn’t mean we shouldn’t be praying for him and doing the best we can, on the ground, to carry on with the rebuilding of a Church fallen to ruins.

Jonathan Liedl observes:

In his first three months as pope, Leo XIV has not issued any significant changes to the status of the traditional Latin Mass (TLM). Traditionis Custodes, Pope Francis' 2021 policy calling for restrictions like the removal of the pre-conciliar liturgy from all parish churches, is still in effect. But something else regarding the TLM has changed under Pope Leo: the conversation.

Since the new Pope assumed office on May 8, several prelates who had previously kept silent under Pope Francis have spoken out in favor of the TLM. Some of these Church leaders, who have included high-ranking cardinals, have made appeals to Leo XIV to reconsider the restrictions placed on the traditional liturgy, while others have criticized some of the reasons for limiting its availability in the first place.

Remember: conversation often precedes conversion, and conversion precedes correction.

Roberto di Mattei, who espouses a more hyperpapalist position than I do, nevertheless draws upon his vast knowledge of papal history to offer us perspective:

Is this period [of 100 days], during which the Pope has not made any decisive appointments, international trips, or major speeches, sufficient to predict the future course of his pontificate? Absolutely not. The Church’s time frames are not those of politics, and three months is insufficient for a serious analysis of the future….

It is easy to suggest to the Pope what he should do, or even demand that he do it in short order, without being in his position and having the responsibility to do so. But we must remember that St Pius X waited four years before condemning modernism, despite having at his side a secretary of state so aligned with him as Cardinal Rafael Merry del Val….

Among the great Pontiffs of the last two centuries we also number Pius IX, a Pope who did not become anti-liberal until three years after his election, following a rude awakening caused by the revolutionary persecution and his flight from Rome.

Pius XII, who was a meek Pope and a lover of negotiation, was overwhelmed by the Second World War and had to wait several years before promulgating his great encyclicals Mystici Corporis (1943), Mediator Dei (1947), Humani Generis (1950) and Ad Coeli Reginam (1954).

The virtue of prudence, both natural and supernatural, can preclude a brief time frame for the realisation of a project, and external events like the wars looming on the horizon today can disrupt it. So there is no need to be impatient, but vigilant, putting all hope in God alone and praying for the Pope and the Church in this dark hour of history.

(De Mattei in the rest of the article offers specific examples, “pro and con,” that should make everyone cautious and realistic, while avoiding snap judgments.)

I recall here some fine words by John Rao:

From what I remember, Paul VI did not merely fail to anticipate the strength of attachment to the Traditional Mass. Rather, he was enthusiastically committed to a liturgical revolution which he knew and expressly indicated would offend pious people.… Still, these are the games that institutions, including divine institutions with a human side, regularly play. The rediscovery by the Church of her proper pathway is generally a messy, halting, and not fully honest affair. It almost never takes place in one, clean, action-packed cinema-like scene.

Just as no one could have predicted Summorum Pontificum on the basis of Paul VI’s repressive policy of enforced liturgical modernization from ca. 1965 to 1978, so today, no one can predict what will follow Francis’s repressive policy implemented four years ago. Although much depends on the pope, the survival of tradition is and has always been a grassroots affair that the Vatican has finally decided to accept and deal with, when saner counsels prevail. It is the same today. Persevere.

The fundamental error to avoid

Charles Coulombe’s “The Pure Church of the Pure: A Perennial Heresy” is one fantastic article. After a long discussion of Gnosticism, he gets to some contemporary applications. I agree 100% with the following:

She [the Church] does make one demand of those who would be transformed by her: that they take her as she is, that they strive to conform themselves to her and her Spouse. Part of complying with this demand is accepting her children as she does.

What does this mean concretely? First of all, it means not trying to erect walls and divisions between those who accept the same four Creeds and the Sacraments that all Catholics must (if indeed they do). I may not like the Novus Ordo on the grounds that it does not express the Faith as clearly as the traditional liturgies of the Church, East and West—or in what I may see as the dodginess of its origins. But I have no right to claim that I am somehow in a superior or holier—above all, a different—Church than the one they inhabit.

Similarly, if I feel that those who refuse to accept the New Mass have “schismatic tendencies,” I have an obligation not to think them outside the Church when the Church herself does not. In a word, I must avoid making myself judge, jury, and executioner for my fellow Catholics—and I must hold out the possibility that even I may be wrong.

Humanly speaking, the Church is and always has been a mixed bag. Throughout the Church’s history, Christ has allowed the tares to grow up with the wheat and the sheep and goats to be herded together. Let us pray that everyone—and most especially ourselves and those with whom we disagree most—may be numbered among the wheat and the sheep on that Last Day.

Liturgical Lessons

Pitre scores an own goal!

Kevin Tierney has written a legitimately snarky article about the massive new Brant Pitre initiative launched in defense of the Novus Ordo (yes, you read that correctly): “‘Mass of ALL Ages’? Shiny New Lecture Series Rehashes 1970s.”

At the moment, I will make just one observation. It's quite telling that Pitre's 25-CD course, to judge from its PDF outline, does little more than repeat long-questioned bromides of the 1970s reformers, at a time when, in addition to copious new scholarship questioning the assumptions of the 60s/70s, explosive documents like Boniface Luykx's memoirs are appearing and providing further detailed evidence of serious "mission drift" on the part of the (post)conciliar liturgical reform. Pitre’s effort is exactly analogous to someone mounting a defense of all the good things we get from liberalism at a time when the entire serious conversation has gone post-liberal.

You may recall that Gregory DiPippo was able to identify dozens of factual errors in Pitre’s embarrassing foray into the topic of “active participation.” Rest assured that a similar treatment will be given to (at least representative sections of) this new series, with a view to showing that Pitre, however great a scholar of Scripture he undoubtedly is, has no business lecturing the rest of us about liturgy.

Head-coverings

Over at Liturgical Arts Journal, John Sonnen reviews Mantilla: The Veil of the Bride of Christ, and concludes: “In my estimation, it is the most thorough book on the subject.”

The work of monks

Denise Trull puts into words what I love about praying the Divine Office and especially visiting faithful monasteries:

The Divine Office is the prayer of the whole Church and it is offered seven times throughout the day by monks the world over, monks who make a solemn promise that they will be there in their stalls with voices ready to sing psalmody for and with each member of the Church of Christ. It is an ancient prayer emerging from the mists of the past.

I have grown to love it because I can immerse myself in its steady rhythm and beauty. Whenever the monks are singing around me, I feel one with the Church; one with a Church that understands the drama of salvation. For praying the Divine Office is not unlike David dancing solemnly before the ark of the Covenant. Each of its books has ribbons that swing back and forth in a graceful nod to pageantry. The monks’ voices swell high and low, from one side of the choir to another, like waves on a sea of peace.

It is a great, solemn drama, this work of monks.

Robert Keim has been writing a series of essays on the Rule of St. Benedict and how it teaches profound lessons for the rest of us. In “Not Just for Medieval Monks: Wisdom for Us All from the Rule of St. Benedict” he points out the centrality of the Psalms:

However much we might associate monks with long hours of meditative prayer, their bodies cloaked in darkness as their minds sink into the mystical depths of the unseen realm, the Rule of St. Benedict gives direct, explicit instructions only for vocal public prayer.

This public prayer was to consist of Psalms, Canticles, passages of Scripture, and readings from the Fathers, and it was envisioned as the central experience, principal labor, and all-encompassing inspiration for those who embraced the monastic life. That the laity of the postmedieval Church have diverged markedly from the paradigm of prayer found in the Rule is, for me, a source of great confusion and dismay.

I see no justification for this, and the following observation, again from the old Catholic Encyclopedia, makes the situation appear even more anomalous: “By ordering the public recitation and singing of the Psalter, St. Benedict was not putting upon his monks a distinctly clerical obligation. The Psalter was the common form of prayer of all Christians.”

In “The Undying Light of the Black Monks”:

Sometimes he turned the soil in his garden, sometimes he read and wrote. He had only one word for these two kinds of labor; he called it gardening. “The spirit is a garden,” he would say.

In “Monks Ought to Be Zealous for Silence at All Times”:

The modern world, with varying degrees of intentionality, has declared war on silence. The cities are its nemesis. Go to the suburbs, and it will elude you. Flee to the farms and homesteads, and you find it not. Go deeper into the countryside, still you search in vain. Parachute into the middle of a National Park, and you will wait, and think you have it, perhaps for a time you will, but then an airplane will fly overhead, or the scream of a chainsaw will echo from the woods, or the temperature inversions of early morning will reveal the presence of motorcars on an unseen highway, or a human emerging from a hiking trail will regale the wildlife with pop music from his smartphone. And you will despair, and rend your garments, and say with Solomon, “There is no remembrance of former things…. All is vanity, and vexation of spirit”—for you have seen all things, and behold, there is no silence under the sun.

Edified and comforted by Latin

An author new to me, Andrew Kelpe, reflects on the comforts and spiritual lessons of Latin, brilliantly putting into words what I and so many others have experienced:

What great beauty lies hidden within the ancient Roman language?... The cadences fall like soft rain, the vowels draw themselves out as though savoring their own existence, the consonants carry a weight that feels both ancient and eternal....

Latin, particularly in hymns and prayers, stills the restless mind and points it toward the eternal. For me, these words have become a steadying presence in my life, especially in seasons marked by solitude and uncertainty. They are more than sounds. They are a thread of continuity in a world fraying at the edges....

In the midst of my own days—sometimes rushing around between classes in Manhattan, other times walking home late at night—the words of the Mass surface unbidden. Gloria in excelsis Deo… Credo in unum Deum… Pater noster…Salve Regina. The phrases loop in my mind with the steadiness of a heartbeat, and I believe that they are not there because I am consciously recalling them, but because they have taken root.

In the noise of New York, where every corner seems to demand alertness, these words are not merely religious nostalgia. They serve as a kind of anchor and belong to no particular time of day. They are both constant and untimely, a presence outside the clock....

I believe the decline of Latin in Catholic life is not merely a matter of preference or tradition. It is a spiritual loss. Without it, we risk becoming too at home in our worship, too certain that God must always speak to us in our own language. We risk losing the humility and wonder that come with kneeling before a God who is not domesticated by our speech....

In a world of noise, Latin is the Church’s whisper. In a world of fragmentation, it is her common tongue. In a world of hurry, it is her steady breath.

Comparing Innocent, Albert, and Aquinas

Rev. Dominik Pascal Witkowski’s study The Sacramental Signification in the Rite of the Holy Mass: The Synthesis of St. Thomas Aquinas in Comparison with Pope Innocent III and St. Albert the Great offers a systematic and comparative account of three major medieval commentaries on the rite of the Holy Mass: St. Thomas Aquinas’ exposition in the Summa theologiæ, Pope Innocent III’s De sacro altaris mysterio, and the De mysterio missæ attributed to St. Albert the Great. At its centre stands the Roman Canon—the core of the Latin Mass tradition—whose enduring liturgical use prompted centuries of theological reflection.

Foley on the Roman Canon

Michael Foley continues his marvelous series on the Latin texts of the Traditional Roman Rite:

• The Communicantes and its wonderful list of saints.

• “The Hanc igitur is a recognizable feature of the Mass because the bells are rung when it is begun, while the priest stretches his hands over the oblata, his right thumb forming the sign of the cross over his left. This action imitates that of the Hebrew priest stretching his hands over the Old Testament scapegoat, which ritually took on the sins of the people and was subsequently sacrificed. (see Lev. 16, 11-14) Originally, lots were cast to determine which of two goats would be the scapegoat and which would be set free in the wilderness. The arrangement is evocative of the fickle crowd choosing Barabbas over Jesus, on whom was laid the iniquity of us all. (see Is. 53, 6).”

Foley says that debates over the epiclesis in the Roman Rite continue unresolved, but I believe he is mistaken. It is clear that there is no “descending epiclesis” of the Byzantine sort in the Roman Rite, but scholars have spoken of an “ascending epiclesis” in the “Supplices te rogamus,” which is not pneumatological in character, but Christological. To read more, see this article.

• The Quam oblationem shows Foley at his best, teasing out layers of meaning from the Latin that would defy any single vernacular translation.

MC hand gesture

Over at New Liturgical Movement, I look into the origins of the familiar “hand-clasp” gesture used by many masters of ceremonies. A surprising amount of speculation and lack of concrete facts…

Barron on target!

In “A European Evangelical Adventure,” the bishop tells us why he’s happy that better architecture is back:

What struck me over and again as I toured these [Gothic Cathedrals] was how different they are from the churches constructed when I was coming of age. In the 1960s and 1970s, the aesthetic governing ecclesiastical architecture was basically Bauhaus modernism: brick walls, no decoration, a paucity of visual symbols, a hyper-stress on the value of the congregation over the church building. In illustration of that last point, I might draw attention to a sentiment expressed in a very influential liturgical document from the seventies to the effect that the building itself is but the “‘skin’ for a liturgical action.” Well, I think it’s fair to say that the architects of the great Gothic cathedrals would have had no truck with any of that. For them, the cathedral was meant to be a symbolic representation of heaven and of the transfigured earth envisioned by the author of the book of Revelation. That is why they are filled with angels, saints, and idealized elements of nature and why their stained glass is meant to resemble the jeweled walls of the heavenly Jerusalem. How wonderful that church architects with a sensibility more medieval than modernist are on the rise today.

Dualism and wholeness

Ross Arlen Tieken has a very profound essay about what he’s learned from teaching kids these days, and his words, to my mind, have an obvious and extensive application to liturgical discussions:

Of all the lessons and exercises that I do with my students, none have been so effective at helping them become healthier, holier, and more whole than emphasizing the unity of internal and external realities. Mental prayer is begun by noticing our posture, the location of our bodies in space, our breathing. When singing, I ask them to feel their throats. When it is not painfully hot outside, I take them for a walk while praying. We stand and stretch, we look each other in the eyes when speaking, we rise when the priest walks in. These are not empty rituals but active engagement of both body and mind, an approach that is backed up by decades of scientific pedagogy.

But their worldview is splintered. On the one hand, they are taught that kneeling when everyone else is kneeling in Mass is of utmost importance, but on the other hand, certain adults can give them the impression that kneeling for the Eucharist is merely a matter of preference. The same people who talk to them about marriage can only be between a man and woman might have motivational posters and “quotes of the day” that tell kids to “Be whoever you want to be.” Parents of my students tell them unequivocally that they love them just the way they are, but then proceed to talk exclusively about their children’s accomplishments. The media is the worst, though. The popular messaging of perfect personal autonomy, authenticity, and expression is paired with an incitement to buy products which everyone else has. The students are pulled constantly between the directive to “express yourself” and the idea that “it’s what’s on the inside that counts”.

Because of this constant tug-of-war, I spend the vast majority of my time in class knitting back together the separation of interior and exterior that has been inflicted on our children. Although the actual dispute is whether there is or is not a separation between exterior and interior, the students (and parents, and teachers) believe that the dispute is whether the interior or the exterior actually matters. In other words, they are Cartesians by default. They are utterly caught up in a worldview that they cannot even sense. They have inherited many lies about their humanity, and their place in it.

All the liturgical reformers were children of the Enlightenment, rationalists and Cartesians in a hundred ways. They engineered the disenchantment of ritual inherited from the ages of faith. The metaphysical-epistemic battle we are fighting is centuries old, and that is part of why it seems so overwhelming at times. Indeed, the Novus Ordo is the small visible tip of a huge hidden iceberg.

Kmita’s Lavish Wealth

My friend, fellow philosopher, and fellow Substack author Robert Lazu Kmita has lately been a veritable fountain of wisdom. I cannot recommend his work too highly. Here are some highlights just from the past two weeks (!).

In “A Catastrophic Crisis: the Exodus of Young Catholics and the Contraceptive Mentality,” Kmita notes that the statistics about the percentage of Catholic parents using contraception and the percentage of Catholic children lapsing is roughly the same. He proposes that the connection is rather direct: since the grace of matrimony is no longer efficacious among those who are living in continual mortal sin, and the witness of a coherent faith and life is absent when children are not welcomed as gifts of God, it makes sense that the children who do exist would intuit the practical apostasy and make it their own.

On the symbolism of bees:

Creatures with a distinctly positive character, presented to us in the context of the great feast of the Resurrection of our Lord, are the bees. What immediately caught my attention is their relationship with that symbolic object—the Paschal candle—which carries the light of the Resurrection: an extremely important symbol in the context of the liturgical ceremonies of Holy Saturday. All these elements—the bees, their queen, the wax, the light—are part of a scenario that, ideally, presents us with a complete picture where we discern all the details of the Christian life of holiness lived within the Church context.

On “The Fall, the Universe of Sacred Symbols, and the Holy Liturgy”:

First, in the midst of the chaos of a world marked by flow, becoming, and death, God consecrates a place. With this begins the construction of the temple/church: a place is sanctified where the building will stand—a construction that itself contains the entire universe of divine symbols. This consecration implies, first of all, the delimitation of a sacred space from the mundane, profane space. After this delimitation the construction can begin. Usually associated with the ritual of laying the cornerstone, that place becomes the consecrated space of the Church.

This space is radically separated from what lies outside—the profane space of the surrounding chaotic world. That is why, traditionally, churches have no windows (eventually, just stained glass windows, which have a special meaning): to mark the separation between the profane and the sacred, between a world that wants to be self-sufficient, without any reference to God, and a place which is an icon of the celestial Jerusalem—the otherworld—depicted in Saint John’s Revelation. Furthermore, the minds of those attending the Holy Liturgy must be lifted, through contemplation, to the heavenly realities presented in the sacred ceremonies. This elevation must be supported by withdrawing and separating from the world of temptations and demons, often depicted on the exteriors of Gothic churches.

On the divine origin of worship: “Mysteries of the Bible: God’s Stone Altar and Technology.”

On “Saint Thomas Aquinas’ Resignation”:

Ordained by Divine Providence, Saint Thomas’s ecstasy is also meant to draw our attention to the hidden life of the one who received such a royal gift. His reverence at Holy Liturgy, his extraordinary concentration and recollection in prayer, his love of prayer and composition of such “poems” (perhaps on par with the Psalms of King David), his childlike trust in the excellence of his brethren in the order, his aristocratic manners, his perfect obedience, his love of poverty, his passion for sacred music—all these are aspects of religious life in which, out of love for his true King, Saint Thomas excelled at least as much as in his speculative abilities.

Calendar debates, especially concernined Julian vs. Gregorian, are more significant than one might initially suppose, as Kmita brings out in “The Eastern Orthodox Calendar Schism,” which furnishes a marvelous example of Eastern stubbornness and disarray.

A very rich article on numerology and the Antichrist, “Mystical Math: the Number of the Beast”:

The key number of the Sacrament of Confirmation is “7.” Therefore, the number of the Holy Spirit, so to speak, is “7” while the key number of the Antichrist is “6.” Three sevens indicate the fullness of the perfection of Christian saints whose bodies, souls, and minds are harmoniously organized through the work of the seven gifts of the Holy Spirit. Similarly, the bodies, souls, and minds of those who, through their own deeds dictated by their wills oriented by minds darkened by passions, by vices, come under the power of the Antichrist and the dragon, are dominated by the incompleteness of the number “6”—which is like a being without a “head.”

Robert Lazu Kmita is among the most intellectually fertile Catholic authors writing today. Well worth following.

Random Bits and Pieces

Demographic crisis

Phil Lawler doesn’t mention it here (“Our Civilization’s Death Wish”), but if I remember correctly, Oswald Spengler pointed out that all civilizations at their peak of wealth and refinement practice contraception and favor momentary hedonism over future-oriented virtues, thus preparing them for being conquered by the next empire-in-embryo.

What is necessary, as soon as possible, is to outlaw birth control, as Mary Proffit Kimmel argues in “Make Birth Control Illegal Again.” It was once illegal everywhere, because it was understood to be contrary to the natural law and to the common good.

I recommend, for those interested, Fr. Pius Mary Noonan's pamphlet Barren Beds Over All Tellus: The Catholic Case Against Contraception.

Veganism is finally dying

So argues Lauren Smith in her amusing article “People Have Lost Their Appetite for Veganism.”

Correcting Monty Python

Modern entertainment outlets and stories of the Middle Ages are replete with examples of tyrannical nobles mistreating their serfs. Was this really so common? Aaron Pattee sets the record straight.

AI madness continues

Now there are “AI companions” for lonely teenagers. What could possibly go wrong? Similarly, a Catholic company is about to launch an app that uses AI to impersonate saints, to whom you can pose your questions; or you can set up various saints to “debate” one another. In a Walker-Percy-style twist, the company calls itself “Magisterium AI.”

Newman vindicated again and again

In “Newman and the Modernists Compared,” Unam Sanctam Catholicam tackling the nonsense that Newman is some sort of proto-Modernist.

In this essay, we will compare Newman's development of doctrine with the theory proposed by George Tyrrell (1861-1909), the Anglo-Irish priest and infamous Modernist. Tyrrell provides a suitable comparison to Newman, as he wrote extensively on the development of Christian doctrine and even commented on Newman's ideas.

And “Pius X Vindicates John Henry Newman.”

George MacDonald appreciation

Robin Phillips asks:

Who was this man that had such a formative influence on C.S. Lewis? What was his vision of the world? And what was the peculiar quality of MacDonald’s mythmaking that gave his art this baptismal quality? These are some questions this article will seek to answer. The first half will offer a sketch of MacDonald’s life, examining the unique experiences that led to his sacramental vision that has influenced so many thinkers and mythmakers since. The second half will explore key elements of MacDonald’s outlook, including his theory of imagination, his theology of beauty, and the re-enchanting quality of his mythmaking.

Judas in Gethsemane

An anonymous Substack writer named Filemonas offers a profound meditation on the encounter between Jesus and Judas in the garden of Gethsemane:

After the miracles that he has witnessed, including Jesus’s stunning mastery over the forces of nature, Judas would have to be insane or delusional not to acknowledge Jesus’s divinity. He is not insane or delusional; rather, he cannot acknowledge Jesus’s divine lordship over him. He is echoing Satan’s “non serviam” to the very same God. Just like Satan, Judas knows very well not only that God exists, but who he is. Judas is not satisfied with a straightforward, businesslike betrayal; he needs to engage in mockery. “Greetings Rabbi!” can be just as accurately translated as “Hail Teacher!” Judas isn’t just selling out Jesus as a person; he is mocking the Truth that Jesus embodies and teaches. Mockery is superiority. Judas has accepted the Serpent’s temptation of “ye shall be as gods knowing good and evil” from that other garden long ago and is gloating over God.

Immigration’s error

“Using immigration as a solution to the demographic crisis only works if you see a nation as just an economic unit where people are interchangeable,” argues Mark Krikorian. That’s why it’s fantastic to see Nigel Farage unveiling plans for the UK to leave the European Convention on Human Rights, create new detention centres, and charter daily deportation flights. May the rightward surge continue.

A loaded word

An interesting article by Ben Reinhard on what the term “Christendom” means and why it's appropriate to continue to use this term to express that which we desire.

Was Jesus a “faithful Jew”?

Philip Primeau argues no; Gideon Lazar argues yes.

Eternal Christendom

Eternal Christendom is one of the most valuable, exciting, and promising initatives in the entire Catholic world. I urge you to watch this 6-minute video to have a sense of the mighty plans ahead. Strongly recommended as a tithing option, for reasons that I think will become apparent:

The Spanish pilgrimage

A 5-minute video digest of the Covadonga pilgrimage that I was privileged to be a part of, as written up last week, has just been released:

And as an envoi…

The cat approves. (Sent to me by a friend.)