Ideas Have Liturgical Consequences | Reverend Brian Van Hove, S.J. | A Review of "Mass and Modernity" by
Jonathan Robinson of the Oratory | Ignatius Insight
Ideas Have Liturgical Consequences | Reverend Brian Van Hove, S.J. | A Review of The Mass
and Modernity: Walking to Heaven Backward (Ignatius Press, 2005), by Jonathan Robinson of the Oratory | Ignatius Insight
http://www.ignatiusinsight.com/features2010/bvanhove_robinson_sept2010.asp
Editor's Note: This review was originally published in Antiphon, vol. 10, no 1 (2006): 117-119.
Readers who enjoyed Jonathan Robinson's Spiritual Combat Revisited in 2003, surely thrilled to The Mass and
Modernity in 2005.This treatment of liturgical landscape is what we
needed forty years ago, when the implementation of the reform was just beginning.
On the other hand, it took us these forty years finally to understand certain factors
related to the reform's failure. Not even Father Robinson could have written
this book in 1965 when the Council ended. Only now do we have enough data and
the pleasure of hindsight.
Robinson explains
what he is doing. He is completing the historical work of Aidan Nichols, O.P.,
especially in Looking at the Liturgy. [1] The two books go together. Both Robinson
and Nichols orient us toward a grasp of the crisis in Catholic liturgy, and of
the fitful, unfulfilled reform attempted since the Second Vatican Council.
These studies also
give notes of hope amidst the bleakness, the chief of which is understanding
itself. Nothing like light to cheer us. But on the political, practical, and
pastoral levels, there is very little to hope for. Robinson says candidly: "The
present state of the liturgy reflects the alienation of modern Catholic thought
and practice from the tradition of the Church; but now it also contributes to
it." [2]
Robinson
gives us a philosophical assessment. Ideas come from somewhere, and all ideas
have a history. Ideas born in the eighteenth century Enlightenment, and
especially the ideas of German philosophers later in the nineteenth century,
influenced our world pervasively. The Old Liturgical Movement before the
Council seemed blissfully unaware of the climate created by modernity. [3] The way we think and feel about community comes from these sources to a greater
degree than the liturgical reformers, and the ecclesiastical authorities who supported
them, were aware of. Once Alexander Schmemann was reported to have said that
the Catholic Church, which valiantly held out for so long, succumbed to
modernity just as this modernity itself was about to collapse. This is the
position Robinson takes in a 377-page explanation. He relies for insights on
Iris Murdoch and Charles Taylor, both critics of modernity. He also mentions
that some of the secondary followers of Karl Rahner and Bernard Longergan are
to blame for part of the current catastrophe.
A search for creativity and community were dominant projects in "reform-minded" Catholic
circles in the 1960s and beyond. In itself, this might not have been bad. But
Robinson shows that a major reflection on community had already gone on in the
century before. It came from a decidedly non-Christian source, namely G.W.F.
Hegel, who taught that the community was god, [4] and that "God" was not
fully "God" without the community. Robinson calls Hegel "the source of the
ideas that have done most damage to the Church." [5] This secular notion of
community made its way into the Church, perhaps unconsciously, and today we do
not seem able to interpret the consequences. Those lacking the philosophical
erudition of Robinson still do not recognize the problem that has been generated. [6]
In some cases, they deliberately insert modernity to supplant the inherited
Christian tradition.
Writers who
exclaim that "we are the Body of Christ" such that they compromise or downgrade
transubstantiation and the tradition of sacramental realism, are influenced by
Hegel whether they acknowledge it or not. Robinson points to German Martinez as
an author in whom the success of the Enlightenment project is complete. [7] He says Martinez's account of the Paschal Mystery has nothing to do with the understanding
of the Paschal Mystery found in the Catechism of the Catholic Church. [8]
Frequently, contemporary
seminarians desire a complete return of the Old Rite--a return to that point
"before everything went wrong". Their instincts are laudable, and they speak up
because they have been deprived of their rightful heritage. But once again
Robinson provides needed wisdom, and he speaks as a parish priest as well as a
scholar.
He believes the
Old Liturgical Movement had some salutary goals. Robinson would keep the Mass
readings in the vernacular, and read them facing the people. In short, with
some adjustment, the New Rite (1969) should and can look much like the Old Rite
(1962). The Eucharistic Prayers should be in Latin, [9] and
both people and priest should face together "Ad Dominum". This is the Mass as
it is celebrated today by the pope in his household chapel, and Robinson would
merely universalize it. The depth, focus, theology, and transcendence of the
Old Rite can be maintained while preserving some of the secondary gains of the
New Rite's structure which has enjoyed the approbation of the highest
ecclesiastical authorities. This way we can say that newer forms evolve
organically (and gently!) from older forms. We could also become proud to say
that we are sticking to a stricter and more faithful interpretation of Sacrosanctum
concilium. [10]
We need a liturgy to
satisfy the soul, to point us beyond the pain of the world, and to unite us
more intimately to Christ's sacrifice. This is what the new crop of seminarians
is trying to say by advocating a return to the Old Rite. They do not want to be
priests who must perform as if on stage, who "get in the way" of the
congregation's worship. The Holy Sacrifice of the Mass is a doctrinal reality
in history. It exists in the documents of the Council, in our liturgical books
and in our implementing documents, and in the Catechism, if only we rectify our ways of interpreting them.
The ambiguities in the law itself can easily be corrected by a critical
rethinking of the principles which are at stake in liturgy. This is what the
Nichols-Robinson books help us to do.
Robinson also
recommends a re-reading of Dionysius [11] the Areopagite for some indications
of timeless liturgical principles. [12] Obviously, the spate of books on the
liturgy by Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger in the 1990s also help, and they are all available
in translation.
The very existence
of any notion of "creativity" in liturgy shows a problem. [13] The
idea of "creativity" only reinforces the thought that the liturgy is something
"we create" rather than something given to us to lift us aloft into a mystery
too sublime for words. In his reference to the Old versus the New Rite,
Robinson says that "What the Old Rite possessed was a clear lesson in the
transcendence of God; while the way the Novus Ordo is often celebrated puts the community in the place
of this reference to God." [14]
Jonathan Robinson
states that "Modern liturgical practices are defective, and they are in place,
and they reinforce people's understanding both of their faith and of how the
faith should relate to the modern world. This means that the 'reform of the
reform' will be a long, hard business. How it will happen is at best opaque." [15]
One way in which
'the reform of the reform' will happen is if more people read the works of
Aidan Nichols and Jonathan Robinson. The new reform will not happen until as
many people as possible see the real problems.
ENDNOTES:
[1] Aidan Nichols, Looking at the
Liturgy. San Francisco: Ignatius Press,
1996. ISBN 0898705924.
[2] Robinson, The Mass and Modernity, 343. Henceforth MM.
[3] One of the tasks of Nichols's historical research
is to uncover the weaknesses and navet of some early pioneers of the first
liturgical movement which dates from the mid-nineteenth century.
[4] MM, 23 and passim.
[5] Ibid., 119.
[6] For an illustration see Nathan
Mitchell, "The Amen Corner, 'Plenty Good Room': The Dignity of the Assembly", Worship 70, no. 1 (January 1996), 65. Also John Foley, Creativity
and the Roots of Liturgy, 223, n. 58.
Washington, D.C. : The Pastoral Press, 1994. ISBN: 1569290156.
[7] German Martinez, Signs of
Freedom: Theology of the Christian Sacraments.
Mahwah, N.J.: Paulist Press, 2003. ISBN 0809141604.
[8] MM, 242.
[9] Which he calls "archaic" or
"hierarchic" but perhaps he meant to say "hieratic". See MM, 316, 336. Nowhere does Robinson address the
derivative question of how liturgical Latin is to be pronounced by a usually
half-educated clergy. An Italianate accent is beautiful, but how many American
priests can imitate it successfully? Neither does Robinson answer the technical
question of why the Old Rite has never been translated into elegant, poetic
vernaculars.
[10] MM,
335.
[11] Robinson does not use the
orthography of Andrew Louth's "Denys".
[12] MM, 269ff.
[13] See for example Guy-Marie Oury, La
Crativit liturgique, chap. IV, 52-68.
Trois-Rivires, P.Q., Canada: ditions du Bien Public, 1977; also Foley, Creativity, passim,
and Susan Benofy's commentary on Foley at
http://www.ewtn.com/library/LITURGY/MMM.TXT.
[14] MM, 237. Robinson is not the first to say this. See Ralph Keifer, To
Give Thanks and Praise: General Instruction of the Roman Missal, 99-100. Washington, D.C.: National Association of
Pastoral Musicians, 1980, ISBN 0960237828; quoted in Foley, Creativity, 272, n. 20. The difference is that what for
Robinson is a tragedy is for Keifer-Foley an opportunity for creativity or
novelty in Catholic worship.
[15] MM, 343.
Related Ignatius Insight Articles and Book Excerpts:
• Walking To Heaven Backward | Interview with Father Jonathan Robinson of the Oratory
• The Rotten Fruits of a Fashionable, Unserious Liturgist | Rev. Brian Van Hove, S.J.
• The Preface to The Old Mass and The New: Explaining the Motu Proprio Summorum Pontificum of Pope Benedict XVI | Bishop Marc Aillet
• Foreword to U.M. Lang's Turning Towards the Lord: Orientation in Liturgical Prayer | Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger
• The Reform of the Liturgy and the Position of the Celebrant at the Altar | Uwe Michael
Lang | From Turning Towards the Lord: Orientation in Liturgical Prayer (2nd edition)
• The Altar and the Direction of Liturgical Prayer | Excerpt from The Spirit of the Liturgy | Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger
• How Should We Worship? | Preface to The Organic Development of the Liturgy
by Alcuin Reid, O.S.B. | by Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger
• Learning the Liturgy From the Saints | An Interview with Fr. Thomas Crean, O.P., author of The Mass and the Saints
• The Mass of Vatican II | Fr. Joseph Fessio, S.J.
• Does Christianity Need A Liturgy? | Martin Mosebach |
From The Heresy of Formlessness: The Roman Liturgy and Its Enemy
• Music and Liturgy |
Excerpt from The Spirit of the Liturgy | Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger
• Rite and Liturgy | Denis Crouan, STD
• The Liturgy Lived: The Divinization of Man | Jean Corbon, OP
• The Latin Mass: Old Rites and New Rites in Today's World | Anthony E. Clark, Ph.D.
• Worshipping at the Feet of the Lord: Pope Benedict XVI and the
Liturgy | Anthony E. Clark, Ph.D.
• Reflections On Saying Mass (And Saying It Correctly) |
Fr. James V. Schall, S. J.
• Liturgy, Catechesis, and Conversion | Barbara Morgan
Father Brian Van Hove, S.J., is the Chaplain to the Religious Sisters of Mercy of Alma, Michigan.
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