The Carthusian Liturgy

Amongst the great religious orders of the Latin Church there are five who retain their own form of Mass: The Carmelites (Calced), The Carthusians, The Cistercians, The Dominicans and the Norbertines. Below is a rare photo of Low Mass in the Carthursian Rite.

Beauty and the Liturgy

POPE BENEDICT XVI

35. This relationship between creed and worship is evidenced in a particular way by the rich theological and liturgical category of beauty. Like the rest of Christian Revelation, the liturgy is inherently linked to beauty: it is veritatis splendor. The liturgy is a radiant expression of the paschal mystery, in which Christ draws us to himself and calls us to communion. As Saint Bonaventure would say, in Jesus we contemplate beauty and splendour at their source. (106) This is no mere aestheticism, but the concrete way in which the truth of God's love in Christ encounters us, attracts us and delights us, enabling us to emerge from ourselves and drawing us towards our true vocation, which is love. (107) God allows himself to be glimpsed first in creation, in the beauty and harmony of the cosmos (cf. Wis 13:5; Rom 1:19- 20). In the Old Testament we see many signs of the grandeur of God's power as he manifests his glory in his wondrous deeds among the Chosen People (cf. Ex 14; 16:10; 24:12-18; Num 14:20- 23). In the New Testament this epiphany of beauty reaches definitive fulfilment in God's revelation in Jesus Christ: (108) Christ is the full manifestation of the glory of God. In the glorification of the Son, the Father's glory shines forth and is communicated (cf. Jn 1:14; 8:54; 12:28; 17:1). Yet this beauty is not simply a harmony of proportion and form; "the fairest of the sons of men" (Ps 45[44]:3) is also, mysteriously, the one "who had no form or comeliness that we should look at him, and no beauty that we should desire him" (Is 53:2). Jesus Christ shows us how the truth of love can transform even the dark mystery of death into the radiant light of the resurrection. Here the splendour of God's glory surpasses all worldly beauty.
The truest beauty is the love of God, who definitively revealed himself to us in the paschal mystery.

The beauty of the liturgy is part of this mystery; it is a sublime expression of God's glory and, in a certain sense, a glimpse of heaven on earth. The memorial of Jesus' redemptive sacrifice contains something of that beauty which Peter, James and John beheld when the Master, making his way to Jerusalem, was transfigured before their eyes (cf. Mk 9:2). Beauty, then, is not mere decoration, but rather an essential element of the liturgical action, since it is an attribute of God himself and his revelation. These considerations should make us realize the care which is needed, if the liturgical action is to reflect its innate splendour.

-- Sacramentum Caritatis

The pitfalls of "Creative Liturgy"

From RORATE-CEALI Blog

From an interview with Msgr. Nicola Bux published last month in the Italian blogosphere:


Then, not too surprisingly, he affirms: “The sense of sin has been weakened by the dilution of the sacrality of the liturgy. There is a close link between ethos and worship.” What do you mean? “That we today have lost values because we often do not give God a worthy worship at Mass. And many atheists ought also to live as if God exists.” (E molti anche atei dovrebbero vivere come se Dio esistesse) But let us return to the liturgical aspect: “People need the sense of the sacred in order to discover God. Sin is a negation of God, but if even when assisting Mass we live far from God, how is it then possible to avoid sin?” Then he specifies: “The liturgy is sacred, divine and glorious; it is vertical in the sense of tending towards the High, towards Beauty and Heaven. It is not something circular or horizontal, some kind of sports stadium, assembly or party. The idea of a fruitful and creative liturgy inevitably loses the sense of the sacred and therefore alienates us from God and draws us near to sin. The people, who are much more intelligent than one gives them credit for, perceive where the sacred is. It is not something abstract but a concrete thing. And it says so in the Gospel. "The woman wished to touch the cloak of Christ. In order to defeat sin, there is a need for certain, unequivocal and firm signs, not fluctuating, unstable ones.”



Therefore creative liturgy creates damage: “Many, especially after the Council, ceded to this unhealthy notion of creativity, but it was not the fault of the Council, as the Council never abrogated or cancelled the liturgy of all times (liturgia di sempre). A sloppy, manipulated and -- even worse – violated Mass is an obstacle to the sacred and alienates the people from the Church. To celebrate creative Masses is a profanation of the sense of the sacred, because it brings us away from God. The minister of the cult must never be an actor, often a mediocre one at that and a source of scandal, but should think that his principal duty is to serve God, never his own unbridled desire to play the protagonist. Only by recuperating or restoring a correct vertical liturgy, can we limit in part the effects of sin, thus rediscovering God.”

Gherardini on Vatican II

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"There was a heedless and unfounded optimism; the capsizing of perspective, which no longer came from above towards what was below, but vice versa with a perspective starting from an unlimited confidence in man; the clouding of the sacred; a false and dangerous irenicism; the spirit of good nature and cooperation with opposing forces; the deconsecration of, and simultaneously, the adoration of certain aspects of creation - above all, of freedom. The Trojan horse was not, properly speaking, the collection of the conciliar documents, but the ideas of certain pressure groups which succeeded in infiltrating the conciliar hall and determining the line of the progressive maturation which consequently flowed out into the post-conciliar culture. The 'sin' of the Council Fathers, therefore, at least the vast majority of them, was not of the formal type 'of full recognition and deliberate consent', but rather the material sin of 'lack of recognition', of levity, of superficial and exaggerated optimism, of good faith on a personal level."

The Truth begins to emerge

From the New York Times -
the balance which was missing from the London Times

Some blame the scandals on Pope Benedict XVI. But Joseph Ratzinger is the man who, weeks before his accession to the papacy five years ago, spoke blisteringly on Good Friday of the "filth" in the church. Days later on the streets of Rome, the Italian newspaper La Stampa reported, Cardinal Ratzinger bumped into a curial monsignor who chided him for his sharp words. The cardinal replied, "You weren't born yesterday, you understand what I'm talking about, you know what it means. We priests. We priests!" The most reliable commentary on Pope Benedict's role in the scandals came from John Allen of the National Catholic Reporter, who argues that once Benedict came to fully understand the scope of the crisis, in 2003, he made the church's first real toward coming to grips with it.


As for his predecessor, John Paul the Great, about whom I wrote an admiring book which recounts some of the scandals—I spent a grim 2003 going through the depositions of Massachusetts clergy—one fact seems to me pre-eminent. For Pope John Paul II, the scandals would have been unimaginable—literally not imaginable. He had come of age in an era and place (Poland in the 1930s, '40s and '50s) of heroic priests. They were great men; they suffered. He had seen how the Nazis and later the communists had attempted to undermine the church and tear people away from it, sometimes through slander. They did this because the great force arrayed against them was the Catholic Church. John Paul, his mind, psyche and soul having been forged in that world, might well have seen the church's recent accusers as spreaders of slander. Because priests don't act like that, it's not imaginable. And he'd seen it before, only now it wasn't Nazism or communism attempting to kill the church with lies, but modernity and its soulless media.

Only they weren't lies.

There are three great groups of victims in this story. The first and most obvious, the children who were abused, who trusted, were preyed upon and bear the burden through life. The second group is the good priests and good nuns, the great leaders of the church in the day to day, who save the poor, teach the immigrant, and, literally, save lives. They have been stigmatized when they deserve to be lionized. And the third group is the Catholics in the pews—the heroic Catholics of America and now Europe, the hardy souls who in spite of what has been done to their church are still there, still making parish life possible, who hold high the flag, their faith unshaken. No one thanks those Catholics, sees their heroism, respects their patience and fidelity. The world thinks they're stupid. They are not stupid, and with their prayers they keep the world going, and the old church too.

Wall Street Journal