Homogeneous Liturgical Aesthetics? Or an Actual Sense of Form?

This book review at the always-able-to-get-up-my-dander Praytell blog offers an interesting critique of traditionalism, traditional liturgy, and the traditional “aesthetic.”  It makes a distinction between so-called “performatism” and “authentic” liturgical/aesthetic experience as defined by von Balthasar.  The former is a philosophy of reaction against postmodernist subjectivity in aesthetic expression, wherein the accurate performance of ritual, rubrics, and rules are elevated as the chief experience of aesthetic.  She argues that Tridentine Catholicism elevates a certain style of Catholic worship as part of its performatism – a high church, lace-and-damask, incense-filled, cappa magna-flaunting style that seems to fit into one category of aesthetics, which rejects any aesthetic outside of that cookie cutter model, and which emphasizes following rules and high church “style” over genuine religious feeling.  A proper understanding, she argues, comes somewhere in between the extremes of performatism and the excesses of post-Vatican II, postmodern liturgical experimentation.

As an analytical framework, I think the concept of performatism being the opposite of raw relativism has some merit, and I think there is some good that can be gleaned from von Balthasar’s view of aesthetics and the liturgy.  Nevertheless, I think the chief flaw of this piece is the oversimplification of the “aesthetic” of Tridentine Catholicism, making it seem much more homogeneous and rules-oriented than it genuinely is.  Further, I think she fails to appreciate the value of rubrics and rules for establishing a genuine form, a genuine objectivity.

The chief oversimplification comes at the beginning of the article:

What is curious about the various critiques, however, is the point at which many of them converge — that is in the specific style of liturgical aesthetics — despite the wide-range of approaches used to critique the reform. The style upheld is one of grandeur and ornate details, often inspired by gothic architecture from the high Medieval Ages to early Renaissance, along with the period’s elaborate rituals, processions, unutterable words and polyphony. The flaunting of the cappa magna, a surge of interest in Gregorian chant and renaissance polyphony, and the return of elaborate gothic chasubles are just three visible trends among many that reflect a growing adherence to such ideas of liturgical reform.

This is a gross oversimplification.  Renaissance polyphony, gothic churches and vestments, Gregorian Chant, the cappa magna, “grandeur” and “ornate details” are not all part of a single aesthetic.  They are characteristics of various kinds of liturgico/aesthetic expressions that all are capable of taking place within the context of the Missal of Pius V OR the Missal of Paul VI.  In 1950, a Mass in an Austrian cathedral would be different from a Mass in an Irish-American parish, which would be different from Mass in a Benedictine Monastery, which would be different from a Mass at St. Peter’s.  Choral music offers a different aesthetic experience from chant, which gives something different from orchestral music, which gives something different from a Low Mass.  Even the differences between super-Gothic Benedictine vestments and heavily Baroque Italian vestments can lead to widely differing aesthetic experience.

I think the reaction from the author comes from a lack of perspective.  The Novus Ordo (as discussed in Martin Mosebach’s book, The Heresy of Formlessness) lacks a kind of objective content that gives it a shape, character, reality; it is largely the fruit of the desires of the priest/people celebrating it, who can shape it into almost anything they wish.  It can be in Latin, ad orientem, with Gregorian chant; it can be in English, versus populum, with the proper chants replaced with hymns, with a million and one options for customization at the priest or parish’s disposal.  In effect, the raw relativism that has resulted since the Council is the unfortunate result of the lack of structure in the Novus Ordo.

In contrast, the Tridentine Rite (along with essentially every other Catholic and Orthodox rite) has of necessity a certain shape, content, and character that defines it as Roman, Latin, Tridentine, Western.  It has an stable musical structure of proper and ordinary chants that one MUST employ: introit, kyrie, gloria, gradual, alleluia, credo, offertory, sanctus, agnus dei, communion chant.  It has certain places for the celebrant and ministers to stand, specific words for them to speak or chant (without options!), a separate language to employ, and requires (through more specific rubrics of posture, tone of voice, direction of the priest’s eyes, the manner in which he holds his hands) a certain kind of bearing and manner of celebration.

I think the author perceives this central structure as an over-fixation on ritual, an elevation of a certain aesthetic as the norm rather than as something beautiful.  I would argue that a liturgical rite is hardly a liturgical rite without a central core structure, and that these structures are essential for avoiding the extremes of postmodern liturgical experimentation.  Many of these same accusations of performatism could be made against every Eastern Rite and every Orthodox Liturgy: homogeneity, emphasis on elaborate ritual, a fixation on certain styles of architecture, music, and vesture, etc.

I think her critique views certain stereotypes about early 20th Century American Tridentine Catholicism as normative for all of Tridentine Catholicism.  If her critique had been limited to American 1950′s Catholicism, I might agree with her more, to some extent.  There were genuine problems of priests being overly fixated on rubrics at the expense of a genuine Christian experience–how extensive is hard to say.  I also think that the presence of sappy, commercialized Christian art deriving from the French l’Art Saint-Sulpice contributed to a kind of homogeneity in American Catholic art.  Daniel Mitsui has a wonderful article about this on his blog.

Furthermore, the fact that the American Catholic experience was overwhelmingly Irish contributed to a kind of liturgical homogeneity.  Neo-Gothic and neo-Classical architectural styles like those popular in 19th Century Ireland found a wide acceptance with the born-in-19th-century-Ireland clergy.  They liked French-style chasubles with lacey albs and surplices, and this particular aesthetic came to be seen as the universal norm in America.

Nevertheless, I think the author is not solely criticizing this American aesthetic, one that I think is less-than-great and in some cases still enduring in the United States among traditionalist communities today.  For this reason, I can’t really agree with her critique.  I think, though, that her analytic framework is an interesting one.

George Weigel on Another Planet

George Weigel is an important American Catholic thinker, not least because of his well-known biography of Bl. John Paul II.  I find myself agreeing with him on most things, but he is genuinely infuriating sometimes.  He wrote this piece for First Things to commemorate the 50th anniversary of the Second Vatican Council.  It is one of the most rose-tinted pieces I’ve read about the state of the Church in the modern world.  Here’s a review of the more ridiculous statements.

The growing end of early 21st-century Catholicism is found in local churches that have embraced the Council’s evangelical intention and the Council’s teaching in full. Those who have done so have found both a new understanding of Word and Sacrament, the twin pillars of Catholic life, and a new passion for evangelism.

This is silly. The “growing end” of 21st century Catholicism didn’t find a “new understanding of Word and Sacrament” in Vatican II. If anything, the sectors of the Catholic Church that are growing have simply RETAINED the traditional notions of the Bible and the Sacraments that existed before the Council and which (as far as I can tell) the Council did not alter with any significantly “new understandings.”   The “growing end” of 21st century Catholicism includes the traditionalist movement, after all, which frankly is not profoundly influenced by Vatican II’s understandings of anything, even though (outside of the SSPX) the traditionalist movement largely accepts the Council as an act of the Magisterium.

Furthermore, I think the unspoken assumption that the pre-Vatican II Church lacked a passion for evangelism is unfair.  At least in the United States, the enthusiasm for young men to join missionary orders (e.g., the Maryknoll fathers), the well-known evangelization and charitable work of groups like the Legion of Mary and Catholic Action, and the numbers of converts to the Catholic Faith demonstrate that the passion for evangelism was actually alive and well in the Pre-Vatican II Church.

Thus the decade and a half after the Council ended on December 8, 1965, was a bit of a free-for-all, as varying interpretations of the Council (including appeals to an amorphous “spirit of Vatican II” that seems to have more in common with low-church Protestantism than with Catholicism) contended with each other in what amounted to an ecclesiastical civil war.

No, the entirety of the 50 years following the Council have been quite a free-for-all, not simply the first 15 years following the Council. The idea that a concept like “The Hermeneutic of Continuity” had to be enunciated by a Pope 43 years after the fact is proof that the silly season is still in pretty full swing.  It was significant for a Pope to argue that we should interpret the Council in light of tradition, with an aim towards reconciling what came before and what came after?  Really?  A hermeneutic like this should be the most obvious component to the interpretation of the Council, and yet we’re only just getting around to embracing it today, 50 years later.  And this hermeneutic of Pope Benedict’s is still highly controversial among academic theologians and much of the worldwide episcopate.  We need a generation or two of priests and bishops to die off before we can start alleging that the free-for-all is over.

Weigel also picks a very specific time period for the “free-for-all”: the decade and a half after Vatican II.  I.e., the papacy of Paul VI.  I am no great lover of the Papacy of Paul VI, but I think it’s inaccurate to act like Paul VI was a terrible Pope while John Paul was fantastic.  There was not some seismic shift between the two Papacies; John Paul largely continued Paul VI’s track record of appointing lousy bishops, and the decline of global Catholicism that started under Paul VI was only barely decelerated by John Paul.  The only major difference was in John Paul’s more aggressive stance against the Soviet Union, for which John Paul deserves high praise.

The Providence raised up two men of genius—John Paul II and Benedict XVI, both men of the Council—to give Vatican II an authoritative interpretation.

Have they really given such authoritative interpretations? Have they given authoritative interpretations to the decree on ecumenism? It seems like we have profound discomfort over where we stand, as best evidenced by the 3 Papal Assisi interfaith meetings. Sure, we know the principles: certain forms of interfaith prayer are allowed, religious indifferentism is to be avoided.  But in practice, what does this look like?  There were a lot of differences between the first Assisi visit in 1986 and the most recent one in 2011. Clearly Ratzinger was quite uncomfortable with how JP2 went about it in 1986, and he was not supremely comfortable with having the event in 2011, going to great lengths to emphasize that he didn’t want to promote religious indifferentism.

Furthermore, many prominent churchmen were opposed to one of the most important acts of ecumenism in the post-V2 period, Anglicanorum coetibus.  Cardinal Cormac Murphy-O’Connor led the more liberal wing of the Church in opposing its passage.  This raises the question: what should the point of ecumenism be?  Is it the unity of all Christians under the authority and Magisterium of the Catholic Church?  If you read the Ratzinger-penned Dominus Iesus, that would be the answer.  A disturbingly high number of Catholic bishops, nevertheless, would fail to agree with that statement.

Do we have any authoritative interpretation of Dignitatis humanae? It seems like Rome insists that DH did not change Catholic doctrine when talking to the SSPX, but hails it as a kind of breakthrough in other venues. No doctrinal clarification of any level of precision has been made explaining exactly HOW DH is consistent with prior teaching (and I sincerely believe that there are reasonable ways to reconcile DH with prior papal teaching, and that serious and responsible study of the question has proven fruitful).

What authoritative interpretation of Gaudium et spes is there? It’s pretty obvious that John Paul II was a lot more enthusiastic about its tone of optimism than Benedict has been.

What authoritative interpretation of Sacrosanctum concilium is there? Benedict obviously has a much different view of these things than JP2 did.  The most “authoritative” interpretation of Sacrosanctum concilium that exists is the Novus Ordo Missae and its General Instruction, which John Paul II fervently embraced, which Ratzinger criticized intensely, and which both Weigel and Ratzinger support reforming.

Moreover, in summoning the world Church to the Great Jubilee of 2000, John Paul II gave Catholicism the Pentecostal experience that John XXIII for which hoped [sic], thus preparing the world Church to enter the third millennium with great missionary energy: to ‘put out into the deep,’ as John Paul II put it, of the New Evangelization.

What Pentecostal experience did we have in 2000?  I must have been busy around that time, because it seems to me like Western Europe by that time had almost completely abandoned the Catholic faith, enormous percentages of Catholics in the West didn’t even go to Mass anymore, we were seeing the oncoming priest shortage-cliff that is going to take place in almost every Western country, huge swathes of Catholics in the West totally reject and in many cases fight politically against the Church’s teachings on abortion and contraception, Protestantism was making huge inroads into the Church in Latin America, and we were a few years away from the revelation of pederasty and homosexuality scandals that would devastate the Church in America, Germany, and Ireland, and enormously sap the Church of its public credibility and ability to engage in evangelization.  There is not a single objective factor one can analyze which would lead one to conclude that the Church was doing better in 2000 than in John XXIII’s pontificate.  The state of the Church in 2000 was clearly not what John XXIII hoped for.

Vatican II, which accelerated the great historical evolution of Catholicism from a Church of institutional maintenance to a Church of evangelical mission in a genuine and Spirit-led development of self-understanding, taught Catholics that they enter mission territory every day.

This is the most insulting and stupid part of the piece.  The pre-Vatican II Church was one of institutional maintenance, and not of evangelical mission?  I’m sorry, how many continents has the Post-Vatican II Church converted?  The Tridentine Church converted South and Central America, and laid the foundation for missionary work in Africa and Asia, without which the Vatican II Church would have absolutely nothing positive to point to.  If you think the Pre-Vatican II Church was just about institutional maintenance, look at the work of the White Fathers in Africa, the Maryknoll fathers in China, and scads of other magnificent teaching orders.

Furthermore, the very concept of “New Evangelization” is one of institutional maintenance.  It is focused on revitalizing currently-moribund Catholic populations where the Church already has a presence.  That is institutional maintenance.  That’s not to say it’s good or bad, but don’t act like it’s bad when the Tridentine Church does it but good when the Vatican II Church does.

Continuing with that theme, I am sick of this notion that the New Evangelization is genuinely new.  What were Tridentine Catholics like St. Jean Marie Vianney or St. Philip Neri doing, if not attempting to revive the moribund faith of European Catholics.  They were engaging in the New Evangelization of their own era.  St. Philip was a wonderful example of this, coming up with an innovative form of priestly life (the Congregation of the Oratory was the first Institute of Apostolic Life)  and exhausting himself in evangelizing the people of Rome through creative means (e.g., the Little Oratory, classes in Catholic doctrine, promotion of the arts).

End of rant.

A Medjugorje Evening

I had an interesting Thursday evening last week.  I learned from a friend that Marija Pavlovic-Lunetti, one of the “seers” of the alleged Marian apparitions taking place regularly for the last 31 years in Medjugorje, was coming to the Joyce Center at Notre Dame (our roughly 10,000-seat basketball arena) to have a Marian apparition, and the public was invited to pray with her and watch the apparition happen.  And guess who was called in to be the special investigative reporter for one of the student newspapers.  Yessiree bob. Yours truly.

Now, let’s get this out of the way.  I think the apparitions at Madge (which I’m going to call it because typing Medjugorje a million times will be a huge pain in the butt) are totally fake.  In fact, they anger me because I think a lot of it is motivated by getting money off of foreign devotees who are being deceived into believing in the apparitions.  I think this for a number of reasons.

First, every single local bishop from the Diocese of Mostar, where Madge is located (Medjugorje is a small town in southern Bosnia-Herzegovina), agrees with my skepticism.  Not one of them has given any sort of positive approval to the alleged apparitions, ever since they began in the early 80′s.  The Church has given the apparitions no approbation whatsoever; in fact, some of the local bishops have argued that nothing supernatural whatsoever is taking place there.

Secondly, the “seers” all have financial stakes in the operation.  All of them have made a good deal of money off of international speaking circuits wherein they talk about, promote, and actually receive the apparitions in front of audiences like this one.  All of them have ownership stakes in hotels and hostels where pilgrims can stay during their visits to Madge.  An entire travel and pilgrimage industry has been built up locally around the apparition sites, which has resulted in many people making a lot of money, including some unsavory types who one time kidnapped the local, disapproving-of-their-cash-cow bishop. Marija herself has a financial stake in the thing; in addition to her international talks, she owns a retreat center and residence in the back of her property for pilgrims to rent out.  That’s kinda like how Lourdes’ St. Bernadette and Fatima’s Lucia acted after their apparitions, only the exact opposite.  They both took vows of poverty as nuns.

Third, the whole thing has become a battlefront for some very weird, very local churchy politics in Bosnia-Herzegovina.  Basically it boils down to a longstanding conflict that the local Franciscans (who have served the people in the region for a very long time, almost exclusively) have had with the imposition of a regular diocesan and secular-clergy structure.  In 1975, the Holy Father issued a decree for how parishes in the region would be divided up between the bickering Franciscan and secular clergy.  This document was (ahem) not well received by some of the Franciscans.  Some of them felt they should have a larger role in this region where they had so long labored.

The supposed apparitions became a front for certain Franciscans to engage in rebellious activity against the local diocesan bishop.  The “spiritual directors” for the seers were all Franciscan priests, and the churches and shrines around which most of the activity of the seers is focused are run by the Franciscans.  In association with their promotion of the apparitions, some of these Franciscans have done insane stuff like hostile takeovers of parishes from the diocesan clergy. As a result, the Holy See stripped some of these Franciscans of their faculties and removed them from the clerical state, while their Franciscan superiors in Rome kicked them out of the order.  These rebellious priests draped themselves in the apparitions as a cloak of legitimacy to justify their unwillingness to submit to lawful authority.

Fourth, the people in charge of these events are pretty disingenuous about the apparitions’ level of approval.  They basically suck people into thinking the apparitions are “approved” by means of a few, not-well-substantiated, off-the-cuff, and highly unofficial quotes from Bl. John Paul II and/or Bl. Mother Theresa.  On the program of this very event at Notre Dame, they had a whole page of such quotes, none of which carried any sort of official weight for the purposes of the Church’s approval.  I would also note that Bl. John Paul and Bl. Mother Theresa are people who (in the Church’s estimation) displayed heroic virtue; this does not mean that they always displayed accurate judgment in evaluating whether something was a hoax or not (Exhibit A-Z: Marcial Maciel of the Legion of Christ, who duped JP2 for his entire life. Thankfully, he didn’t dupe Josef Ratzinger one bit.).

Fifth, and most importantly, there’s no way that Mary has said some of the things these people claim she has said.  Apparently, Mary has encouraged disobedience to the local diocesan bishop some 13 times.  Given that the most famous things Mary ever said were 1. silence, and 2. “Let it be done to me according to Thy will,” I’m guessing that disobedience to lawful authority isn’t generally her cup of tea.  Also something Mary probably wouldn’t do: threaten a local bishop.  Apparently she threatened that she and her Son would punish the local bishop if he didn’t approve the apparition.  Riiiiiiiiiiiiiiight.  The Medjugorje seers seemed to wise up after these “declarations” received bad press; they then began publishing messages from Our Lady that tread much safer ground: e.g., that Mass, the Rosary, the Eucharist, and Confession are Good Things.  Wow, thanks Mr. Obvious!

I could go into other stuff.  For example, during their ecstatic visions, the seers are allegedly unable to sense anything else going on around them.  In one of these visions, someone waved a hand in front of one seer’s face, which caused her to be startled.  She explained her jump by claiming that, in her ecstatic vision, Mary almost dropped the baby Jesus–that’s what she jumped at.  This makes sense because–as we all know–Mary sure can be a real clumsy oaf sometimes when she, the IMMACULATE MOTHER OF GOD AND MOST HOLY QUEEN OF HEAVEN is holding THE SECOND PERSON OF THE MOST HOLY TRINITY in her arms.

Nevertheless (if that enormous heap of steamy BS wasn’t enough to convince you) the most simple argument against being involved with Medjugorje is simply that it (drumroll)  IS.  NOT.  YET.  APPROVED.  BY.  THE.  CHURCH.  So why bother with it?  Why get so emotionally whipped up about it, only possibly to find out in a year or so that maybe it isn’t authentic (which may well happen, since the Vatican is investigating it currently)?  There are plenty of approved Marian apparitions, including a lot of apparitions that people don’t really read a lot about.  Here’s a whole list of them.  Go (Our Lady of) Knock yourself out!  (That started out as an inadvertent pun, and it became a lot more advertent in the second draft of this piece.)

“But Johnny, I know a priest who went over to Madge and he said he found his vocation there and it changed his life forever and there are so many good fruits!  How can you just dismiss the devotion these people have?!  You ought to be ashamed of yourself.  Ya irreverent little smartass.”

Well, look, I’m not unaware of the fact that a lot of good has come out of Madge.  It has changed lots of people for the better.  I’m pretty skeptical about the reports of miracles out there (lots of unsubstantiated talk about people’s rosaries turning to gold isn’t going to sway me), but it’s clear that good things happened and are happening there.

How to explain it?  Well, first of all, Christ’s expression that “[b]y your fruits you shall know them” is not, nor was it intended to be, a universally true statement in each and every scenario in each and every time everywhere.  Yes, it tends to be true.  St. Ignatius of Loyola was a good guy; he produced a lot of good fruits.  His order also produced a lot of not-so-great fruits, IF ya know what I mean (thank you, thank you, I’ll be here all week).  We’ve seen a number of times where bad fruits came out of well-intentioned efforts (e.g., the Crusades where the good motive of keeping the Holy Land free from Muslim conquest resulted in killing innocent civilians in Jerusalem and Constantinople), and where good fruits came from rotten efforts (e.g., the Legion of Christ, which produced a lot of holy priests and helped a lot of laity grow in holiness, but also were led by a corrupt, power-hungry child molester).  Basically, you’re going to have good fruits whenever well-intentioned people are going to Mass a lot, adoring the Blessed Sacrament a lot, going to Confession a lot, and praying the Rosary a lot.  Hence, the conversions, the spiritual fruits, etc.

I don’t wish to demean the people who believe in Madge.  Almost all of them are well-meaning, devout Catholics; as I walked into this event at the Joyce Center, I saw a lot of people I knew, some of them there with their large, Humanae vitae-following families.  I even saw a few people who are devoted to the Traditional Latin Mass–odd, since trads generally view Madge with outright disdain.  I have nothing but respect for people who have found something inspiring and beautiful from Medjugorje; nevertheless, their sincerity does not make them immune to deception.

Anyway, I walked into the Joyce Center at about 5:55pm with a friend of mine, whose identity I will protect by calling her LaSaundruh.  LaSaundruh and I walked to some seats, surrounded by about three or four thousand faithful–the Joyce Center was somewhere between 1/3 and 1/4 full.  Although the event was held at a college campus, I did not see a ton of college kids or single young adults.  Most of the crowd seemed to be younger married people, their children, and a large number of senior citizens.  Near the middle of the basketball court a dais was set up; on the right side was a crucifix, on the left side was a podium, and in the middle was a large statue of Our Lady.  To the left side of the dais was a piano which someone played in order to lead the people in singing hymns.  In front of the dais, in the center, was a prie-dieu set up for Marija to kneel during her vision.

The organizer of the event greeted us by letting us know that we would pray a rosary, and then Marija would talk a bit, lead us in a few prayers, and then go into her vision.  He also noted that there was going to be another event in the Joyce Center around 8 or so, and that they had promised the Joyce Center people that the crowd would depart by 7:45.

This small scheduling bit actually seemed like the most significant part of the night, to me.  Exactly how, I pondered, is this seer able to schedule when Mary will appear around the availability of the Joyce Center?  I’ve never heard of this concept of Mary “appearing” to someone via an extraordinary, ecstatic vision at the seer’s very whim and command.  I cannot comprehend how anyone would think that the very Mother of God, the Theotokos herself, the Queen of Heaven and Earth, would give a flying rip about another event occurring in the Joyce Center at 8pm.  I’d imagine that, generally, with authentic apparitions, the apparition-er is dictating the whens and wheres of the apparition to the apparition-ee.  Apparently, this is not the case with Our Lady of Madge, who can appear at the seers’ command, and can appear at essentially any public event that they schedule.

Anyway, there was nothing else particularly noteworthy about the event itself.  We prayed a rosary, with Marija (a modestly dressed, middle-aged woman with bleached blonde hair and a thick European accent) leading two decades of the rosary in Italian and her native Croatian.  We then all knelt down in anticipation of Marija receiving the apparition; in Croatian, she led the crowd in a series of Our Father’s, Hail Mary’s, and Glory Be’s, until she suddenly stopped in the middle of one of them.  This was the big moment.  The apparition had begun.

Everyone knelt silently for about five minutes.  Eventually, she made the sign of the cross and stood up to address the people.  Apparition over.  The whole thing felt almost like a liturgy, very well-scripted, with Marija acting as though she had done all this a thousand times before.

Well, I’m not sure if I’m just ascribing my own disappointment to everyone else’s expectations, but…she didn’t talk about what happened in the apparition.  She didn’t say what Mary had told her.  She did not mention the apparition at all, in fact.  She thanked everyone for inviting her, she talked about how so many wonderful Catholic things had been going on at Notre Dame, and…yep, that was about it.  I mean, I was miffed, and I don’t even think she was having an apparition.  I’d have to imagine everyone else was at least slightly disappointed.  Anyway, after that, the event was effectively over.

Well, almost.  It was then noted that the organizers were wondering if people would be willing to “donate” money to Marija to cover the costs of her flight out.  Not for any of the churches over in Medjugorje, not for some charitable organization, but to cover her flight.  A couple hundred check books came out.  Ah ha.  No wonder she was able to build that big retreat center.

At any rate, I think I’ve had my fill of Marian apparitions for now.  I hope the Holy See can finally give some clarity to this mess, which stewed for almost the entirety of Bl. John Paul’s pontificate without resolution.

I just pray that the people attached to Medjugorje have more faith in the Church than in these apparitions.  You don’t need Medjugorje, or even Lourdes or Fatima, to be an authentic, believing Catholic.  You do need the Church.  The Holy See established a commission to investigate the Medjugorje question, and this commission (led by Cardinal Camillo Ruini, a longtime friend and confidant of Ratzinger) will soon issue a ruling on the matter.  I fear that a negative ruling from the commission could be a cause of scandal and possibly even loss of faith for people who have become devoted to these apparitions.  I pray that the supporters of the Medjugorje movement will respond with humility and submission of their wills to Holy Mother Church, no matter what she decides.

Trent, Quo Primum, and “Divine Law”

This article really got my goat for some reason. I am writing to oppose its arguments only because the author has a JD after his name, and his bad arguments annoy me as a future lawyer. He also doesn’t sound like he studied St. Thomas’ jurisprudence closely enough. I will note that I make all these arguments as someone who loves the ancient Roman Rite and who seriously dislikes the Novus Ordo. I realize that these sorts of arguments affect only a very small percentage of the Catholic world, but here goes.

First, the author’s slippery and imprecise term “Divine Law” doesn’t fit into any of the four categories of law defined by St. Thomas: Eternal Law, Divine Positive Law, Natural Law, Human Positive Law. I think he’s trying to argue that the principle (one cannot change “received and approved liturgical rites” without sin) emanates from something other than the last category of human positive law. If it is human positive law, it is subject to change by the appropriate authority (i.e., the Pope, the Catholic Church). If it is not, then the Church has no right to change it. That is what he wants to argue.

Well, it is not a part of either the natural or eternal law. We cannot know, from unaided human reason evaluating man’s nature, that such a thing as the Mass even exists, nor that we have an obligation to worship God by one or another form, nor that we cannot change certain nonessential aspects of our manner of worshiping him. Since this is the case, it is not a matter of natural law. Since natural law is simply man’s participation in the eternal law, it isn’t part of the eternal law either. God did not imprint the 1570 or 1962 Missal into the very fabric of creation.

This principle doesn’t emanate from divine positive law either. It is nowhere commanded in divine revelation that only “received and approved liturgical rites” be used for the Eucharistic sacrifice, nor was the term “received and approved liturgical rites” defined anywhere in Revelation. Now, it is certainly true that the core essentials of all Catholic rites (the use of bread and wine, using Christ’s words of Institution) were decreed by Divine Positive law, but that’s all.

It is quite clear that this decree from Trent (that one cannot alter received and approved liturgical rites without sin) was therefore an act of human positive law, in this case ecclesiastical positive law. Now, it is certainly necessary to obey ecclesiastical positive law; the duty to follow the Church’s human positive law emanates from the Divine Positive Law (“Whatsoever you bind on earth shall be bound in heaven…”, “He who hears you hears Me,” etc.). Nevertheless, ecclesiastical positive law is a judgment of the practical reason that can be altered, even though it must be obeyed. The Church did not require people to follow set liturgical forms at all times prior to Trent; they did require it after Trent.

Thus, the Council of Trent’s anathema (“If anyone says that the received and approved rites of the Catholic Church…may be despised or omitted … or may be changed … let him be anathema.”) did indeed have the weight of cutting someone off from communion with the Church; it doesn’t mean it’s a part of “divine law,” whatever that is. Infallible proclamations on faith or morals do not always come with an anathema sit, nor does anathema sit always accompany an infallible proclamation on faith and morals.

I will also note this particular anathema and the directives of Quo Primum seemed directed at those without the proper authority to alter the Missal (a pastor of a church, ministers, bishops, cardinals, patriarchs, and the various 16th-century Protestant heretics who were messing with the Mass willy-nilly), rather than at the Pope, who had himself just made some fairly significant alterations to the received Roman liturgical forms (eliminating an enormous slew of sequences, banning troped Kyries, etc.). He also issues his commands in Quo Primum under holy obedience, something he cannot command from future Popes after he is dead.

Furthermore, St. Pius V’s commands in Quo Primum are more exhaustive than the author admits. Pius V did not simply forbid introduction of a new rite of Mass; he forbids ANY addition of ANY prayers to his Missal: “they must not in celebrating Mass presume to introduce any ceremonies or recite any prayers other than those contained in this Missal.” Clearly, Popes added prayers to and subtracted prayers from the 1570 Missal before the Novus Ordo was released; the absolute decrees of Pius V did not bind Popes, but rather they bound any lesser ecclesiastical authority. Any commandment by Peter is forever binding (as Pius V states his commands are) so long as Peter does not later change them through his power of binding and loosing.

Thus, St. Pius V’s statement in Quo Primum was not an infallible interpretation of divine law. There was no divine law to interpret infallibly. It was a more specific application by Peter of one of the decrees of the Council of Trent that, if it were not overturned by Peter at a later date, would have been binding throughout perpetuity.

Also, the article is ignorant of history. The Roman Rite obviously changed a lot over time, even going from Greek to Latin at one point. The faith did not necessarily change as a result. Change in liturgical rites does not always and necessarily imply a change to the Faith; if that were true, we should all still be offering the Mass in Aramaic.

Because one Pope cannot bind a later Pope to obey him in matters of ecclesiastical law, Paul VI had the right to change the liturgy if he wished. I also believe in the indefectibility of the Church; thus, while I think the Novus Ordo is enormously inferior to the 1962 Missal in terms of how it expresses the theology of the Mass, its susceptibility to abuse, the kinds of philosophical impressions it can give, etc., I believe that it remains a valid and licit Catholic rite of Mass.

End of the Line for Rome/SSPX?

This post from Rorate Caeli touches on two big stories: First, that the SSPX might finally expel Bp. Williamson from its ranks; second, but more importantly, that the Rome-SSPX negotiations are effectively done.

Regarding Williamson, it was only a matter of time.  He disobeys Fellay publicly, repeatedly, without repentance, and with gleeful abandon.  At this point, I feel like he’s trying to get himself kicked out.  I think he got spooked by the recent round of negotiations with Rome, and now doesn’t trust Fellay’s leadership.  He’d rather be on his own.

Now, we turn to the possible end of Roman negotiations.  Fellay declares that there will be no reconciliation with the current Pope.  Since it takes two to tango, and since one of the partners is sitting out, this is a self-fulfilling proclamation.

Unless something changes (and it could), we will have to view the breakdown in the SSPX negotiations as a failure by the Holy See, which has waffled while the SSPX remained constant in its position during the negotiations. Cardinal Levada’s incredibly harmful intervention in June mortally wounded the chances of reconciliation, and the Pope clearly buckled to it.

The SSPX will be further embittered by how the negotiations were mishandled.  The CDF sent their proposed “Doctrinal Preamble” to the SSPX, and asked the SSPX to review it.  The CDF encouraged the SSPX to send amendments if they wished.  It was an invitation to collaboration.  The SSPX sent in some amendments.  The Holy See stated publicly that they accepted almost all of them.  Then Levada met with the Cardinal members of the CDF, who clearly were not on board with the SSPX’s amendments to the preamble.  As a result, everything moved back to square one, with Cardinal Levada meeting with Fellay and simply re-proposing the original preamble, which the SSPX had rejected months ago.  This is an insulting way to negotiate.  The Holy See did not treat the SSPX as serious, adult partners in the negotiation, because the Roman right hand (those who initially reviewed the SSPX amendments to the preamble) did not know what the Roman left hand (Levada and the cardinal members of the CDF) was doing or thinking.

After the June breakdown, some swift action was needed.  The Holy Father needed to intervene personally to reverse the actions of Cardinal Levada and his fellow cardinals.  He needed to intervene before the SSPX General Chapter began on July 9.  He needed to appoint a new Prefect of the CDF of impeccable orthodoxy, a man friendly to the traditionalist world, a man who understood the sympathies of the traditionalists and the SSPX’s doctrinal positions.  Essentially, he needed to appoint someone who could get this deal done, and with whom the SSPX could foresee themselves co-existing (Let’s not forget that the Prefect of the CDF is technically the president of the Pontifical Commission Ecclesia Dei).  They needed to fix the doctrinal problem before proposing any canonical structure.

Instead, the Holy See issued a premature press release stating that they were offering the SSPX a personal prelature.  This was NOT the canonical vehicle favored by the SSPX, given that it would put them at the mercy of local bishops for establishing new foundations.  It immediately incited the ire of a number of SSPXers, most notably Bishop de Mallerais.

Then, with the final blow, the Holy See replaced Cardinal Levada with Archbishop Muller of Regensburg.  I can hardly think of a worse appointment to the CDF for the sake of these negotiations.  Muller had a longstanding friendship with a prominent liberation theologian, had made a number of (to be generous) confusing and questionable public statements on the nature of the Eucharist and Mary’s perpetual virginity, and had been personally involved in some exceedingly public conflicts with the SSPX over the past few years.  The SSPX loathe him, and he is now officially the man in charge of Rome-SSPX negotiations.

This essentially sealed the coffin for negotiations.  The Holy See made some ineffectual attempts to soften the blow of Muller’s appointment for the SSPX.  Abp. Muller clarified his various questionable declarations on Catholic teaching, but he did so in an insulting interview with Zenit wherein he castigated everyone who dared to question him for his muddling of Catholic teaching.  Furthermore, he did not make any attempt to reconcile his confusing doctrinal formulations with the Church’s teaching; he simply declared that he accepted it.  Maybe a Zenit interview wasn’t the time or place, but many SSPX followers thought this was inadequate.

The Holy See also appointed Archbishop Augustine Di Noia to be the Vice President of the Pontifical Commission Ecclesia Dei, in an obvious desire to placate the Muller-fearing traditionalists.  Unfortunately, Archbishop Di Noia has had little experience dealing with the traditionalist world, and although he is a Thomist and a very orthodox bishop, he has already made public statements alarming to the SSPX (that they would “have to come around” to the teaching of Vatican II on some points).  Furthermore, he was moved from his position as Secretary of the Congregation for Divine Worship and the Discipline of the Sacraments, where he was replaced by the sometimes-liberal English bishop Arthur Roche.  Everything the Holy See did to attempt to ease SSPX concerns just wound up making things worse.

The Society believes that a crisis situation (emanating, they believe, from Vatican II) is still ongoing.  They see the appointment of a man like Muller, who has such squishy public statements on key dogmatic tenets, to the head of the CDF (i.e., the body entrusted with preserving doctrinal orthodoxy in the Church) as a sign that the crisis is alive and well.  They view this crisis as so great that it is necessary to be separated from the Church’s structures.  I cannot agree with their response, but it’s hard to argue with some of their criticisms of the state of the Church.

Let’s continue on the theme of Roman missteps.  We have seen, since Vatican II, the Holy See destroy thousands of trees writing documents about the importance of ecumenism and inter-religious dialogue.  We have seen the Holy See go to enormous lengths to promote these ideals: changing the Good Friday Prayer for the Jews, writing encyclicals, establishing whole dicasteries dedicated to “fostering dialogue,” having the Holy Father visit synagogues and mosques and Protestant Churches, holding interfaith prayer gatherings in Assisi, various common declarations of belief that don’t amount to a hill of beans, scads of fancy conferences where people give speeches and accomplish nothing, and the list goes on and on.  People have even justified the Pope’s jettisoning of the Papal tiara and the title of “patriarch of the West” on the grounds that such things are “ecumenically insensitive.”  We have walked on eggshells trying not to offend other religions for 50 straight years.

For the Holy See to be that worried about ecumenical and interfaith sensitivities, but to give so little thought to the SSPX’s opinions, is absurd. The Pope made a number of decisions that demonstrated such a lack of concern: Assisi III, the gay prostitute-condoms comment, his partial approval of the Neocatechumenal Way, and a spotty record of curial (Bertone, Levada, Muller) and diocesan episcopal appointments.  All of these fostered mistrust among the SSPX, and have led to the current breakdown. The SSPX wanted to return to Rome, and they only have non-dogmatic disagreements with Vatican II; frankly, there’s no reason we shouldn’t be able to reconcile them.  The Orthodox, Jews, and Protestants are not about to enter the Church in droves anytime soon, and yet we’re a thousand times more worried about what they think.  We were on the cusp of bringing some 500 SSPX priests and hundreds of thousands of lay faithful back into the official structures of the Church.  We probably should have been a lot more concerned with what they thought about stuff.

I write all of this as someone who does not support the SSPX.  I don’t agree with their decision to be outside the Church’s structures, I don’t agree with their opinions that Vatican II is heretical or intrinsically impossible to reconcile with prior Catholic teaching.  Furthermore, I very deeply admire Pope Benedict.

Nevertheless,  many of the SSPX’s critiques of the state of the Church are spot on, and this whole episode is demonstrating that the Holy See is drastically behind the curve on internal communication and coherence of message.  Further, we still have an Emperor-has-no-clothes situation of destructively liberal bishops worldwide being promoted up the ranks of the hierarchy, and new liberal bishops being created.  We in America do not see this as acutely because of the positive influence of the late nuncio to the United States, Archbishop Pietro Sambi, who helped appoint a base of solidly conservative bishops in America.  Nevertheless, in a number of European countries, including France, Portugal, and Italy, the situation is not so rosy.  Poor bishops continue to be appointed worldwide, and it seems it takes a crisis-level situation for the Holy See to choose someone for a nunciature who isn’t a member of the usual, ineffective, low-level Italian curial circuit.  One thinks of Ireland, which needed to have a massive sex abuse crisis before the Holy Father intervened to appoint the rock-solid orthodox American CDF official Charles Brown to be its nuncio.

There are still some signs of hope for bringing the SSPX back.  Fellay has frequently stated that the SSPX will always listen if Rome calls.  Ratzinger has desperately wanted a reconciliation to take place since the 1980s.  If the Holy Father were to re-initiate rapprochement, and were to agree to some or all of the modifications the SSPX made to the doctrinal preamble, I think a reconciliation could happen.  Nevertheless, if he stands by the decisions made by Levada and the CDF in June, the SSPX is not going to budge.

Latest at Daily Caller and a Follow Up

Here is my latest Daily Caller piece: http://dailycaller.com/2012/09/06/why-is-cardinal-dolan-associating-with-democrats/

Also, a follow-up point.  A few of my friends have critiqued my comments regarding Cardinal Dolan’s invitation of Obama to the Al Smith dinner.  They have pointed to the example of Christ, who ate with sinners and was criticized for it.  If Christ did it, then why shouldn’t Dolan do it?

I think this is an oversimplification of the issue.  Eating food with people does not give you automatic carte blanche against causing scandal.  We can make plenty of real, meaningful distinctions between Christ’s interactions with sinners and the Al Smith dinner.  First, many of the sinners with whom Christ ate were repentant sinners, not obstinate sinners.  Christ ate with them to make the point that we should not treat repentant sinners as societal lepers, as the Pharisees wanted to.  

Even if they were not repentant, there was a clear purposefulness to Christ’s interactions with sinners that is lacking in this dinner party.  Christ constantly exhorted sinners to conversion, taught them the good news, actually forgave them their sins, and worked miracles in their presence.  And yes, he did these things at meals.  The Al Smith dinner simply isn’t the setting for those kinds of interactions.  The point of the occasion is to raise money for charities, for the candidates to tell jokes for the TV cameras, to eat a fancy dinner, and that’s it.  It’s not like Dolan is going to have an opportunity to have a meaningful discussion with Obama about policy questions.

Christ also ate, generally, at private meals.  The Al Smith banquet is a televised event that Obama is USING as part of his reelection campaign.  The dinner is an important PR event.  The candidates hire comedy writers to make sure they look good on TV.  It’s a news story.  Dolan may think the point is to foster dialogue and good will; the point of the event, for Obama, is to look good for voters on TV.  He doesn’t care if Cardinal Dolan, the Dalai Lhama, or the Maharajah of Pookajee is sitting next to him.

Lastly, let’s look at the kind of scandal being provoked.  Christ incited scandal among the prideful Pharisees, who wrongly thought that Jews should completely shun those who were sinners.  Dolan has admitted that he is causing scandal among faithful Catholics.  He argues, though, that the benefit of goodwill and dialogue with Obama outweighs the cost of scandal.  I’m saying that those benefits are illusory, while the scandal and discouragement the event causes for faithful Catholics is real.  

To be frank, it makes Dolan sound phony when he urges a “call to arms” among Catholics in defense of our religious freedom, but then the next minute is guffawing at Obama’s jokes at some silly PR-stunt dinner party.  Obama is the very person INCITING this new assault on religious liberty.  If Dolan is going to interact with Obama, it should be in a purposeful fashion.  Ingesting food should not absolve him from any and all criticism.

 

The most Nietzchean moment in Breaking Bad (and not very spoiler-y)

I forgot about this scene from the 5th season premiere: Walt is in a hospital getting his regular cancer scan being a full-blown übermensch. 

He lives life according to his own terms.  Be in control.  Make plans and God laughs at them?  Bullshit.  I am powerful.  I am taking the place of God.  Acceptance is for the weak.

“Voices” in the Ordinary Form, Rite of Modernity

This was a rather thought-provoking article by Fr. Robert Pasley, recently posted on The Chant Cafe.  The enormous possibility for variation within the Ordinary Form is a real problem; Fr. Pasley goes so far as to say that different expressions of the Ordinary Form of the Mass can almost seem like the expression of different religions.  It’s worth a read.

I’ll add this thought.  The Novus Ordo’s never-ending series of options makes it the child of modern philosophy.  With the ancient rite, the Mass came to the Church from above and demanded that we conform ourselves to it.  Other than maybe 3 options (high or low Mass, read the epistle or chant it, use incense or not), there wasn’t much for the priest to do beyond reading the words written in black and doing the things written in red.

It was an objective reality which we obeyed, but not in any servile way.  Rather, it was similar to the obedience that is the necessary response of Christian Faith.  The truth, when the full measure of its beauty and goodness is presented to us, makes demands upon how we live, think, act, and worship.  Just as the Church instructed man in what to believe by presenting him with the truths of faith, so the Church instructed man in how to worship by presenting him with her traditional rites.

Nowadays, it is Enlightenment Man who does not receive instruction, but rather selects from a pu-pu platter of options to tell the Church how HE is going to worship.  Mass facing the people, or ad orientem?  Latin or vernacular?  Which vernacular language?  Entrance chant or a sing-songy hymn?  Penitential Rite A, B, or C?  The shortened form of the reading, or the longer one?  And on, and on, and on, as man shapes his own reality of what worship is and looks like.

In a sense, the modern Mass is a reality emanating from the subject.  It is Kant, it is Descartes’ Cogito-ergo-sum, it is the full swathe of subjectivist thought, and all of it expressed (insofar as it is coherent and capable of expression) liturgically.

Even among more traditional adherents to the Ordinary Form we see this kind of near-subjectivism, particularly at the fringes of liturgical expression.  Some don’t think women should serve as lectors while others allow it; some think it’s better to speak the Eucharistic Prayer, others think it’s best to chant it; some think we should only use the Roman Canon, while others think we should use all of the several Eucharistic Prayers; some think the Responsorial Psalm is ok, others think it should never be sung in place of the Gradual.  And this disagreement exists among the hardcore “traditionalist” adherents to the Novus Ordo, the very people who desperately desire an objective reality to which they can conform themselves.  Even for people who have an objective standard to follow (the Extraordinary Form’s shadow), it is impossible to escape the idea that WE are imposing OUR WILL upon the Mass, that we are shaping our own lex orandi, and Lord knows what lex credendi will result.

This imposition of man’s will on the Mass is totally opposed to its very nature.  The fact is, the Mass IS an objective, transcendent reality; it is not simply some cultural expression of a certain group at its own time and place.  It is the sacrifice of Jesus Christ, presented to us again in an unbloody fashion.  Because of the eternal, changeless nature of the reality at hand—that is, because Christ eternally offers Himself to the Father forever in heaven—it is fitting that the Mass be changeless, enduring, transcendent, instructing us in a certain truth rather than allowing us to shape our own reality.

While the project of offering the Ordinary Form in a more traditional, beautiful, and  reverent style is worthwhile and important, it is not enough.  Ultimately, the Church needs to fix the root problem: a liturgical rite that is inherently weakened by the spirit of modern subjectivism.  This is what the Reform of the Reform is all about: we don’t want simply to choose the better options, we want the Church to take away the worse options.

I pray and truly think that a reform of the modern Mass will occur, because I trust the Holy Spirit to guide the Church.  And if certain men become Pope, I think I will be alive to see it happen.

Breaking Bad and Nietzche (slight spoilers)

Breaking Bad is (unoriginally, I admit) my favorite television show.  The surface stuff is fantastic; it’s an exciting storyline about a high school chemistry teacher who gets cancer and starts “cooking” and selling methamphetamine to provide for his family, but then gets horrifyingly drawn into the world of organized drug crime.  Beyond that, though, it also gives a powerful look at wounded human nature, how virtue can build it up and vice can destroy it.

To do this, the show focuses more and more around the Nietzchean concept of the übermensch, the “over-man” or super-man, the man who rejects the limits of Judeo-Christian “servility” to impose his will and shape his own reality over those beneath him.  He is concerned with this-worldliness.  Making oneself established and powerful in this life is for the übermensch; a desire for a life to come and for the moral constraints of Christianity is characteristic of lesser beings.  In a way, the übermensch himself takes the place of God, creating a new moral universe of self-generated values to fill the vacuum left by God’s absence.  While Adolf Hitler was and always will be the epitome, in some ways, of the übermensch (and was himself quite enamored of Nietzche), I think Walter White might be charging towards second place.

Walter begins the story as a restrained person.  He is never the most charismatic or assertive man in the room.  He is polite to everyone, and people think of him as a good father and husband.  When he learns he has cancer, he becomes desperate in his desire to make his family financially secure after his death, and resorts to cooking meth.  This results to him being put through a number of physical humiliations, most iconically in the first episode where he is on the run from the cops in an RV with no pants on.

But that’s scratching the surface of who Walt is.  Looking deeper, we see a man of enormous pride, who hates the meek and pitiful state of his existence.  His professional ambitions were squashed after he left a chemical technology firm he had co-founded; the other co-founder had married Walt’s ex-girlfriend, a fellow chemist, and the two of them had been incredibly successful.  Walter turned down their offer to pay for his cancer treatment, preferring the life of making methamphetamine to receiving their charity or pity, still seething with a quiet bitterness at their success.  Even at his less assertive stages of character development, we see Walt’s fierce pride shine through as a defining characteristic.

This pride was the seed of the übermensch to come.  Without giving away too much of the story, Walter becomes more in control of his surroundings, more assertive, more dominant.  He becomes willing to lie, cheat, threaten, and kill in order to preserve his life and improve his standing.  He starts to earn incredible amounts of money from his methamphetamine, and the audience (who, unable to help themselves, frequently finds itself rooting for Walt) is frequently left unsure whether to be happy or deeply worried at his “successes.”

One of the most disturbing ways Walt’s character developed was sexually.  In the beginning of the series, he passively (and quite pathetically) lets his wife pleasure him manually as a “birthday present.”  Later, as he becomes more of a dominant and assertive personality, he starts to surprise his wife with more active advances, until finally one time hurting her through excessive aggression.  It is in his intimate life that we see the development of the übermensch most clearly.  Walter wants no more of passivity, of receiving things as some joke-like gift, of being pathetic.  He wants to be the one who takes, who is in control, who is dominant and assertive, and to hell with the costs or how it affects others.

And affect others it does.  His wife, teenage son, brother-in-law, sister-in-law, attorney, meth-cooking partner, are all adversely affected by him, sometimes horrifically so.  His wife looks at him with terror as he nears their infant daughter.

Perhaps the height of Walt’s megalomania is seen in this scene, which has probably the best line from the whole series.

The personal, moral destruction that results from this fundamental shift in Walt’s character is ongoing, and more and more catastrophic.  The more Walt does bad things, evil things, things that gave him control and power, the more inclined he is to continue down this path.  It’s actually a more realistic view of the human condition, an acknowledgment of the reality of concupiscence and vice’s effects.  The more bad things we do, the easier it is to continue doing them, because our wounded natures draw us that way.  Chesterton thought Original Sin was the most self-evident of all Christian dogmas; Breaking Bad examines it in all its gory, terrifying detail.

And that’s what makes it the best show on television.  Breaking Bad is not the same ol’ humdrum liberal preachiness about tolerance, diversity, acceptance, and every other vague moral precept with which television repeatedly bludgeons us.  It isn’t about “values”—which is a disgustingly Nietzchean and subjective term—and instead is about moral principle, right and wrong, and what happens when you choose one or the other.  This realistic framing of the nature of moral questions gives the show an authenticity that endures even through its most extreme, dramatic, and unlikely moments.  That’s what makes for fantastic art.  That’s why I like Breaking Bad.

Old Roman Chant

Here is a sampling of some Old Roman Chant.  Old Roman Chant was the ancestor to Gregorian Chant.  Many, perhaps most, of the great melodies of the Graduale Romanum are derived from Old Roman Chant.  ORC has a strong eastern sound to it, and is exceedingly melismatic.  It also employs a kind of droning tone in its foundation known as the “ison.”

Different groups, cities, regions had their own strain of ORC, including the Knights Templar.  This is their version of the solemn Salve Regina chant.

I intend to employ the use of some sort of ison more with my Gregorian Chant schola cantorum at Notre Dame.  It gives an entirely different feel to the chant that I find particularly beautiful.