Bauerschmidt on the Pauline Reform

For those with niche interests: some thoughts on the post-Vatican II liturgical reforms: https://t.co/RdgvqVesi6

— Fritz Bauerschmidt (@BauerschmidtC) November 30, 2021

Projection onto St. Joseph

The Holy Family devotion as a logical consequence of the development of Latin popular piety. If only Fr. Louis Bouyer were still here to comment on this. Moreover, could St. Joseph be exploited by Latin progs to subvert patriarchy, because they have forgotten the authority of God? Certainly.

I pray that every family may feel the living presence of the Holy Family of Nazareth in their own home, that they may fill our small domestic communities with sincere and generous love, a source of joy even in trials and difficulties. #AmorisLaetitia pic.twitter.com/ku78PZroiC

— Pope Francis (@Pontifex) March 19, 2021

A great read from Bishop Conley. https://t.co/tOOZ4RuiqD

— Fr. Thomas Petri, OP (@PetriOP) March 19, 2021

Jean Duchesne on Louis Bouyer

Les grands théologiens du XXe siècle : Louis Bouyer (4/6)

The others in the series:
Henri de Lubac
Jean Daniélou
Hans Urs von Balthasar
Karol Wojtyla
Joseph Ratzinger

Paul Airiau , "Louis Bouyer, du centre à la marge?"

A chapter from Liturgie et société, edited by Bruno Dumons, Vincent Petit, Christian Sorrel

Theology and Sanctity

NRT: "Théologie et sainteté dans l’œuvre de Louis Bouyer" par Marie-David Weill

Three More Thoughts on the Anglican Catholic Liturgy

1. I remembered that the Anglican tradition was supposedly in need of correction by competent Roman authorities. Standing as an outsider now, I would expect that one of the problems Latins and Latinizing Anglicans would have with the BCP would have to do with its sacramental theology or the presence or absence of the word "sacrifice," given their adherence to Tridentine Latin Catholicism. How much disagreement was there in the past between Latins and Anglicans (and Protestants generally) about the Eucharist being a "sacrifice"? And was this debate grounded upon a misunderstanding of a principle, that is the meaning of "sacrifice" in Scripture and the Apostolic tradition?

Some sort of agreement between Anglicans and Latins was reached some time ago:
ARCIC-28 ~ Sub-Commission on the Notion of Sacrifice in the Eucharist in Anglican and Roman Catholic Theology
Agreed Statement on Eucharistic Doctrine (1971)

If I were to do further research on this topic, I would have to find out who the experts in Anglican Eucharistic theology are. But here are some affirmations by Anglicans that the Eucharist is a sacrifice. Does that mean certain of their worship books were deficient with respect to form because they don't reflect a Tridentine Latin understanding of sacrifice? Maybe. Does that mean that they are objectively deficient from the standpoint of Apostolic tradition? Maybe not. Latins will insist that their understanding of sacrifice is dogma, promulgated by a valid "ecumenical council" and not just a preferred theologoumenon of that time -- will that barrier to dialogue have to be addressed first or is there some other common principle which we can employ?

Fr. Matthew S.C. Oliver:
No end to sacrifice: The legacy of Gregory Dix
No end to sacrifice: Anglicans on ‘offering’
No end to sacrifice: Mitchell and Meyers, Praying Shapes Believing

Eucharistic Sacrifice in Anglicanism

Anglican Eucharistic Theology: Essentially Compliant with both High and Low-Church Traditions.

A Companion to Anglican Eucharistic Theology: Volume 2

On the Eucharistic Sacrifice and the Christian Priesthood. by Alan S. Hawkesworth (1896)

Episcopal Church Glossary: Eucharistic Sacrifice

How We Worship

Greg Goebel:
Good Friday: Do We Still Need A Sacrifice?
What do Anglicans Believe about Holy Communion?

Calvinism and Eucharistic Sacrifice by Rev. Dr. Eric M. Parker

From 2013: Ordinariate Mass - look carefully and you can see Lutheran and Calvinist influences by Fr Gregory-Palamas

A Comparison of the Roman Missal, Missale Romanum and Divine Worship Forms of the Roman Rite Eucharistic Liturgy
2. Before the introduction of Divine Worship in 2015, people asked and even hoped for some sort of restoration of the Sarum Use, but translated into hieratic English. How "Sarum" is Divine Worship? Is there any possibility of a future creation and introduction of another Missal that is more "Sarum"? And would a Sarum rite, whether in hieratic English or Latin, have to be revised, just like the Roman rite, if the Latin notion of sacrifice is found to be in need of correction or modification?

From 2012: Sarum Use in the Ordinariates (see the tagged posts under Sarum and Anglicanorum Coetibus)
The Future Liturgy of an Anglican Ordinariate: Why not Sarum? - The Use of Sarum
What Happened to the Sarum Rite?
The Death of Sarum

3. On the Epiclesis:
Some Anglicans did introduce it, whether it was in imitation of non-Latin rites (or the Pauline Missal?) or because they erroneously thought one was originally present in the Roman Canon, I do not know.

I know Fr. Hunwicke is opposed to its introduction to the Roman rite, because apparently the Roman Canon must remain unchanged (or unreformed, that is unrestored?). Is organic development of the liturgy possible, especially one takes into account the ecumenical councils of the first millenium, which one could say that the Church of Rome has not received properly, not because of its rejection of the councils, but because of its conservatism with respect to its own ecclesial tradition? Should the Roman Canon (and the Eucharistic prayers of Latin rites in general) be more Trinitarian and explicit about the Holy Spirit, even if it is recognized that it is not "sacramentally deficient in form" in the current texts of the EF?

I say Latin rites though acknowledging that it is debatable whether any of the others are celebrated in a way that can be called "living," reflecting a proper engagement and liturgical spirituality of the people that includes an appropriate understanding during the liturgy of what is being prayed and a participation in those prayers.

Related:
Romantic and Patristic Liturgy in Louis Bouyer

NCReg: From Earth to Heaven With England’s Glory: Sarum Vespers Resound in Philadelphia
Catholics prayed together in the Pre-Reformation English form of the Roman Rite familiar to St. Thomas More and his contemporaries.
Peter Jesserer Smith

An Interview with Matthew Levering and Nicholas J. Healy, Jr.

CWR: Ressourcement after Vatican II honors the work of Fr. Joseph Fessio, S.J.
An interview with Matthew Levering and Nicholas J. Healy, Jr., who co-edited a collection of 13 essays on ressourcement thought in gratitude to Fr. Fessio for a lifetime of service to the Church.

Ressourcement after Vatican II: Essays in Honor of Joseph Fessio, S.J.

50+ Years of the Pauline Reform

Translation of the liturgy into the vernacular, etc. and we still have devotions like this that are gaining to popularity, which have replaced a proper understanding of our adoption by the Father as sons in Christ. The Holy Family has supplanted the Trinity.

CNA/CWR: Why a new consecration to St. Joseph is spreading like wildfire

CWR Interview with Keith Lemna on Louis Bouyer

CWR: Recovering the Cosmos: The theological and spiritual vision of Fr. Louis Bouyer by Carl E. Olson

A conversation with Dr. Keith Lemna, the author of The Apocalypse of Wisdom: Louis Bouyer’s Theological Recovery of the Cosmos, about “one of the most comprehensive theologians of the twentieth century.”

The Latin Traditionalists React

Just as they can't admit that maybe the Ressourcement movement might have had a point.



NLM

Latin traditionalists can't concede anything. "Everything was A-ok with the Church [i.e. the patriarchate of Rome] before the Pian reform of Holy Week in 1955 [or choose some earlier liturgical reform]." As if they were alive at the time and had the omniscience to know that this was true. "Vatican 2 ruined everything!"

Did Ressourcement fade because of the hard-headedness of some of the Latin clergy and religious and the ignoring of Ressourcement by "progressives"? Or maybe the patriarchate of Rome didn't deserve such a gift and God withdrew it.

Kwasniewski writes this howler:

"Many more examples can be given in the realms of clerical vestments, church architecture, and liturgical hymns and orations. And then there will be simply issues of pluralism: some churches give the sacraments of initiation all at once to infants, while others spread them out in acknowledgment of the role of reason and free will. Is one necessarily right and the other wrong? Couldn’t they both be right, because they’re looking from different legitimate angles?"

Would he concede such pluralism on the question of ecclesiastical divorce? I am doubting it, even if he begrudgingly grants it with respect to the Eastern discipline of ordaining married men to the presbyterate. Show me a Latin author who justified the delay of Confirmation on the basis of "the role of reason and free will" rather than ecclesiological considerations centered on the office of the bishop.

Like the West, the East has its “black boxes” into which people are not supposed to look too closely, lest they find tensions, contradictions, reversals, laxities, and other odds and ends. Above all, their systematic theology and moral theology are a mess, because they have no authoritative framework for interpreting the Fathers. Their own version of scholasticism, a bit like Islam’s, imploded and fell apart, unlike the West’s, which with figures like Bonaventure and Thomas attained a rare perfection and magnificence. Above all, there is no one in the East who is as biblical, patristic, ecumenical, synthetic, broad-minded, and comprehensive as the Angelic Doctor. Aquinas makes frequent, sympathetic, incisive use of dozens of Western and Eastern Fathers — indeed, more Eastern authors than Western — so it’s a bit silly to say our theology starts in the 12th century.

Except it is arguable that theology in general did not have that place in the life of the Church that the Latins have given to theologians. Perhaps the Orthodox would here claim that it is the reception of a theological opinion, its incorporation in the liturgical and prayer life of the Church, that matters, rather than what the majority of theologians might say. And anyways, Aquinas is not the end-all, be-all of Latin theology, even if Thomists and Latin traditionalists like Kwasniewski would like to think that his theology holds this primacy of place.

Moreover, what the hieromonk doesn’t seem to grasp, or perhaps doesn’t wish to acknowledge, is the many great spiritual figures the West has always had, and still has. He does not mention figures like St. Thérèse of Lisieux, Bd. Charles de Foucauld, St. Elizabeth of the Trinity, St. Maximilian Kolbe, and Bd. Columba Marmion, let alone countless martyrs and saints of every state in life. He mentions St. Pio of Pietrelcina only to suggest that he was opposed by the Church, which is only partially true. The writings of Fr. Jacques Philippe are every bit the equal of many contemporary books published by the Orthodox. One might also take a look at the pre-Reformation volumes of the Classics of Western Spirituality series from Paulist Press to get a rough sense of the richness of our mystical tradition.

I bet Kwasniewski rejects Bouyer's claims about the separation of Latin spirituality from Latin liturgical experience. But this is not a theological claim but a historical claim that must be evaluated accordingly, not in accordance with some a priori position that is taken to be a truth of Divine Faith -- "The Holy Ghost has not abandoned any of the apostolic-sacramental churches, since all of them give abundant evidence of the operations of the Spirit: faith, hope, charity, the gifts and fruits, miracles." Just because the Holy Spirit sanctifies does not mean that a church or group of churches does not have defects which the Holy Spirit must remedy.

I posted a link to the English translation of the original here.

A New Book on Fr. Bouyer's Theology by Keith Lemna

announcement

A Memorial!

Rorate Caeli: Exactly 50 Years Ago, Paul VI tried to destroy the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass

7. Cena dominica sive Missa est sacra synaxis seu congregatio populi Dei in unum convenientis, sacerdote praeside, ad memoriale Domini celebrandum. Quare de sanctae Ecclesiae locali congregatione eminenter valet promissio Christi: "Ubi sunt duo vel tres congregati in nomine meo, ibi sum in medio eorum" (Mt. 18, 20).


"7. The Lord's Supper, or Mass, is the sacred meeting or congregation of the people of God assembled, the priest presiding, to celebrate the memorial of the Lord. For this reason, Christ's promise applies eminently to such a local gathering of holy Church: 'Where two or three come together in my name, there am I in their midst' (Mt. 18:20)."

I don't recall Fr. Bouyer criticizing the General Instruction of the Roman Missal itself, rather than the Roman Missal, but I am guessing that para 7 would not be problematic for him. After all, what is to prevent a memorial from also being the re-presentation of the sacrifice of Christ, through the ministry of the Church (CCC 611, 1323, 1330, 1341)? (At the moment I am accepting Latin theology and expression on this point for the purposes of this post.) Granted, Pope Paul VI does not seem to say this explicitly, but even if he doesn't, it doesn't imply that he denies that the Eucharist is a sacrifice.

Of course, it may be that he had reasons for not elaborating on sacrifice and it is not clear that the received Latin tradition on what sacrifice means, and how Christ's Passion and Death constitute a sacrifice, are correct.

Related:
The Sacrifice of the Mass by Fr. William G. Most
The Sacramental Life of the Orthodox Church by Rev. Alciviadis C. Calivas, Th.D.
The Liturgy in the Thought of Benedict XVI by Giles R. Dimock
Peter Leithart: The Non-Eucharist Eucharist

A Proliferation of Spiritualities?

Fr. Bouyer would have something to say about this. For that matter, so would Fr. Gabriel Bunge:

Another problem is that Christians have different personalities. Not all are given over to outward expressions of heartfelt piety even while they have deep faith and knowledge of God. Karl Rahner—who I suppose could be considered a pietist, even though he regarded pietism as exclusively Protestant—once said, “The Christian of the future will be a mystic or simply will not be.” That’s certainly within the spirit of pietism, but the problem is that mysticism is difficult for many. We should all attempt to engage in meditative and contemplative prayer, but different personalities gravitate towards different spiritualities. Carmelites are not Benedictines, and Dominicans are not Jesuits, and Franciscans are not Augustinians. Mysticism, above all, is a divine gift, and as such shouldn’t be expected of all.

The Problem of Pietism by Dr. Leroy Huizenga
We must overcome an overemphasis on religion as orthodoxy assenting to true doctrines while also resisting the reduction of our religion to feelings and activism.

"Christ Our King and God"

How old is this expression in the Byzantine rite? Is there a danger of understanding the kingship of Christ, as used in the Byzantine tradition, by referring to the human analogate as primary, rather than the Divine analogate? (As there may be such a danger in the Roman rite, especially with the Feast of Christ the King? See the comments of Fr. Bouyer in Liturgical Piety.) The Word is to rule in our lives, by ordering our actions and infusing us with Divine Love -- and human kingship is to be in accord with this.

Is Liturgy More than Worship?

I have been considering this question for the past few days, in connection with Bouyer and Schmemann. Worship is part of St. Thomas's catalog of the virtues, but I suspect that the Latin equivalent can be found in the texts of the Roman rite going back to the earliest days, when Latin was first introduced. (If this is the case, was it a translation of a Greek word introduced by the first Roman Christians, or was it adopted later?)

Youth, liturgy, and the need for true worship by Peter M.J. Stravinskas

Liturgy – like the Faith it celebrates – never admits of an “erector-set” approach; good liturgy, true liturgy is received, not fabricated, and it takes seriously the human person in all his complexity of body and soul.

On the Conversion of the Western Roman Empire

It would not be surprising if Latins think first of all of the persecution of Christians in Rome in connection with its eventual conversion. But in considering the historic relations between Christians and their pagan neighbors, and to what degree they co-existed, does Rome give us a representative picture of what was happening elsewhere in the Roman Empire? And was it truly the case that Rome converted because the blood of martyrs is the seed of faith? Or because of the rise of the "Constantinian Church" and the subsequent declaration of Christianity as the official religion of the empire, along with the outlawing of other religions? Is this pattern of apparent conversion replicated elsewhere, with the conversion of tribes and kingdoms? And should we really consider that a viable model of evangelization? After all the persecutions (and martyrdom) of Christians in China, Korea, and Japan, for example, has not had similar results yet; and Christians not having the reins of state in these polities is not an insignificant difference. Even if we think of Mexico converting not because of the prestige and power of the Church under the Spanish but because of the intervention of Our Lady of Guadalupe, what about the rest of Ibero-America?

A Church of the Many or a Church of the Few? Louis Bouyer's question remains relevant today, especially with the latest Apostolic Exhortation repeating the calls of previous pontificates for a new evangelization.

Articulation entre théologie et anthropologie dansl’œuvre liturgique de Louis Bouyer: Une introduction à la question by Laurent Penot

Fr. Bouyer and the Pauline Reform

Sacred Music 141.4: "Louis Bouyer and the Pauline Reform: Great Expectations Dashed" by John Pepino

L'Ivresque: Louis Bouyer – Le sens de la vie sacerdotale

Reprinting of Christian Initiation by Louis Bouyer

Rorate Caeli: Fine new edition of Bouyer's Christian Initiation - Cluny Media

30% off any order from Cluny Media that includes Christian Initiation