The Mystical Body of Christ

First Things: A Wafer-Thin Practice by Hans Boersma

De Lubac was troubled by a Eucharistic individualism that he believed had shaped the mindset of many of his Catholic contemporaries. Convinced as they were that the body of Christ in the Eucharist was the true body (corpus verum), all that seemed to matter was to partake. Once the miraculous medicine of immortality had been ingested, one might as well turn back down the aisle and walk out of church, for the one and only reason for going to Mass had now been performed. De Lubac was agitated, rightly I think, with the individualism—yes, the selfish consumerism and greed—in this Eucharistic spirituality.

I don't know if "the selfish consumerism and greed" is de Lubac's own judgment or Boersma's. It seems to go too far -- I think there were poorly catechized Roman Catholics who were taught to be concerned with subjective certitude regarding their salvation and limited salvation to receiving the sacraments, rather than a fuller participation in the Mystery of Christ.

De Lubac countered the gnostic demon at work. He asked his readers to think about what it means to eat the body (the Eucharist) as a body (the church), pointing out the close link between embodiment and community. Turning to 1 Corinthians 10:16–17 (“The bread that we break, is it not a participation in the body of Christ? Because there is one bread, we who are many are one body, for we all partake of the one bread”), de Lubac pointed out that for Saint Paul, participation (koinōnia, communion) of the body of Christ (the Eucharist) turns us into the body of Christ (the church).

All this talk of the “body of Christ” is no mere metaphor. Saint Augustine, in his famous Sermon 227, writes about the Eucharist: “If you have received worthily, you are what you have received, for the Apostle says: ‘The bread is one; we though many, are one body.’” The African bishop seems to suggest that believers, by partaking of communion, are transubstantiated (well, changed) into the body of Christ. When we eat Christ, we become Christ.

Hence the allusion in the title of this post to de Lubac's Corpus Mysticum.

The Christian tradition has typically treated body and body (Eucharist and church) as mutually dependent. On the one hand, the Eucharist makes the church. This seems to be the Pauline logic of 1 Corinthians 10 and of Augustine in Sermon 227. On the other hand, the church makes the Eucharist: We offer up our gifts—our entire lives—in Christ on the altar. Body and body depend on each other. Neither can go it alone. The reason is simple: The two are one flesh (Eph. 5:31).

The ministers of the church, presbyters and episkopoi, do have an instrumental role in making Christ sacramentally present. But I have doubts as to whether we participate in the sacrifice in that manner, by offering ourselves in union with Christ. But this seems to be the typical Latin view of sacrifice and our participation in the Eucharist.


This essay is written by Boersma in connection with televised Masses during COVID-19 lockdowns. I am reminded of the question I posed in this post, whether it is possible to have a Eucharistic liturgy with pre-sanctified Gifts only. (Not the same as Boersma's thought experiment of having a virtual consecration done by a presbyter through long-distance communication.) If it is possible, would such a Eucharistic service that is done by teleconferencing be contrary to piety or to true liturgical participation? (People would receive the Divine Gifts at home and then have a internet teleconference in which a presbyter would lead them to some sort of communion service, one featuring an act of Thanksgiving.) I would think that it isn't true liturgical participation.

As for the original question I raised - if we take the Act of Thanksgiving in the abstract, it might seem that it is possible to have a Eucharistic liturgy of pre-sanctified Gifts only. But when the Act of Thanksgiving is tied to the Anamnesis of God's saving acts, including the salvation who is Christ, maybe it is not possible to separate the Thanksgiving from the Consecration of the Gifts at the same time.

Or maybe it is. I will have to think about it some more. I don't think that such a "Eucharistic" communion service has any historical precedent.


Related:
A Eucharistic Church by Avery Dulles
Eucharistic Ecclesiology of Henri de Lubac  by Fr. Manuel-Alfredo Razo-Canales

Pinkoski on American Socialism

Law&Liberty: The Strange Rise of Bourgeois Bolshevism by Nathan Pinkoski

Fr. Bogdan Bucur on Emmaus

Related:

Firings as a Form of (In)Justice?

Sandro Magister: Francis, the Good Boss “Who Doesn't Want To Fire Anyone.” But the Facts Say the Opposite

Interview with Dr. Timothy Patitsas

St. Nicholas Press

More:
Dean of Hellenic College Timothy Patitsas Publishes Book on the Ethics of Beauty

Hope in Source 11: City as Liturgy

The Ethics of Beauty - Christian Rights and Freedom Institute

The Ongoing Dispute About the Anaphora/Eucharistic Prayer

And when Christ becomes sacramentally or truly present on the altar.

NLM: East-West Disagreements about the Epiclesis and Transubstantiation by Peter Kwasniewski


A modified Tridentine position that is close to the "holistic" position of Fr. Louis Bouyer, who thinks that the Words of Consecration effect consecration of the sacred species but the whole anaphora is important. (But not the same as Fr. Robert Taft's, who talks of the necessity of the whole anaphora, both the institution narrative whether explicit or not and an explicit expiclesis, if there is one.) But Trent was not an ecumenical council with representatives from all of the Apostolic Churches, nor did it take into consideration the liturgies from the traditions of those Churches.

One More on Spiritual Communion

HPR: Epidemic and the Liturgical Reform by Dr. Joseph Shaw

It is not surprising to find that when medieval-style pestilence stalks the streets, the Church has to reach back into the past, before that brief gilded historical moment, for responses. The most obvious example is “spiritual communion”: the practice of uniting oneself in prayer to Our Lord in the Blessed Sacrament, since one is not able to receive sacramentally. Our predecessors in the Faith used to do this at the great majority of the Masses they attended, either formally or informally, since they received Holy Communion only once or a few times a year. When I mentioned the practice as a response to the epidemic in a letter to the UK’s liberal Catholic weekly, The Tablet, the first response of one priest was ridicule. We wouldn’t, he wrote, have a “spiritual collection,” would we?¹

The concern that the faithful receive Holy Communion reverently and fruitfully, and not mechanically is correct. It might even be claimed that a Christian should even consider abstaining from Communion if necessary, because he does not have the right spiritual disposition, or the "minimum" that is needed for Communion to bear fruit. A spiritual father would have more to say in this regard and appropriate advice that has been fitted to an individual.

Fr. Andrew Stephen Damick on Evangelization

What Is Needed for Reconciliation with Rome

According to Fr. Thomas Hopko -- AFR: What Does Rome Need To Do? - Part 2 (and Part 1)

Some are the same demands of Rome made by Orthodox polemicsts in the immediate centuries following the supposed date of the schism.

Russian Faith has a summary: 22 Changes Roman Catholics Must Make to Repent, Become Orthodox, and Join the One True Church

The restoration of ad orientem worship was not included, but it probably should have been. Many of Fr. Hopko's demands regarding supposed "doctrinal errors" seem to ignore legitimate differences in theologoumena between the Latin and the Byzantine churches. I will have to reconsider those.

The doctrinal errors concerning the papacy are important, and considered by others to be the main or primary obstacle to full reconciliation.

• Aquiesce Papal Power
• Abolish All Pretenses of Papal Infallibility
• Actively Promote a Conciliar Approach

I agree with the demands that are based on the tradition once universally observed by the Church Universal:

• Perform Chrismation/Confirmation Immediately After Baptism
• Provide Holy Communion for Infants and Young Children, Immediately after Baptism and Chrismation
• Partake of Holy Communion Consecrated at the Present Service, Not from a Previous One  

Some comments on the following proposals:
Prepare Holy Communion with Leavened Bread
I have read that Rome used to use leavened bread as well; despite the claim that unleavened bread was used at the Last Supper, I don't see why Rome can't make the use of leavened bread at least optional.


Affirm New Bishops, Not Appoint Them
I think there need to be changes in how bishops are elected, but such a reform would require prior reforms of the local Church and its ecclesiology, and the Orthodox themselves need to consider what changes they should be making to church governance. So I don't think that should be a necessary condition for reconciliation.

Abdicate the Position as Head of State

With regards to the pope being a sort of figurehead and teacher of the universal teacher, I disagree with Hopko, who writes:

Then finally, in this area, I say: As leader of the world’s Christians, the pope of Rome would travel extensively. He would take full advantage of contemporary means of transportation and communication. He would master electronic media to serve his ministry in proclaiming Christ’s Gospel, propagating Christian faith, promoting ethical behavior, protecting human rights, and securing justice and peace for all people. He would be the servant of unity among all human beings, and first of all his fellow Christians, not as a unique episcopus episcoporum—that’s an expression of St. Cyprian—not as a bishop of other bishops—there is no bishop of other bishops, as was decreed already in the Council of Carthage in the third century: he is not the bishop of bishops; he is one of the equal bishops with all the others—so he would not have that position, but he would have the position as the leading bishop in the world, that Pope St. Gregory the Great called servus servorum Dei, the servant of the servants of God, among all the Christian bishops in the world. 

In an age of the collapse of a "civilization" powered by fossil fuels, this sort of role as "universal teacher" will pass into history. In the age of collapse, if anyone should be exercising some sort of teaching authority with regards to some political community or unit, it should be the local bishops, but within their competence, and the Christian laity must be acknowledged as having a role within the reform of political society that is partly separate from whatever teaching authority bishops may have in that area.

A Faithful Interpretation of Suarez?

forgetting that Francisco Suarez was such a Marxist pic.twitter.com/msfWIagOsZ

— Jordan L. Perkins, Doctor of Juris (@jordanlperkins) May 7, 2020

How do we get from point A (resources given by God for the benefit of all) to point Z (after being allocated and being the matter of productive labor, what is produced is nevertheless still a "common good" that can be distributed by whoever holds political authority)?

I am doubting that the distinction resulting from the mendicant controversies between ownership and use would be that helpful, though it is the case that later scholastics applied it.

The Nature-Grace Distinction

What relevance to the distinction between the distinction between "State" and "Church"?

The reversal noted here by @jacobwwood is missed by many who think about the application of the nature-grace distinction to the distinction of the two powers. pic.twitter.com/UKGW1TV3CB

— Pater Edmund (@sancrucensis) May 5, 2020

…because he has a much more "optimistic" theology of sin. That is, de Lubac has a naively optimistic understanding of justification through "implicit faith" that leads him to underestimate the extent to which the ’world‘ is under the domination of the devil.

— Pater Edmund (@sancrucensis) May 5, 2020

Thomas Pink on Latin Integralism

Public Discourse: Philosophy, Politics, Religion and the Public Square by Thomas Pink

Integralism, Thomas Pink writes, "involves a rejection of the metaphysical foundations of most current legal and political philosophy." https://t.co/jGwe2SIcnh

— Public Discourse (@PublicDiscourse) May 10, 2020

Brilliant new article by @thomaspink1, explaining why integralism matters even nand especially in our curret, secular age: https://t.co/hkf1ncZfDl

— Pater Edmund (@sancrucensis) May 10, 2020

Integralism further involves a conception of the church as an authority over religion that replaces the state. The church is a sovereign potestas, with the authority to make laws and enforce these through punishments, just as is the state. Its authority is based not on natural law as is the state’s, but on the revealed law of Christ. Any interpretation of Dignitatis Humanae that denies this conception of the church as potestas over religion runs directly against the interpretation of that declaration given officially at Vatican II by the commission that drafted it. (For more on this, see my “Dignitatis Humanae: continuity after Leo XIII”.)

Latin integralism depends upon and promotes Latin maximalist conceptions of ecclesial authority, especially the authority of the bishop of Rome.

It is tempting to suppose that there are two quite different kinds of state: an integralist state that prioritizes the good of the community, and a liberal state that fosters the autonomy of the individual. But perhaps the better view is that there simply exist states that serve the common good in a way that involves enforcing an ethical consensus.  

The questions that should be asked are: what is the common good, what defines a political community, and is any state, integralist or otherwise, able to bring about the common good. Maybe integralists will have a new response to MacIntyre and Cavanaugh--until they do, they theorizing merely serves statism, and at best they serve as controlled opposition, inconsequential and no threat to the status quo.

Violence Necessary to Maintain Orthodoxy?

Alan Fimister and Andrew Willard Jones discuss the reasons for a seeming rise in the amount of violence necessary to maintain orthodoxy in the High Middle Ages. https://t.co/untg1qd3gX

— The Josias (@josias_rex) May 10, 2020

Making any act of heresy tantamount to treason is a papocaesarist's dream.

Vermeule's Response to Straussian Josh Hammer

MOJ: On “Common-Good Originalism”

I was so engaged by Josh Hammer’s thoughtful work that I did an unusually long response — with bonus collateral remarks on some other varieties of originalism https://t.co/1HvKEn7rA1

— Adrian Vermeule (@Vermeullarmine) May 10, 2020

No Wine and Song

Sandro Magister: Sex, Women, Power. The Three Challenges Germany Is Issuing To the Church

Eugene McCarraher, "You're a Slave to Money, Then You Die"

text version

Latin Medieval Women Mystics in the Service of Feminism

CLJ: Historiographic Sophistications: The Eclipse of Medieval Women Mystics by Cyril O'Regan

“These medieval women mystics are now shadows of a postmodern elite who are geniuses of theory, which if it includes women, seems to have Georges Bataille as its presiding spirit.”

Cyril O’Regan seeks to rescue the mystics from the theorists.https://t.co/8hZxpqB2MR

— Josh Hochschild (@JoshHochschild) May 6, 2020

Ss. Cyril and Methodius 20th Annual Lecture with Fr. John Behr

Edit.
Original video has been set to private. Here is a copy:

Praying the Anaphora Out Loud

Vocal Reading of Prayers by John Nichiporuk



Related:

Fr. Paul Drozdowski

AFR: Everyday Orthodox - Meet Fr. Paul Drozdowski

Extended!

Teaching and Learning Byzantine Music

St. George

Related:
Churches of St. George Around the World
OrthoChristian.com presents a collection of photographs of churches dedicated to St. George that have been built around the world.

Saints Athanasius of Alexandria and Gregory of Nazianzus

NLM: Ss Athanasius of Alexandria and Gregory of Nazianzus by Gregory DiPippo

Ignatius Press for the English Translation?

Nope: Bloomsbury.

CWR Dispatch: In new biography, Benedict XVI laments modern ‘anti-Christian creed’
The biography, written by Peter Seewald and issued by Munich-based publisher Droemer Knaur, is available only in German. An English translation, “Benedict XVI, The Biography: Volume One,” will be published in the U.S. in November.

BXVI on Modern anti-Christian creed https://t.co/Dcuf54c7OQ @cnalive

— The Catholic Thing (@catholicthing) May 6, 2020

Fr. David Anderson: The Sunday Experience of the Resurrection

One of Fr. David's wishes is to write a book on write book on Paschaltime. May God bring it to fruition!

How is our Lord breathing upon the apostles (John 20:22-24) different from what happened at Pentecost? Was this gift of the Holy Spirit a kind of ordination, to give them the power to do the acts necessary to minister to Christians before Pentecost, a prefiguration of the gift of the Holy Spirit to the Church Universal?

As for Fr. David's memories of Sunday Mass: in the Latin ecclesial tradition (justified by texts in the Roman rite?) is the exclusive or almost-exclusive identification of the Eucharist with the "sacrifice of our Lord on the Cross a possible reason why Sunday doesn't feel like a ceelbration of the Resurrection? Maybe Mass wouldfeel more like a mini-Good Friday if anything. In contrast, the Byzantine rite is more holistic in how it understands the sarifice of our Lord, looking at the entirety of His life, both here on earth and after His ascension.

Russell Hittinger on the Compendium of Catholic Social Doctrine

From Pecknold's essay:

Hittinger’s critical analysis comes to a head when he discusses the Compendium’s treatment of the common good. He notes that the older metaphysical definition of the common good—that which belonged to the common philosophical infrastructure of Leo XIII and Pius XI—had given way in the Catechism to a weaker definition lifted from Vatican II’s Gaudium et Spes, which suggested that the common good was concerned with “the sum total of social conditions.” But the compilers of the Compendium are aware that this “sum total” account differs from the older and more precise definition of the metaphysical primacy of the common good. So what do they do? As Hittinger observes, they don’t try to reconcile them, they just “juxtapose” them, like this: 

a. The common good indicates “the sum total of social conditions which allow people, either as groups or as individuals, to reach their fulfilment more fully and more easily.”

b. The common good does not consist in the simple sum of the particular goods of each subject of a social entity. Belonging to everyone and to each person, it is and remains “common”, because it is indivisible.

Hittinger thinks that the authors of the Compendium juxtapose these two passages without reconciling them because they don’t know how to do so. They are actually perpetuating the problem that John Paul II was trying to solve. The juxtaposition is not only lazy, but dangerous—in such juxtapositions, usually the weaker, less binding of the formulas wins out. This loss of philosophical coherence leads to a loss of moral authority, ecclesial unity, and evangelical witness.

Hittinger observes that “at best these are equivocations about what the common good means.” What was needed was not a mere juxtaposition, but a synthesis that strengthens rather than weakens principles. Hittinger even suggests an elegant way the Compendium authors could have done so. Rather than let a thousand principles bloom, they could have clarified that the first “broadly accepted sense” of the common good is not an aggregate definition at all but simply concerns “social conditions,” whereas the second is a definition of the common good in the strict and stronger sense. If they had done the work that John Paul II had asked for, Hittinger reckons, they would have secured the tradition instead of exchanging it “for a mess of pottage.”

Httinger is correct, and it should be noted that the Compendium was released with Rome's authority.

C.C. Pecknold on R. Hittinger and RCST

First Things: Defend Us From Ideology by C. C. Pecknold

“To guard ourselves against ideology...we need to strengthen principles through coherent philosophical definition and reflection. Hittinger concludes, ‘it is not only rigid thinking...but also weak thinking is vulnerable to ideology.’

My latest. https://t.co/fZ3x6aVQNw

— C.C. Pecknold (@ccpecknold) May 8, 2020

"Some might take this as a counsel of despair, but I take Hittinger to be issuing an invigorating challenge... we need to strengthen principles through coherent philosophical definition & reflection."https://t.co/EjweJOEHKh

— Josh Hochschild (@JoshHochschild) May 8, 2020

Yet Hittinger sees “warning signs” beginning with Pope Pius XII. Pius was well-schooled in the same philosophical infrastructure, yet issued no social encyclicals from 1940 until his death in 1958. Pope John XXIII began writing social encyclicals again, but no longer “to all bishops,” as was the Leonine custom. Rather, he addressed them “to all men of good will.” This shift of address drastically changed the scope and coherence of social doctrine, since it no longer assumed the shared philosophical infrastructure and distinctions that had been essential to the tradition.

Should a bishop be preaching moral theology to non-believers or Christ instead?

Does Rome have the authority to promulgate principles of moral theology, other than precepts of the Divine Law, as definitive? By what competence? Rome can only affirm that such principles (and conclusions of moral theology) are free from heresy but Rome cannot guarantee that their formulation is true or sound as they stand, at least not with the authority of the pope as defined so far. Not only that, but the Compendium does not include an exhaustive list of the precepts of Divine Law regarding political communities and political life.

Some might take this as a counsel of despair, but I take Hittinger to be issuing an invigorating challenge. If we want to guard ourselves against ideology and corruptions of our traditions, we need to strengthen principles through coherent philosophical definition and reflection. Hittinger concludes, “it is not only rigid thinking that’s vulnerable to ideology, but also weak thinking is vulnerable to ideology.” 

This is true for the political common good as well as the ecclesial common good. Skepticism that eschews a strong, coherent public philosophy will not help us. Only a philosophically coherent account of the American common good will save us from our descent into ideological incoherence.

Preaching the "common good" never transformed a tyranny to a just regime. While we need to critically examine the principles of RCST, I do not think that Latins will have the courage to take such an examination that far, as it may run contrary to accepted beliefs about the state and other beliefs taken from liberalism, egalitarianism, and other political ideologies.

Fr. Stephen Brock Has a New Book

Wondering if any of my Twitter friends have seen Fr. Stephen Brock's new book, The Light that Binds. I look forward to reading it, expect it to be excellent.https://t.co/2vyh1UsfOr

— Josh Hochschild (@JoshHochschild) May 8, 2020

The Feast of the Apparition of the Cross

NLM: The Feast of the Apparition of the Cross by Gregory DiPippo

Who Is the Future of Existential Thomism?

Finished writing a review of John F.X. Knasas’s Thomistic Existentialism & Cosmological Reasoning. Knasas has a distinctive—I think difficult—voice and it left me wondering: who in the younger generation might be carrying the torch for “Thomistic Existentialism”?

— Josh Hochschild (@JoshHochschild) May 4, 2020

European Society of Philosophy CFP

webpage

This call for papers for an issue of the journal of the European Society for Moral Philosophy on political philosophy looks very promising: https://t.co/FZ7l25mZey

— Pater Edmund (@sancrucensis) May 7, 2020

Fr. Stamatis Skliris

Orthodox Arts Journal: The Icon Painting of Fr. Stamatis Skliris: A Call for Authenticity By Fr. Silouan Justiniano


His website.

The Icon as a unique and inimitable fact in the Church

The Pontificale Romano-Germanicum

NLM: The Purest Source of the Roman Palm Sunday Rites by Gregory DiPippo

Western Culture

CWR Dispatch: Ratzinger’s Western Culture delves deeply into the foundations of European life
This collection offers reflections on many of the fundamental underpinnings of the life of society, applicable to both European and non-European countries.

Ignatius Press

Edit. 5/12
A review: What Will Become of Europe? by Carson Halloway

Concilium v. Communio

CWR Dispatch: Joseph Ratzinger, Theological Reformer by George Weigel
(Also published at First Things.)

As I wrote in The Irony of Modern Catholic History, a fissure in the ranks of the reformist theologians at Vatican II began to open up during the Council’s third session, held in the fall of 1964. A new theological journal, Concilium, was being planned by some of the Council’s influential theological advisers (many of whom had been heavily censored in the pre-Vatican II years). A towering figure among them, the French Jesuit Henri de Lubac, began to worry that Concilium would take the reformist project in a deconstructive direction: one that would do serious damage to what John XXIII, in his opening address to the Council, called “the sacred deposit of Christian doctrine,” which Pope John urged “be more effectively defended and presented.”
  
The first several issues of the new journal intensified de Lubac’s concerns. So in May 1965 the most venerable member of its editorial committee quietly withdrew from the Concilium project while continuing his work at the Council itself. As Vatican II drew to a close, others would join him in expressing serious reservations about the tack being taken by their onetime theological allies. And those concerns did not lessen over time.  

The result was what I call in my book “The War of the Conciliar Succession”: the war to define what Vatican II was and what Vatican II intended for the Catholic future. This war was not a struggle between “traditionalists” and “progressives.” It was a bitterly fought contest within the camp of Vatican II theological reformers. It continues to this day. And the question that so concerned Henri de Lubac remains entirely pertinent, 56 years later: Would an interpretation of the Council that effectively set the Catholic Church against “the sacred deposit of Christian doctrine” end up betraying the gospel and emptying it of its power?  

Joseph Ratzinger joined de Lubac and other dissident conciliar reformers in launching another theological journal, Communio, which he and his colleagues hoped would advance an interpretation of Vatican II that was in continuity with the Church’s settled doctrine even as it developed the Church’s understanding of that doctrine. Communio, now published in 14 language editions, has been a creative force in Catholic intellectual life for decades. Like Ratzinger, Communio is not against Vatican II; it has challenged what its authors contend is a wrongheaded interpretation of Vatican II.

Only one group was engaged in true reform, though in a wrong-headed way by employing the council to do it. Would  it be accurate to say the progressives were leaning towards heresy or had embraced it? Or were they guilty of an archaeologistic thinking that reflected a historical reality that existed only in their imagination? (Simplicity, the Eucharist as Last Supper, and all that?)

Evidence of Bugnini Being a Freemason?

Rorate Caeli: BOMBSHELL: New historical evidence emerges in support of Bugnini’s membership in Freemasonry — Names are named

Eastern Christian Books: Bulgakov on the Apocalypse of John

Eastern Christian Books: Bulgakov on the Apocalypse of John

The Apocalypse of John: An Essay in Dogmatic Interpretation by Sergius Bulgakov

Peter Kwasniewski on the Roman Canon

Rorate Caeli:

“The Roman Canon: Pillar and Ground of the Roman Rite” — Full text of Dr. Kwasniewski’s lecture

Today, in honor of the feast of Pope St. Pius V, I am pleased to present to readers of Rorate Caeli the full text of my lecture on the Roman Canon, which in recent years has been delivered in a number of places in varying forms. The lecture had previously been translated into and published in Italian (“Pilastro e Fondamento del Rito Romano: il Canone Romano come Norma Dottrinale e Morale”) and German (“Im Herzen des katholischen Gottesdienstes: Zwölf Glaubenswahrheiten im römischen Kanon”).

More on the Palm Sunday Blessing and Procession

NLM: The Ancient Form of the Palm Sunday Blessing and Procession by Gregory DiPippo

Leonardo Lugaresi on Televised Masses

Sandro Magister: “To Be Or Not To Be.” The Capital Question of Masses on TV

Fausto Bertinotti, Julián Carrón, Antonio Polito - Il muro che cadde due volte

Law 101

How do we understand the law? According to the mind of the legislator, and in the case of the Constitution, according to the mind of the states who ratified it.

Chronicles: Faux Originalism by Mark Pulliam

In response to the activism of the Warren Court (and the marginally better record of the subsequent Burger Court), conservatives in the 1970s, led by Robert Bork, advocated a jurisprudence of “original intent”—hewing to the original meaning of the Constitution, based on its text and history. Following decades of heedless activism, this was a bold position. In a 1982 article in National Review, Bork famously stated that “The truth is that the judge who looks outside the Constitution always looks inside himself and nowhere else.” Like the boy who pointed out that the emperor was naked, Bork’s critique was devastating.

Famed jurist Antonin Scalia and others tweaked “original intent”—which focused on the subjective intentions of individual Framers—into a more general inquiry into the original public meaning of the constitutional provisions when they were enacted and ratified. How were the words understood at the time they were adopted? This is the central doctrinal question of constitutional originalism.

Will Vermeule eventually concede this? Or will he stick to his error of judging "originalism" to be a form of "legal positivism"?

Webinar with Fr. Bogdan Bucur

Waiting for This One to Be Published

Nobody knows more about the history of Catholic social teaching than Russell Hittinger.

This lecture is a preview of Russ’s book forthcoming later this year. https://t.co/sDVXNzu5AA

— Josh Hochschild (@JoshHochschild) April 29, 2020

Can There Be a Reform of the Reform?

1P5: Why the “Reform of the Reform” Is Doomed by Peter Kwasniewski

Why are there still liturgically minded people defending the Novus Ordo or promoting its “redemption” through Ratzingerian improvements?

Only now are some younger men becoming bishops; thus we see examples like Thomas Daly or Alexander Sample, both of whom sponsored liturgical conferences, which I think are aimed at an enrichment of both forms of the Roman rite. There are also probably many bishops like Joseph Strickland, who prefer the OF but allow their priests to study and celebrate the EF, and perhaps introduce some enrichment into the OF. But many dioceses still have the old guard in positions of power, though many have retired in recent years and will continue to retire, while others have the next generation of "progressives" in charge. So, ask the question again in 5 years, and maybe things won't seem so bleak, at least with respect to liturgical praxis.

Let's break down the second claim.

Cappella Romana, Icons of Sound - Part 1

Related:

"Faith"

This is the "pisteuo" Πιστεύο pblm.
Credere does not mean epistemic belief, but trust, which I defined as "pisteic", a kind of doxastic committment . From the Nicene credo: "Πιστεύομεν εἰς ἕνα Θεὸν"
In Engligh, "belief" ~beloved.
Note: δόξα = belief, gift, & glorification. https://t.co/qZYuRKfKPz

— Nassim Nicholas Taleb (@nntaleb) May 3, 2020

2/ In Semitic lang., "Amen" means "trust", not epistemic belief, so professions of faith state trust.

The Syriac credo is "mhayminan 7ad aloho" = "WE TRUST only one god". (not "I" since; is no Nicene creed for non Greek-Orthodox/Cath)
Doxa in Christian Aramaic/Syriac is tshba7. pic.twitter.com/VLTM6j7Fbo

— Nassim Nicholas Taleb (@nntaleb) May 3, 2020

3) The pisteuo pbm is the reason first-order atheists a la Dawkins & religious people talk past one another: simply religious beliefs never claimed to be epistemic that is, belief in the scientific sense.

You need to remove verbalism & labels to understand what something means.

— Nassim Nicholas Taleb (@nntaleb) May 3, 2020

From the Altar to the Icon Corner: Bringing Liturgical Prayer Home

The Jesus Prayer

I just wanted to take the long version and show how it embodies most of the aspects of prayer outlined here.

"Lord Jesus Christ": adoration/doxology/praise/benediction

"Son of the Living God": adoration/doxology/praise/benediction

"have mercy on me": petition

"a sinner": contrition

The only aspect that seems to be missing would be thanksgiving, but it may be implicit in the first two, an acknowledgement of what God has done for us that is joined with thanksgiving in the spirit.

I would argue that all 4 aspects can be implicit in the Most Holy Name of our Savior, the simplest form of the Jesus Prayer which is His name itself. A cry to our Lord should be a cry for His Mercy, an expression of our humility and recognition of our sinfulness.

An Excerpt from Fiedrowicz’s Book

Something not included with Krwasniewski's recommendation over at Rorate Caeli, a link to which I posted here.

NLM: Best One-Volume Scholarly Introduction to the Traditional Mass, Now in English by
Peter Kwasniewski

Law and Leviathan

In 2018, @CassSunstein and I published a piece connecting administrative law with Lon Fuller’s account of law’s morality. (For a valuable response: https://t.co/DnDCybyuHE). Two years later, our project is almost finished. Release date is September 15! https://t.co/dl8HbRz5FU

— Adrian Vermeule (@Vermeullarmine) May 1, 2020

Another Opinion Piece Against Watching Televised or Livestreamed Masses

Rorate Caeli: Tired of Streaming Masses? An Alternative Option for How Families may worship in Spirit and in Truth in this time of Crisis. by Father Richard Gennaro Cipolla

Two points:
1. His recommendation is for people to not watched live-streamed Masses but do the following:

I offer here a suggestion as to what a family might be doing on Sunday morning without the Mass being available at this time. Gather the family together. Let a parent begin by reading the Introit of the Day, followed by the Collect of the Mass. Then let one of the children read the Epistle for that day, followed by the Alleluia verse by another child. Then a parent reads the Gospel of the day with all standing. This is followed by a brief silence and then a Family Rosary. And that is Sunday worship for that day, and it is fine and it is good and bestows grace.

I think they should instead start praying the liturgy of the hours, whether in its full form or something adapted from the domestic church, and they can start with Sunday, Vespers on Saturday, Morning Prayer on Sunday, and second Vespers on Sunday. But this may be difficult for many to learn on their own; why haven't parishes been promoting the liturgy of the hours? Well, we know it wasn't a priority for parish life in the so-called "reforms" that happened after Vatican II, though some EF parishes may celebrate them.

2. The author offers a perspective on the Mass that is predominantly Latin in its principles:

The Church has always understood the Mass as a supernatural event in which the priest, and the congregation assisting him, “bring down” the eternal, bring down heaven in some sense, in doing what Jesus asked us to do: in mei memoria. “Therefore with angels and archangels and the whole company of heaven….” The precept of the Church to attend Mass on Sundays and Holy Days is of course based on the Commandment to worship God. And this worship in spirit and truth is the offering of the Holy Sacrifice that is the source of grace for the forgiveness of sins that makes possible eternal life in God.
...

What does this have to do with streaming Masses? The Mass is a supernatural event that takes place in a particular place and time. The priest and people are not mere observers of the event. They take part in this supernatural event that happens on Sunday in a certain time and place. Their real presence “enables” the supernatural event to take place that brings about the Real Presence.

It has the advantage of being readily intelligible to the average Latin. But it could be elaborated more in a catechetically useful way, with a discussion of the priesthood of the faithful, though "traditionalist" Latins might be loathe to do that.

More on the Reform of Palm Sunday in the Roman Rite

NLM: Bugnini on the Reform of Palm Sunday (Part 2) by Gregory DiPippo

Daria Spezzano, "The Burning Coal: Aquinas on the Eucharist, Eros, and Deification"

The Medieval Mind and Academic Bias - with Rachel Fulton Brown

Eastern Christian Books: Orthodoxy and Contemporary Thought

Eastern Christian Books: Orthodoxy and Contemporary Thought

Pickwick/Wipf & Stock: Theology and Philosophy in Eastern Orthodoxy: Essays on Orthodox Christianity and Contemporary Thought edited by Christoph Schneider

Adam DeVille Reviews Eros Crucified

Routledge

CWR Dispatch:The Idolatry of Eros and the Corporeality of God by Dr. Adam A. J. DeVille
Matthew Clemente’s Eros Crucified is philosophy of religion done by a young scholar in such a way as to give one great hope for the future not just of the discipline, but of Catholic letters and intellectual culture more generally.

Some thoughts:

DeVille writes:

One popular, and often dreaded, buzzword in the academy today is “intersectionality,” which is just a newer version of the idea Newman first demonstrated so winsomely: “all knowledge forms one whole.” Clemente, a young Catholic philosopher of religion at Boston College, lives Newman’s method in this book (without mentioning him). Clemente ranges freely across theology and philosophy, refusing to allow them to be forcibly separated via an act of what Paul Ricoeur famously called “controlled schizophrenia.” But Clemente’s point, and method, is not merely reflective of current academic preoccupations to bring things together. It is, in fact, the only method on offer to human thinkers, who cannot (and must not) be bamboozled into seeing the world as divisible, the end result of which is the creation of some “private” sphere labelled the “secular” from which God has been exiled into some other sealed sphere called “religion.” In philosophizing in this way, Clemente is reflecting some of the best insights of recent philosophers including Charles Taylor and one of Clemente’s mentors, the philosopher (and Greek Orthodox priest) John Panteleimon Manoussakis.

Is Clemente's book really philosophy of religion, as opposed to Christian theology? For an unbeliever who reasons accordingly, it might be philosophy of religion. But for a Christian who thinks thus? It is theology, even if the author's academic degree is in philosophy.

Clemente wants us to think about the corporeality of God and its nakedly erotic self-giving in the Eucharist (“this is my body”) as well as its implications for us as human beings in our quotidian living, desiring, and dying, our lovemaking and birth-giving. (Clemente’s one-and-a-half-page conclusion, a meditation on watching and waiting with his wife give birth to their first son, packs in more biblical theology than a year’s worth of homilies from your average preacher.) Clemente writes with verve and a wide sweep of philosophy and theology, ancient and modern. All this learning, including considerable insights from psychoanalytic thought, is rendered in a way that is at once lively and serious.

Might there be some truth in Freud's writings? Perhaps. Would it be better to rely upon sound philosophical psychology which is open to the insights of Christians with rich interior knowledge and wisdom? I would think so. But doesn't it depend on one's audience? What if one is reaching out to those who have been influenced by Freud? How many of those are left?

One does not have a conversation with the dead who can no longer answer for themselves, but with the living, and this is true even in the scholastic method. So how many committed Freudians are there who need an apologia of Christianity or of Christ?

Then there is the question of whether Freud's reasoning and not just his claims can be captured well in essay form... This does raise a question of what the best way of transmitting reasoning through the written word. Something for theologians and philosophers to consider, even if they reject the manualist approach.

Blackfriars 2020 Aquinas Lecture for by Russell Hittinger

"Tradition or Pottage: Reflections on Catholic Social Doctrine"

Lecture includes discussion of the notions of justice an the common good.https://t.co/lpIEkJ9xvi

— Josh Hochschild (@JoshHochschild) April 29, 2020

Soundcloud

Fr. Simon Gaine, O.P.: "Did Christ See the Father?"

Eastern Christian Books: Searching for Sacred Images

Eastern Christian Books: Searching for Sacred Images

Gracewing: In Search of the Sacred Image by Aidan Nichols, O.P.

Eastern Christian Books: OCA's 50th Anniversary of Autocephaly

Eastern Christian Books: OCA's 50th Anniversary of Autocephaly

SVS Press: The Time Has Come edited by Ionut-Alexandru Tudorie

Related: SVS Press publishes volume commemorating OCA autocephaly

Eastern Christian Books: Old Believers in the Tsarist Empire

Eastern Christian Books: Old Believers in the Tsarist Empire


Bloomsbury: The Old Believers in Imperial Russia: Oppression, Opportunism and Religious Identity in Tsarist Moscow by Peter T. De Simone - hardback and paperback

An Article About the Benedictines of Norcia

CNA/CWR: Monks of Norcia praying with ‘greater intensity’ during coronavirus

That Will Be an Unpopular Post

among Latin traditionalists.

One of the points made by James Chastek in his post on Latin liturgical reform:

4.) The main problem of the TLM is that through historical accidents it lost a large part of its ability to symbolize the pascal sacrifice, which is essentially a sacrificial community meal presenting the sacrifice as a culmination of God’s fidelity in salvation history according to the scriptures. I wholeheartedly endorse the most strident traditionalist who insists on “the holy sacrifice”, but the claim that we have to choose whether the Mass is a sacrifice or a supper completely misses its nature. Passover is a sacrificial meal. If this is Protestantism, then the Protestants were right about something. So what?

I think I would agree with his post for the most part; it's good to know that not all Thomists are committed to the prevailing theologoumena among Latin traditionalists about the Eucharist. (I will have to review Levering's work on these questions.) I am not sure if the more "traditional" Dominicans themselves hold to such views.

Fr. Aquinas Guilbeau, O.P.: "Friendship and the Common Good"

Here is the video:

Pinkoski's Response to James Patterson on Latin Integralism

Law and Liberty: How Not to Challenge the Integralists by Nathan Pinkoski

A response to @McGillPatterson on integralism, its origins and ideas. https://t.co/Rcy2Cx6AuR

— Law & Liberty (@LawLiberty) April 30, 2020

And one recommendation for the above by Michael Brendan Dougherty: Is Integralism Just Catholic Fascism?

The swift refutation of James Patterson’s smear tactics is *almost* enough to make me believe in the marketplace of ideas https://t.co/ZhnxS8xsHW

— Adrian Vermeule (@Vermeullarmine) April 30, 2020

The author gives a history of the development of Latin integralist thought, starting with the Roman Catholic anti-liberals (not all of whom were strict monarchists, by the way). 

Although its theological claims go back further, Catholic integralism owes its politics to post-revolutionary Europe. The basic presupposition of integralism is that theology is prior to politics and must order politics. As Émile Perreau-Saussine observed in Catholicism and Democracy, this requires a strong demarcation between the spiritual power of the Church and the temporal power of the state. That demarcation was not visible in the Ancien Régime, as the monarch anointed at Reims mixed temporal and spiritual power. The cruel exposure of that demarcation came as the French Revolution’s newly secular state violently attempted to assert its temporal power over the spiritual power of the Church. Since Catholics could no longer rely on their monarch—a Christian head of a Christian state—to protect the Church’s liberties, early 19th century Catholic political thinkers sought a deeper understanding of the principles of authority. They looked to the Papacy—to spiritual power—as the ultimate guarantor of Catholic liberties. Hence Perreau-Saussine argues that integralism is post-revolutionary. Ultramontanist thinkers, such as Joseph de Maistre, helped develop the demarcation between Church and State. In distinguishing temporal authority from spiritual authority, spurning Bonapartist Concordats to revive the Gallican Church, and granting that the Pope was the ultimate authority, these thinkers sought to free the Church from the grip of the post-Revolutionary secular state and campaigned for regimes that would get the Church-State relationship right.

And Latin bishops today act with this sort of mindset, that they have a "spiritual authority" that enables them to lecture the state, even if the state does not recognize their authority. Integralism is a logical consequence to certain Roman claims concerning the authority of the bishop of Rome, and here is its first major weakness. Latin integralists will call their political theory "Catholic" as Latins are apt to label everything part of their ecclesial tradition, but it is particular to them alone, at least so far. Byzantine theory of symphonia may be reconcilable with some looser form of Latin integralism, but it will differ with Latin integralism in all forms in so far as integralism is tied to ultramontanism or a maximalist conception of the papacy. While symphonia developed within the context of empire, on the face of it I cannot see why a version of it cannot be harmonized with republican forms of government.

The rest of the essay is worth reading as the author discusses the relation of integralism to political movements in Europe in the 19th and 20th centuries. It is not a thorough history nor does he mention all of the Latin counter-revolutionary/anti-liberal thinkers, but hopefully Patterson will read it.

Carron on Giussani

Julián Carrón presenta "Il senso religioso" di Luigi Giussani - Comunione e Liberazione


Intervento di Julián Carrón al corso su Il Senso Religioso (versione corretta)


Julián Carrón presenta "All'origine della pretesa cristiana" di Giussani - Comunione e Liberazione


Presentación de «El Sentido Religioso» de Luigi Giussani por el P. Julián Carrón


Julián Carrón e Luciano Violante - Incontro sull'educazione al Teatro Dal Verme

Another Recommendation for Fiedrowicz’s Book

Rorate Caeli: The supreme literary vindication of Summorum Pontificum: Fiedrowicz’s comprehensive guide to the Traditional Mass — now in English by Peter Kwasniewski

"There is No Gnosticism"

CLJ: Historiography and the Demands of Theory: Did Gnosticism Exist? by Cyril O'Regan

Prof Robin Jenson, "The Place of the Altar and the Shape of the Font"

|

The Reform of Palm Sunday in the Roman Rite

NLM: Bugnini on the Reform of Palm Sunday (Part 1) by Gregory DiPippo

Modern Latin Devotion to St. Joseph

in the guise of a Roman document to the Church Universal.

Pope Leo XIII, Quamquam pluries

NLM: The Solemnity of St Joseph 2020 by Gregory DiPippo

The special reasons for which St Joseph is held to be Patron of the Church, and for the sake of which the Church has such great confidence in his protection and patronage, are that he was the spouse of Mary, and was reputed the father of Jesus Christ....

Now playing Rachel Fulton Brown: Bury St. Edmunds

Fr. Aquinas Guilbeau, O.P.: "Friendship and the Common Good"

Thomistic Institute:

To be live-streamed tomorrow at 5:00 PM EST>

Recent Synods of the Patriarch of Rome

The “Historic” Amazonian Synod, Revisited by George Weigl

Also published at CWR.

Weigel's purpose is to protect the true legacy of Vatican II and of the popes of Vatican II, and so he compares the Amazon Synod to previous synods called by the patriarch of Rome. We see the same pattern over and over ago, attempts at top-down reform using existing institutional practices, which are mostly bureaucratic in nature. I'll just comment upon a few of these synods that Weigel considers to be more "historic" than the Amazon Synod.

The 1974 Synod on evangelization was a donnybrook, reflecting the turbulence in the Church a decade after the Second Vatican Council. The synod fathers couldn’t agree on a final report, so they handed the synod’s materials to Pope Paul VI with the request that he do something. Pope Paul responded with the great apostolic exhortation Evangelii Nuntiandi (Announcing the Gospel). It was Paul VI’s last pastoral testament to the Church and the first summons to what John Paul II would call the “New Evangelization”: the grand strategy that animates the living parts of the world Church today.

This is the same pope that failed to give any sort of modicum of leadership at a time when papal authority still carried some weight with bishops. This is also the same pope who created the turbulence with a disastrous liturgical reform. A pope who was wrongly canonized for the sake of institutional reasons. How can there be a "evangelization" by Christian peoples who cannot give credible witness with respect to their private lives, non-existent parish lives, and liturgical worship? The bishops failed to focus on the basics; if they had done so, they wouldn't need a document from Paul VI about evangelization.

The 1990 Synod debated priestly formation and seminary reform. The propositions adopted by the synod fathers helped shape John Paul II’s 1992 apostolic exhortation, Pastores Dabo Vobis (I Shall Give You Shepherds). Where it was taken seriously (as in the United States), that exhortation helped apply the brakes to the silly season in seminaries and laid the foundation for the reformed seminaries of today.

Assuming that seminaries, during a time of contracting local churches and budgets, would remain a viable option for educating future deacons and bishops was a mistake. Weigel's assessment of the current state of American seminaries, like his judgment of many other aspects of the patriarchate of Rome, is excessively positive. How many of these seminaries have implemented a program of scripture study even close to something like Pius X wanted? (What is the typical Latin seminarian's knowledge of Greek and Hebrew like?) How could Latins come to a new appreciation of the fundamental Kerygma without returning to the language of scripture, away from the jargon of neo-scholasticism?

And then there was the special Synod of 1985, which met on the 20th anniversary of Vatican II’s fourth and final session to explore what had gone right, and what had gone not-so-right, in implementing the Council. Its final report’s description of the Church as a communion of disciples in mission provided the thread that wove the 16 documents of Vatican II into a coherent, compelling tapestry of Catholic faith. Like Evangelii Nuntiandi, the special Synod of 1985 was a crucial moment in the journey from Vatican II—the council Pope John XXIII called to give the Church new missionary energy—to the New Evangelization.

Second Extraordinary General Assembly - The Twentieth Anniversary of the Conclusion of the Second Vatican Council (24 November-8 December 1985)

Vatican II remains the paradigmatic example of the use of an ecumenical council Latin synod to try to reform the patriarchate of Rome with respect to its theological outlook. (Even if one were to assume that the Ressourcement approach to theology and liturgy was the correct one, and this Latin traditionalists will still dispute.) It was the wrong instrument to accomplish this task, and could only fail. A Latin could argue that Vatican II was merely following Trent as a council of reform, but the Tridentine fathers had certain reforms in mind, which could be readily ascertained as to whether they were implemented or not. There was no questioning of the Latin ecclesial tradition at that time, but just a clarification of dogma in response to the Protestants (but really a solidification of scholastic theology as dogma), and how to reform the institutions of the Latin churches so that this dogma could be promoted. With respect to Vatican II, in contrast, a renewal of Latin theology and spirituality (which would necessarily involve an integration of the two), by its paradoxical combination of simplicity and complexity, could not simply be legislated into existence. It requires a true paradosis, and churches not acting as institutions but on a humane scale. Knowing the Gospel or Kerygma, witness, and the Christian life -- all touched upon in the synods after Vatican II, which did nothing permanent to arrest the decline of the Latin churches, as the same institutional practices remain in place.

Glorifying the Institution

CNA/CWR: Pope Francis creates foundation to promote John Paul I’s teachings





A pope who reigned for only 33 days... according to those who knew him, a gentle man. How many writings are there from his pontificate? Take a look.

According to a note signed by Secretary of State Cardinal Pietro Parolin, the foundation’s purpose “is to promote and disseminate awareness of the thought, works, and example of Pope John Paul I.”

Will the foundation also promote what he wrote and said as a bishop or as a theologian with private opinions? (Such writings must be evaluated according to their merits, and not elevated merely because the one who wrote them would later become pope, as if the Holy Spirit somehow guaranteed by his election that all of his previous writings were exemplary and free from error.) Why would it be necessary to promote the writings of an individual pope, except because of a maximalist view of the Roman papacy? All too often the private opinions of the man who was pope are confused with the "papal magisterium" and held to be on the same level.

There is one of his homilies as pope, in which he uses a proof-text from St. Ephrerm in support of Rome's claims about the scope of authority of the bishop of Rome: HOLY MASS FOR THE INAUGURATION OF THE PETRINE MINISTRY OF THE BISHOP OF ROME

Of course, the same sort of criticisms could be made about the establishment of a foundation for Benedict XVI/Joseph Ratzinger, even if Ratzinger's theological legacy is arguably greater than that of Albino Luciani.

Related:
Who was Albino Luciani, the 'smiling Pope'?
John Paul I: The September pope
The Unpublished Albino Luciani – Pope John Paul I, ‘the Smiling Pope’: Part I and Part II

The Proper Use of Icons

New Men Now Available

Byzantine Chant Education

Jesus, Icon of God

Démocratie : vers quelle finalité commune ?

More:
Pierre Manent : Pourquoi recourir à la loi naturelle ?

Pierre Manent- La théologie politique et ses légendes : Carl Schmitt et Erik Peterson

Rachel Fulton Brown: Constantinople 1204

Kabarnos Nikodimos

Misunderstanding Secular Europe

That rare moment when De Koninck agrees with the reds. pic.twitter.com/6KUAgZKggo

— Pater Edmund (@sancrucensis) April 26, 2020

The important consideration being that "plures hominum sequuntur passiones"; not that the plures will actually use this right to contradiction, but in that they will, through negligence and indifference for the common good, allow those who do contradict, to seize power. Ex.g.: several European countries today.

An Aristotelian would agree that "absolute democracy" is a bad regime; after all it was Aristotle, following Plato, who distinguished between good and bad regimes. But what of politeia, the "republic"? I cannot see that De Koninck would deny that the possibility of a good form of government by many exists. Aristotle would probably be inclined to there is no "absolute" politeia, whether with respect to the number (rule by all, regardless of qualification) or with respect to what they can legislate.

Rubrics for the Laity in the EF?

NLM: Should the Postures of the Laity at the Traditional Latin Mass Be Regulated, Legislated, or Revised? by Peter Kwasniewski



Kwasniewski takes a laissez-faire position on this question, and that is appropriate, though it may be counter to the mindset of many Latin traditionalists, who will insist upon kneeling as the appropriate posture for certain parts of the Mass, etc.

There is but one further angle to examine: the Problem of Pews. Since nearly every Catholic church in the West is now equipped with pews, usually bolted down for permanence, the topic is far more speculative than what we have discussed heretofore, and deserving of a separate treatment.

The two questions are intertwined so I await for the next part of his discussion. There is also the first ecumenical council's prohibition of kneeling on Sundays, but Latin traditionalists think the patriarchate of Rome is above that. And then there are sentiments like this expressed in comboxes and elsewhere:

I like the fact that the TLM has no rubrics for the laity at all -- including posture. It underscores the fact that the congregation (to be blunt) has absolutely nothing to do with the activity of the Mass. The priest offers the Mass. The server (clerical role) makes the responses. The schola (clerical role) sings the chant. None of this, at least in the missal or rubrics, is appointed for the congregation.

Michael Fiedrowicz, The Traditional Mass: History, Form, and Theology of the Classical Roman Rite

Angelico Press

From the publisher's description:

In contrast to conventional explanations of the Mass that offer practical or allegorical explanations of particular moments in the rite, the present work attends to the organic process by which the Roman rite was built up from its foundations into a magnificent structure, marked by the accumulated riches of each age through which it passed, and characterized by order, beauty, and piety in its texts, gestures, rubrics, chants, and calendar—ranging from the major elements to the most minute details. Treated as well are the reality of the sacred and how it is encountered, the irreducible role of ritual action, the eastward direction of prayer, the formation and value of a specialized sacred language, and liturgical participation correctly understood.

via Fr. Z, who includes this excerpt:

Only in the orations of the classical rite are contained and preserved numerous ideas that, although they belong irrevocably to the Catholic Faith, are understated or entirely lost in later modified versions: detachment from the temporal and desire for the eternal; the Kingship of Christ over the world and society; the battle against heresy and schism, the conversion of non-believers, the necessity of the return to the Catholic Church and genuine truth; merits, miracles, and apparitions of the saints; God’s wrath for sin and the possibility of eternal damnation.

"The necessity of the return to the Catholic Church and genuine truth" -- in reference to whom? Protestants? Non-Latin apostolic Christians?

Is a Latin traditionalist mindset necessarily tied to Latin triumphalism? Or is Latin triumphalism just the consequence of Roman Catholicism of the latter half of the second millenium taking precedence over charity?

Rachel Fulton Brown: The Lives of Charlemagne

Metropolitan Ephymios (Stilios) on Gerondism

OrthoChristian: The Phenomenon of “Gerondism”
Part 1: The components of “gerondism”
Part 2: Theological critique of the phenomenon. The ethics of the spiritual father and his child

Are the problems similar to the cult of personality that surrounds founders of young religious orders and communities in the West?