It's anno Moto Proprio I, do you know where your local T.L.M. is?

This being my first column, I suppose a few words of introduction are in order. I am a software engineer by trade, but my degree is in History, and one of my areas of focus was the history of the Sacred Liturgy in mediæval era and its interplay with culture, especially the military. I am the co-author, with my good friend Nicholas Wansbutter, of the “stridently radical traditionalist” blog Traditio in Radice. I am also the founder and webmaster of TheCatholicLibrary.org.

My family and I are lucky enough to be able to assist at the Extraordinary Rite at least twice weekly (thrice if we assist at both the Low and High Mass on Sunday) and on Holy Days of Obligation. That's not nearly enough, nor is a “community” of far-flung people, no matter how strong, who only see each other at these periodic liturgical functions, a substitute for the holistic and integrated community of a parish, and therefore we are in the process of trying to move to a full, canonical, traditional parish. I ask your prayers not only for our family to move to a traditional parish, but for more families to have the courage and dedication to do so.

Our esteemed Editor has given me the Liturgical column in this publication, and so my focus must remain (mostly) on the Sacred Liturgy. Within that sphere I'll focus on things from minuscule items like houseling cloths and the canopeum to the great concepts of organic development and the horrors of popes throughout history meddling with the liturgy. All that having been said, I firmly believe that liturgy and culture are conjoined, and I will not hesitate to highlight the effects one has upon the other.

In this first column, I'd like to address the difference between substance and style in the Sacred Liturgy. Much of this will focus on the Liturgy of the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass, but the argument applies to the rest of Holy Mother Church's Sacramental rites, and even her non-Sacramental liturgies – especially those that are official and public (the Divine Office being the paramount example).

In the the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass, the substance is first and foremost the Most Blessed Sacrament. It is the Heart of the Rite, indeed the Heart of the Faith (quite literally). But not all of the Liturgies of Holy Mother Church are centered around a Sacrament, and one cannot say that they are without substance. It seems then that there is more to the substance of the Holy Mass than the Holy Eucharist. The substance of the Most Blessed Sacrament is bread and wine and the words of Consecration, yet the Church has never allowed that alone to be a licit Liturgy of the Holy Sacrifice. The Most Blessed Sacrament is the heart of the Holy Mass, it is the Pearl of great price, yet the setting is not all decoration – without the substantial part of the setting, the Pearl falls out of the Morse and rolls across the filthy floor and is lost in the dust and detritus.

The substance of the Sacred Liturgy is first and foremost those words and actions which, springing up organically under the inspiration of the Holy Ghost, have been approved and promulgated by the liturgical authorities of Holy Mother the Church. These words and actions are the structure of the liturgy, they express the heart of the rite and invite all present to a deeper union with our Lord through true ghostly participation in the Sacred Liturgy. It is a Dogma of the Faith that the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass makes present the Sacrifice of our Blessed Lord on Calvary. As a sort of side effect of this, however, one may say that a celebration the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass also makes present every other celebration of the Holy Mass. This union, through and outside of time, is what binds us poor sinners with the saints who have preceded us. We all turn towards the Lord as one. This is the font from which tradition and historical continuity – not only in the Sacred Liturgy of our cult, but also the culture that flows from it – are continually watered. This continuity, in perhaps a less absolute manner, is also present in all the rites of our Holy Mother the Church. When we pray Vespers, when we participate in the Corpus Christi procession, we are uniting ourselves to two millenia of our brethren. This is an important reason why substantial change in the Sacred Liturgy is bad – it threatens this continuity. That is not to say that all change is bad; when the liturgical authorities of the Church are performing their proper duty of carefully examining organic developments and pruning away those which may obstruct or obfuscate the heart of the liturgy, then the Liturgy may grow and develop under the inspiration of the Holy Ghost. It is when the authorities themselves begin to tinker with the rites, treating them not as organic things but as mechanical ones, that the Sacred Liturgies suffer the greatest damage – far greater than when individuals abuse or mar the celebration of the rites.

Style comes in with anything that is added to the substance of the liturgy. Cloth-of-gold vestments, folk music, and polyphony are all elements of style. The purpose of style, like that of substance, is to enhance the Sacred Liturgy, and above all, to engage the senses of man – not to titillate, but to draw the man deeper into the mysteries of the rite. Because of this appeal to man, style is less absolute than substance. Whereas the focus of substance is the heart of the rite, the focus of style is both the rite and the man. It is the bridge, the portal, by which men are drawn to the substance, and the substance supports and displays the very heart of the Church.

In the Holy Mass and the other Sacramental liturgies, both substance and style can be judged by the Sacrament – how does this element confirm or obfuscate the teachings of Holy Mother Church on this Sacrament? Likewise, the non-Sacramental rites may be judged by whether they support and expose the heart of the rite. Finally, all the elements of a Sacred Liturgy must be judged by how they confirm the intent of the Church as laid out by Holy Tradition.

A Latin “High” Mass in the Ordinary Rite, such as that at St. Agnes in St. Paul, Minnesota, certainly has a lot of traditional elements of style, but what about the substance? As a parishioner there, reading through old (i.e.: pre-1960s) books on the Liturgy, I was constantly struck by the gap between what I was reading and what the Sacred Liturgy that I was participating in. The difference in what the Church teaches and has always taught about the Holy Sacrifice and the Holy Sacrament and what the Novus Ordo says and doesn't say, the actions it proscribes and doesn't proscribe. Setting to one side those areas in which St. Agnes, (usually) taking advantage of legitimate options, uses words and actions proscribed not in the Ordinary Missal but in the Extraordinary, I kept coming to the same conclusion. It is the substance of the Ordinary Rite that is dubious, especially compared to the Extraordinary.

On the other hand, a badly said simple Low Mass in the Extraordinary Rite, such as I found at St. Augustine in South St. Paul, did not have much in the way of style. At the time I began assisting there, the Indult at was said by a kindly old retired priest, a priest who was willing to step in and offer the Traditional Mass for us in a time when everything traditional was still radioactive. His intentions were nothing but the best. The style, however, was lacking. Further, prayers were sometimes said in the wrong order, as Father struggled through the rite every Sunday. Silent prayers were sometimes said aloud, loud prayers silent (or skipped). But yet, even though these were substantial defects, at the core the substance was still there. It was still the liturgy of the ages. Charlemagne would have recognized it. In fact, these problems are even the same as those faced by the Carolingian Church. The 8th Century had old, infirm priests struggling with Latin. It did not have clown Masses. It had a “clash” of sorts between two rites of Holy Mass, yet both were the products of organic development – neither was a fabricated product. It was this substance, even though sometimes garbled, this continuity with the millions of my Catholic brethren who have preceded me, that convinced me to continue to assist at the Traditional Mass, eventually exclusively.

No, Haydn and Mozart do not make a Holy Mass – that is obvious. What may not be as obvious is that Latin and Gregorian Chant, cloth-of-gold vestments and incense, in and of themselves, do not alter the substance of the Sacred Liturgy. They are, to put it in vulgar terms, lipstick on a pig. A human heart is a holy thing, it is the seat of the soul, it is made in the image of the Most Sacred Heart of our Blessed Lord. A human heart is a human heart, no matter where it is, no matter what setting it is in. Therefore, a human heart in one of these freaky organ-growing pigs that science has thrust upon us is just as much a human heart as the one beating in your chest. The heart of the substance (i.e.: the human heart) is the same, but the rest of the substance (i.e.: the pig) is wrong and disguises the human heart inside it. The pig may have a human heart hidden within it, and you can put lipstick on the pig, but that doesn't make it human.

Traditional style does not improve fabricated substance. The substance is what we must cling to – it is our link with the Faith of our Fathers. If we lose sight of this, if we accept fabricated substance dressed up in traditional style, we lose our link to the living Tradition of the Church, and both our Liturgy and Culture will suffer.