The Enlightenment's impact on the Mass

In "The Idler," his monthly column in Crisis magazine (February/March 2006), Canadian journalist David Warren (one of my favorites in Crisis, by the way) addresses the question of "Mass and Modernity." He writes:

For some time, I had been aware of "Jonathan Robinson of the Oratory" as a writer and interesting priest. I was, however, too shy and Anglican to come near. But when I resolved to be received into the Catholic Church, there was a happy accident: I was sent to him for catechetical instruction. This was, of course, terrifying. In addition to founding the Toronto Oratory, the man was once chairman of philosophy at McGill and wrote a book on Hegel. By reputation he does not suffer fools gladly; how was I to know that under a forbidding exterior he is a gentle parish priest?

I mention Father Robinson because his new book, The Mass and Modernity: Walking to Heaven Backward (Ignatius Press), deserves mention outside the ecclesiastical confines, where it will be read by the "professional Catholics" as the expostulation of a frustrated, traditional Catholic. Its subject -- the Mass -- is far broader, and the book is pitched to the intelligent general reader -- Christian and non-Christian alike -- who wants to understand his world. It largely ignores the "in-house" disputes over liturgical arrangements that have been rending the Church for two generations.

The book is instead about the Mass in relation to Western civilization in the time since the Enlightenment; about how the Mass has been interpreted and progressively diminished -- not by some conspiracy of freemasons in the Vatican, but by the impact of modernity.

Hard on the heels of Warren's column Crisis magazine , Zenit (2/17/2006) came out with an interview with Father Robinson entitled "The Enlightenment's Impact on the Mass." The Zenit article began with a quotation from Cardinal Newman from whom the subtitle of Robinson's book is taken:

TORONTO, FEB. 17, 2006 (Zenit.org). -- Cardinal John Henry Newman said that bad practice is based on confused and false principles, and it is by an often bitter experience that we finally see the truth.

Oratorian Father Jonathan Robinson concurs -- especially in the case of the contemporary Mass.

In his book The Mass and Modernity: Walking to Heaven Backward (Ignatius), the superior of the Oratory of St. Philip Neri in Toronto and rector of St. Philip's Seminary asserts that confused and false principles have seriously damaged the liturgy.

Fr. Robinson shared with ZENIT how the Enlightenment and its intellectual pundits influenced Westerners' understanding of God, society, religion -- and the state of Catholic worship -- and understanding of worship -- today. One thing we learn from this interview about Robinson's book is that it differs from the many excellent "in house" books about the Mass in that Robinson's book steps outside the ecclesiastical framework to examine how the Age of Reason and Enlightenment philosophers -- especially Kant, Hegel, and their successors -- have changed how Western individuals understand and perceive God, man, society, religion, community, etc.

When asked about the subtitle of his book, "Walking to Heaven Backward," Robinson explained that the phrase is from a sermon of Newman's where he writes:

We advance to the truth by experience of error; we succeed through failures. We know not how to do right except by having done wrong ... we grope about by touch, not by sight, and so by a miserable experience exhaust the possible modes of acting till nought is left, but truth, remaining. Such is the process by which we succeed; we walk to heaven backward; we drive our arrows at a mark, and think him most successful, whose shortcomings are the least.

Newman, he says, was not preaching the modern idiocy that we have to sin in order to be virtuous. Rather, he was reminding us that bad practice is based on confused and false principles, and it is by an often bitter experience that we finally see the truth a bit more clearly. Applying this to liturgy, Fr. Robinson explains:

I think that confused and false principles have seriously damaged the liturgy. That means that any reform, or renewal, of the liturgy will cause us to walk to heaven backward.

We will have to walk to heaven backward without any sign posts and without any certainty except for the promises of Christ to his Church; but if we believe in the Church we know that out of disorder and wrong turns God's truth will ultimately prevail.

When asked about "modernity" and "postmodernity," Fr. Robinson mentioned the secularization of the West and said:

We live in a world for which the language of traditional Christianity is a dead letter. The intellectual frame work, the images, and the moral teaching of the faith no longer color the ordinary consciousness as they once did.

There are many different strands in the history of thought that have contributed to this condition. The difficulty for the Christian is that many of these strands contain valuable elements.

There is the Enlightenment with its concern for justice, human rights and due process; or again "the rise of modern science" with its applications to health and technology; or the Romantic movement, with its historical, communitarian and imaginative preoccupations.

All these in different ways have persuasive and desirable elements. Nonetheless the overall thrust that characterizes them is hostile to the Christian revelation. The efforts of various sorts of Christians to accommodate the Gospel in order to make it acceptable to the world had proved, not surprisingly, destructive of the Christian message.

I think the attitudes and concepts that we associate with "postmodernism" is toward "liberation" -- especially liberation from the necessity of making judgments.

Postmodernists, Robinson suggests, are indiscriminate -- equally at home with everything from the Nicene Creed to hard pornography, from kitsch to high culture. The refusal to reject anything, he says, is what they take to be their escape from what they regard as the harsh, scientific, 'masculine' sort of thinking of modernism. Postmodernists seem to see themselves as living beyond value, beyond right and wrong, beyond truth and falsehood. This sort of attitude, of course, has dire consequences for freedom, sanity and any serious version of the Catholic faith.

Furthermore, Robinson sees postmodernism as the vehicle used by the self-anointed inheritors of the Enlightenment as one more tool to destroy the authority of tradition, thereby wrecking the partnership -- of which Edmund Burke wrote so eloquently -- between the dead, the living and yet unborn -- a partnership that is the only real guarantee of a freedom independent of the whims of sociology departments and high court judges. While admitting his ignorance whether any of this may considered viable politics, Robinson insists that something like Burke's attitude is probably necessary to Catholicism if the Church is to recover the integrity of its liturgical worship.

When asked whether the Church's desire to speak to the modern world shouldn't be reflected in the liturgy, Robinson replied:

The answer is "no" if you mean that the liturgy is supposed to adapt to what we are told are the aspirations of modernity and the promptings of postmodernity. The Church is supposed to bring something to the world, not accommodate its message to what it thinks Tom, Dick or Harry will swallow.

Pope Benedict XVI gives us a lesson in what I mean in his first encyclical, "Deus Caritas Est." The document is a vibrant affirmation of the uniqueness of the Christian teaching about love, and this uniqueness is based on God's self-disclosure of himself -- what we call revelation.

The liturgy must return to reflecting this God-centered approach.

The following exchanges are excerpted (with editing) from the conclusion of the Zenit interview:

Q: What are the ways in which authentic liturgical renewal can overcome the handicaps of modernity?

Father Robinson: If by authentic liturgical renewal you mean a liturgy based on God's revelation -- and not on our aspirations -- as well as serious preaching based on this same revelation, and finally on an attempt to live holy lives, then nothing more is required....

Q: How can the Mass be reinvigorated and renewed without bringing constant change and upheaval to the spiritual lives of the faithful?

Father Robinson: In principle, as the French say, the answer is that the Mass can indeed be reinvigorated and renewed without constant upheaval and change. For a variety of reasons, many of them detailed in my book, I am not optimistic that this will in fact happen.

Q: An appreciation of the transcendent dimension to the liturgy has always appeared to be important to Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, now Benedict XVI. How do you believe the Pope will foster a renewed appreciation of the liturgy?

Father Robinson: I would not presume to second guess what the Holy Father might do or not do.

On the other hand, everything we know from Cardinal Ratzinger's writings about liturgy shows that they are firmly grounded on a theological foundation, and so we can assume that he will try to ensure that this teaching about the nature of God is reflected in the worship of the Church.

David Warren, back in his Crisis column, concludes with the following reflection:

[Father Robinson] is a pessimist; yet he knows Christ can fix what we cannot. Father Robinson advises the contemporary Catholic to succumb to neither anger nor indifference. He counsels prayer and study. As Newman observed, a light shines deeply into history. Follow it, and the extraordinary claims of Catholicism (and of the Judaism on which it was founded) become more visible. Abide with that light.

Good words.