" ... a low Mass in the old rite, read silently in a garage, is more solemn ..."

The liturgy of the reform and its adornments will never be able to constitute a seminal fact in the life of the nations. It is too anemic, too artificial, too little religious, too lacking in form to do this. The old liturgy, on the other hand, is not as poorly equipped for the terrible trials it has to face as we might often think, beholding its daily woes. The struggle against the old liturgy has helped us toward greater insights into its nature. Initially it must have felt like a deathblow when the liturgy was driven from the magnificent old churches that had been created for it. Then, however, it became clear that it was the churches that died, once the spirit of the sacred vanished from them; the liturgy itself stayed alive, albeit in lamentable circumstances. For it is the liturgy that produces all that is solemn and festive -- art can contribute nothing essential to it. Once, I recall, the dean of a cathedral, very annoyed, asked me why on earth I wanted to go to the old Mass; after all, he said, very elaborate orchestral Masses were celebrated in the cathedral from time to time. I simply could not make him see that a low Mass in the old rite, read silently in a garage, is more solemn than the biggest church concert with spiritual trimmings. We have come to see, in a time without holy images, without sacred places and sacred music, that the old liturgy was itself the greatest possible image; we have realized that, if there is eve to be a significant religious art again, this art will come from liturgy that expresses the sacred.

Once, I recall, the dean of a cathedral, very annoyed, asked me why on earth I wanted to go to the old Mass; after all, he said, very elaborate orchestral Masses were celebrated in the cathedral from time to time. I simply could not make him see that a low Mass in the old rite, read silently in a garage, is more solemn than the biggest church concert with spiritual trimmings.

The period of iconoclasm in Byzantium lasted for more than a hundred years; it, too, contained a certain tincture of ecumenical calculation -- Islam, of course, was hostile to images. In the nineteenth century Dom Prosper Guéranger had already predicted the Roman iconoclasm that was to proliferate in the wake of the Second Vatican Council: he called it the "antiliturgical heresy". In Byzantium, after vast destruction, the holy images wee victorious. Resolute monks had taken some of the icons and hidden them. We, too, need many resolute priests who will guard and keep for us the sacred rite of the Incarnation.

Martin Mosenbach, The Heresy of Formlessness: The Roman Liturgy and Its Enemy, translated by Graham Harrison, Foreword by Fr. Joseph Fessio, S.J. (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 2003), 220 pages; paperback; $16.95