Solemnity: key to good liturgy

Peter A. Kwasniewski has written another thought-provoking piece, this one the first of a two-part series entitled, "Solemnity: The Crux of the Matter" (Latin Mass [Winter 2008], 8-12; reproduced with permission of the publisher at Scripture and Catholic Tradition, March 1, 2008). Whatever your perspective on liturgy may be, and whether you find yourself in agreement with Professor Kwasniewski or not, we invite you to read the article in its entirety at the linked site above. We are confident, as with other articles we've seen by Professor Kwasnieswki, that it will stimulate fruitful reflection about the Holy Mass, liturgical renewal, and that kind of "active participation" that is properly directed at leading us to the "Source and Summit" of our lives. We have also added a feature allowing the reader to open a linked article in a separate window without closing the homepage. To prime the pump, here are a few brief excerpts:

... The difference between good liturgy and bad liturgy, as far as the mind of the Church is concerned, often does come down to a difference between worship that is solemn, formal, and devout, and worship that is slipshod and superficial, with a decidedly casual air....

... One of the many errors that poisoned the liturgical reform was the fear of ritual, stemming from the view that ritual keeps people away, prevents the priest from "getting in touch" with the people. The new missal has been deritualized, or at least allows and even encourages the priest to deritualize the Mass by injecting the liturgy with extemporaneous remarks, by moving about in a causal manner, and by inviting into the sanctuary numerous unvested laity, which is totally contrary to the spirit of ritual or divine cultus. In Thomas Day's Why Catholics Can't Sing, there is an hilarious (and appallingly true) description of the schizophrenic liturgies generated by the current rubrics together with poor training and clueless custom: a clearly ritual ceremony performed by people who act as though the ceremony were not a ritual. The priest, wearing ritual vestments, processes down the aisle to the tune of a hymn. He arrives at the altar. He adjusts his microphone. He looks out to the congregation. He smiles, and then descends into utter banality: "Good morning, everyone!" Back to ritual: "In the name of the Father ..." Back to chatter: "Today, we remember that we are trying our best but are still failing, and so we go to the Lord for mercy." Back to ritual: "Lord, have mercy." Back and forth it goes, until he dismisses the congregation with "Have a nice day, everybody!"

For a long time it struck me as bizarre that so few should sense the utter discontinuity between ritual and quotidian modes of address and bearing, but as I better sized up the mess of modernity, I saw how markedly anti-ritualistic and indeed anti-spiritual our age has become: anything outside the comfort zone of everyday speech about business or pleasure is alien, dangerous, and threatening, and people avoid that region of dissimilitude as much as possible. The Catholic liturgy, which is all about the sacred, the numinous, the mysterious, is diametrically opposed to the mentality of the Western "marketplace of ideas"; it runs against the grain of the ubiquitous modern lifestyle of indulgent materialism. Any traditional liturgy, whereby eyes and souls are focused on that which is above and beyond, is a serious threat to the triumph of egoism that the government, the school systems, and the private sector are all mightily struggling to bring about in every town and home. Never before have I appreciated so much the slogan: "Save the liturgy, save the world."

Read the entire article at "Solemnity: The Crux of the Matter" (Scripture and Catholic Tradition, March 1, 2008). Enjoy.