Transcript:
Host: The primary speaker today is Bishop Athanasius Schneider. Born Anton Schneider on April 7, 1961, in Tokmok, Kirghiz Soviet Socialist Republic, his parents were ethnic Germans from Odessa, Ukraine. After the Second World War, they were sent by Joseph Stalin to a gulag in Krasnokamsk, in the Ural Mountains of Russia.
While there, his family was deeply involved with the underground Catholic Church. His mother, Maria, was one of several women who helped shelter Blessed Oleksa Zaryckyj, a Ukrainian priest who would later be imprisoned and martyred in a gulag near Karaganda, Kazakhstan, by the Soviet regime for his ministry.
In 1963, after being released from the camps, the family moved to Kirghizia, then later left Central Asia for Estonia. In 1973, shortly after making his first Holy Communion in secret, Bishop Schneider immigrated with his family to Rottweil, West Germany.
In 1982, he joined the Canons Regular of the Holy Cross of Coimbra, a Catholic religious order where he was given the religious name Athanasius, a name that would prove to be prophetic. He was ordained a priest on March 25, 1990. In 1997, he received a doctorate in patristics from the Pontifical University of Saint Augustine in Rome. In 1999, he became a professor of patristics at Mary, Mother of the Church Seminary in Karaganda, Kazakhstan.
In June 2006, he was consecrated as a bishop at the Altar of the Chair of Saint Peter in the Vatican. He was then assigned to the position of auxiliary bishop of Mary Most Holy in the Archdiocese of Astana, Kazakhstan. Bishop Schneider is the General Secretary of the Bishops’ Conference of Kazakhstan and titular Bishop of Celerina.
Bishop Schneider is the author of several books, including Dominus est, It Is the Lord, and Pro Ecclesia et Pontifice. He has been a leading voice for fidelity, continuity, and tradition in the Church today. Most recently, on December 31, 2017, Bishop Schneider, along with two other Kazakhstani bishops, issued a “Profession of Immutable Truths about Sacramental Marriage” in a bid to resolve the confusion over interpretations of Pope Francis’s 2016 post-synodal exhortation, Amoris Laetitia, which some bishops read as opening the door to Holy Communion for some civilly divorced and remarried Catholics.
Your Excellency, we, lay Catholics, are extremely grateful for your courage, your leadership, and your devotion to Holy Mother Church. We need more good bishops like you.
The topic of Bishop Schneider’s talk is the relationship between tradition and liturgy. Please join me in a warm welcome to His Excellency, Bishop Athanasius Schneider.
Bishop Athanasius Schneider: Thank you very much for the invitation to come and take part in this conference on the Liturgy. I greet very cordially my brother priests here present; I’m very happy to see your priests. And also I greet all of you, my dear brothers and sisters, especially the young ones and children, and young people. It’s also a joy for me to see them. And I thank Mrs. Maranski for her invitation; she was insistent on letting me come. Ultimately, I managed to come, but I have a cold, so I’m not able to speak so well today. I have to beg your patience with me.
I would like to speak to you about the theme, the essential dependence of the liturgy on tradition. What is liturgy? What is sacred liturgy? The tradition and the Magisterium of the Holy Church have left us admirable words on the essence and true meaning of the Sacred Liturgy. This appears in the following statement of the Second Vatican Council, which I quote: “Christ indeed always associates the church with himself in this great work of the Sacred Liturgy wherein God is perfectly glorified and men are sanctified. The church is his beloved bride who calls to her Lord and, through him, offers worship to the Eternal Father. Rightly, then, the liturgy is considered as an exercise of the priestly office of Jesus Christ. In the liturgy, the sanctification of man is signified by signs perceptible to the senses and is effected in a way which corresponds with each of these signs. In the liturgy, the whole public worship is performed by the Mystical Body of Jesus Christ, that is, by the Head and his members. From this it follows that every liturgical celebration, because it is an action of Christ, the priest, and of his body, which is the church, is a sacred action surpassing all others; no other action of the church can equal its efficacy by the same title and to the same degree. In the earthly liturgy, we take part in a foretaste of that heavenly liturgy which is celebrated in the holy city of Jerusalem, toward which we journey as pilgrims, where Christ is sitting at the right hand of God, a minister of the holies and of the true tabernacle. We sing a hymn to the Lord’s glory with all the warriors of the heavenly army, venerating the memory of the saints, and hoping for some part and fellowship with them. We eagerly await a Savior, our Lord Jesus Christ, until he, our life, shall appear and we too will appear with him in glory.”
This is a quotation from Sacrosanctum Concilium. I would like to stress this beautiful concept to you. I’ll repeat, “In the earthly liturgy, we take part in a foretaste of that heavenly liturgy.” This is truly important and very profound. We should repeat this often and ask others, “Does the manner in which you now celebrate clearly give you a foretaste of the heavenly liturgy? If not, then please correct your celebration.” Vatican II is demanding that our celebrations be a foretaste of the heavenly liturgy, and we know what the heavenly liturgy is from the Book of Revelation. It presents to us a clear heavenly liturgical form.
Now, what is tradition? The Church teaches us about what Sacred Tradition is in the document of the Second Vatican Council. I quote the Belgian text: “There exists a close connection and communication between Sacred Tradition and Sacred Scripture. For both of them, flowing from the same divine wellspring, in a certain way, merge into a unity and tend toward the same end. For Sacred Scripture is the Word of God inasmuch as it is consigned to writing under the inspiration of the Divine Spirit, while Sacred Tradition is also the Word of God entrusted by Christ the Lord and the Holy Spirit to the Apostles, and hence on to their successors in its full purity, so that led by the light of the Spirit of the truth, they may, in proclaiming it, serve this Word of God faithfully, explaining it and making it more widely known.”
I would like to once more draw your attention to this: Sacred Tradition is also the Word of God. It’s not only the Bible; we have the oral Word of God. Sometimes we forget this. This Word of God, Sacred Tradition, was entrusted to the Apostles. They transmitted their Holy Tradition to their successors, the bishops, in its full purity. I stress this word: full purity must be the hallmark of Sacred Tradition, the Word of God that the Apostles transmitted and, by extension, the successors of the Apostles, the bishops, and the Magisterium. And the first of the bishops is the Pope.
They have to preserve this sacred tradition in its full purity, not in half or in ambiguity, but in full purity. This is the Council’s direct counsel: to preserve and explain it.
So now I continue with the quotation: “Consequently, it is not from Sacred Scripture alone that the Church draws her certainty about everything which has been revealed,” not from Holy Scripture alone, but also from the sacred Word which is orally transmitted in its full purity to the Magisterium.
And the Council continues: “Therefore, both sacred Tradition and Sacred Scripture are to be accepted and venerated with the same sense of loyalty and reverence.”
This is very important. Sacred Tradition and Holy Scripture, we have to have the same reverence for both. As we venerate the Holy Bible, so we have to venerate Holy Tradition.
And then the Council continues: “Sacred Tradition and Sacred Scripture form one sacred deposit of the Word of God committed to the Church. Holding fast to this deposit, the entire holy people, united with their shepherds, remain always steadfast in the teaching of the Apostles, in the common life, in the breaking of the bread, and in prayers (see Acts 2:42), so that holding to, practicing, and professing the heritage of the faith, it becomes, on the part of the bishops and faithful, a single, common effort.”
I very much like this expression; I repeat it. The heritage of faith is our greatest richness, and the heritage that we have. This heritage of faith becomes, on the part of the bishops and the faithful, a single, common effort. Bishops and the faithful have to make a common effort to preserve the purity of the faith. This is the teaching of Vatican II, not only the bishops, but the faithful also. And in our day, we are witnessing this, that it seems that in our days, the faithful have more strength of faith than a considerable part of the episcopate.
Then I continue with the quotation: “But the task of authentically interpreting the Word of God, whether written or handed on, has been entrusted exclusively to the living teaching office of the Church, whose authority is exercised in the name of Jesus Christ. This teaching office is not above the Word of God, but serves it, teaching only what has been handed on.”
So the teaching office of the Church, the Pope and the bishops, are not above the Word of God, neither the written nor the sacred Tradition. The Pope is not above Sacred Tradition, nor can he act contrary to it, according to the words of the Council. I repeat, it is a very important statement: “The Magisterium, or the living teaching office of the Church, is not above the Word of God, but serves it, teaching only what has been handed on.”
Therefore, the Pope and the bishops have nothing other to do, according to Article 2 of Dei Verbum, but to teach only what has been handed on. It says, “by devoutly listening to the Word of God and guarding it scrupulously.” We have to be scrupulous in keeping the purity of Tradition. It’s logical. It’s not my word, it’s the Council’s word. And it continues, “and explaining it faithfully.” In our day, this is a divine commission, and with the help of the Holy Spirit, the Magisterium “draws from this one deposit of faith everything which it presents for belief as divinely revealed.”
The help of the Holy Spirit in the Magisterium is given assistance, clearly, only when the Church is proposing a truth which is divinely revealed. So, this is particularly for ex cathedra decisions and dogmatic teachings. The Holy Spirit is not given for every word of the Pope or for the bishops or for their so-called ordinary or authentic Magisterium. The assistance of the Holy Spirit is only for the moments when the Magisterium is teaching and presenting something to the faithful that is divinely revealed and which has to be believed. Only in these cases is the Holy Spirit’s assistance promised. In other cases, it depends on the prudence, sanctity, and preparation of the Pope and the bishops.
We have to distinguish this. Not every word of the Pope, not every document, not every encyclical is assisted by the Holy Spirit. It would be contrary to the teaching of the Church. The assistance of the Holy Spirit is promised only when the Pope or the bishops are teaching something as divinely revealed and demanding of all to believe it. In this case, the Holy Spirit is an assistant, but not an inspirator. It is a negative assistance of the Holy Spirit, not a positive inspiration. The Holy Spirit is the inspiration only of Holy Scripture and of the Word of God, the written and the oral Word of God. In all other cases, there is no inspiration, but only the help of the Holy Spirit. In these rare cases, the Pope and the episcopacy will not commit an error in what they present for you to believe.
It is a very delicate issue. We have to be very careful in explaining this because today there is a huge confusion on this topic. I continue the quotation, and it is clear, therefore, that: “Sacred Tradition, Sacred Scripture, and the teaching office of the Church, in accord with God’s most wise design, are so linked and joined together that one cannot stand without the others, and that all together and each in its own way, under the action of the Holy Spirit, contribute effectively to the salvation of souls.” This is the end of the quotation from Dei Verbum, articles 9 and 10.
What are the surest criteria and signs that a doctrine or liturgical practice corresponds to the authentic spirit of Tradition, reflecting the true spirit of the Catholic Church? The central question is, “What is the surest touchstone?” St. Vincent of Lérins, a holy theologian from the fifth century, gave us one of the most apt explanations on this topic. He stated: “I have continually given the greatest pains and diligence to inquiring from the greatest possible number of men outstanding in holiness and in doctrine, how I can secure a type of fixed and, as it were, general guiding principle for distinguishing the true Catholic faith from the degraded falsehoods of heresy.”
“And the answer that I receive is always to this effect, that if I wish, or indeed, if anyone wishes, to detect the disease of false teachings that arise and to avoid their snares and to keep healthy and sound in a robust faith, we ought, with the Lord’s help, to fortify our faith in a twofold manner. First, that is, by the authority of God’s law.” And so, in a twofold manner, by the authority of God’s law, and then by the tradition of the Catholic Church.
Now, in the Catholic Church itself, we take the greatest care to hold that which has been believed everywhere, always, and by all. This is the famous expression of St. Vincent, that this is truly and properly Catholic. This is true and properly Catholic everywhere, always, and by all. This is Catholic, as it is shown by the very force and meaning of the word itself, which comprehends everything universally. We shall hold to this rule if we follow universality, antiquity, and consent.
We shall follow universality if we acknowledge that one faith to be true which the whole Church throughout the world confesses. We follow antiquity if we in no wise depart from those interpretations which it is clear that our ancestors and fathers proclaimed. And we follow consent if, in antiquity itself, we keep following the definitions and opinions of all, or certainly nearly all, bishops and doctors alike.
What then will the Catholic Christian do if a small part of the Church has cut itself off from the communion of the universal faith? The answer is: he will prefer the healthiness of the whole body to the morbid and corrupt limb. But what if some novel, contagious heresy tries to infect the whole Church, and not merely a tiny part of it? Then he will take care to cleave to antiquity. This is very important. I repeat: when some novel, contagious heresy tries to infect the whole body of the Church, and we are now witnessing this, already for decades, infecting almost the whole body, what shall we do? St. Vincent asks, and he answers: Then we have to cleave to antiquity. This antiquity is then our truest orientation, which cannot now be led astray by any deceit of novelty.
But if in antiquity itself, too, the man of which may be a city or even a whole province, be detected in error, then he will take the greatest care to prefer the decrees of the ancient General Councils, if they are such, to the irresponsible ignorance of a few men of the present time.
But what if some error arises regarding which nothing of this sort is to be found? Then he must do his best to compare the opinions of the Fathers and inquire into their meaning, provided always that, though they belong to diverse times and places, they yet continued in the faith and communion of the one Catholic Church, and that they be teachers approved and outstanding. And whatever he shall find to have been held, approved, and taught, not by one or two only, but by all equally and in one consent, openly, frequently, and persistently, so I stress openly, frequently, and persistently, which was taught in antiquity, not only by a hidden consent, then let him take these as his guide without the slightest hesitation.
This is the end of the quotation from St. Vincent of Lérins in his book, Commonitorium.
Dom Prosper Guéranger, the founder of the Benedictine congregation of France and first abbot of Solesmes after the French Revolution, wrote his book, Liturgical Institutions, in 1840, in order to restore among the clergy the knowledge and love for the true liturgy. In this book, he summarized what he calls the anti-liturgical heresy, a summary of the doctrine and liturgical practice of the Protestant sects from the 14th to the 18th century. Even before Luther, there were already some kind of pre, Protestant opinions, like Wycliffe and Hus. As it can easily be seen, many of these principles have a striking similarity with some of our now post, conciliar liturgical reforms. You can state this.
So Dom Prosper Guéranger wrote, and I quote him, “The first characteristic of the anti-liturgical heresy is hatred of tradition as found in the formulas used in Divine Worship. Every sectarian who wishes to introduce a new doctrine finds himself unfailingly face to face with the liturgy, which is tradition at its strongest and best.” He says liturgy is tradition in its strongest and best and continues, “And he cannot rest until he has silenced its voice, until he has torn up these pages which recall the faith of past centuries.”
As a matter of fact, when Protestantism, Calvinism, and Anglicanism established themselves and maintained their influence over the masses, all they had to do was substitute new books and new formulas in place of the ancient books and formulas, and their work was done. There was nothing that still bothered them; they knew each other, and they could just go on preaching as they wished. The faith of the people was henceforth without defense; they changed the liturgy.
Luther understood this doctrine with a shrewdness worthy of a genius. At the beginning of his innovations, at the time he still felt he should maintain a part of the external form of the Latin cult, Luther hated too much the sacred songs composed by the Church herself as the public expression of her faith. He felt too much in them the vigor of tradition, which he wanted to banish. If he granted the Church the right to mix her works with the oracles of Scripture in the holy assemblies, he would expose himself thereby to have to listen to millions of mouths anathematizing his new dogmas. Therefore, his hatred for everything in the liturgy that does not exclusively derive from Holy Scripture is the most Lutheran of all.
As a matter of fact, this is the second principle of the anti-liturgical sect: to substitute for the formulas of the ecclesiastical teaching, readings from Holy Scripture. This involves two advantages. First, to silence the voice of tradition, of which sectarians are always afraid. The voice of tradition. All heretics are afraid of the voice of tradition; therefore, it has to be silenced and substituted by Scripture only.
Then there is the advantage of propagating and supporting their dogmas by means of affirmation and negation. By way of negation, they pass over in silence certain truths or, through cunning, the texts which express doctrines opposed to the errors which they wish to propagate. By way of affirmation, they emphasize truncated passages that show only one side of the truth, hiding the other from the eyes of the unlearned.
For centuries, we have known that the preference given by all heretics to Holy Scripture over Church definitions has no other reason than to facilitate making the Word of God say all they want it to say, manipulating the Word of God to their will. Protestants have nearly reduced the whole liturgy to the reading of Scripture, accompanied by speeches in which one interprets by means of reason. As to the choice and determination of the canonical books, these have ended up falling under the caprice of the reformer, who, in the final analysis, decides the meaning of the word itself.
In every age and under all forms of sectarianism, it will be the same: no ecclesiastical formulas, only Holy Scripture, but interpreted, selected, and presented by the person or persons who are looking to profit from innovation.
The third principle of the heretics concerning the reform of the liturgy is having eliminated the ecclesiastical formulas and proclaimed the absolute necessity of making use only of the words of Scripture in Divine Worship. Having seen that Holy Scripture does not always yield itself to all their purposes as they would like, their sub principle is to fabricate and introduce various new formulas by which the people are more surely ensnared in error, and thus the whole structure of the entire reform will become consolidated for the coming centuries.
One should not be astonished at the contradictions which heresy shows in its works when one knows that the false principle, or if you will, the false necessity imposed on the sectarians by the very nature of their rebellious faith, is a habitual contradiction of their own principles. Truth alone can be consistent.
Thus, all the sectarians, without exception, begin with the vindication of the rights of antiquity. They want to cut Christianity off from all that the errors and passions of men have mixed in, from whatever is false or unworthy of God. All they want is the “primitive,” as they say, and they pretend to go back to the cradle of Christian institutions in the first century. To this end, they prune the superfluous. They cut away in the liturgy. Everything falls under their blows, and while one is waiting to see the original purity of the Divine cult reappear, one finds himself encumbered with new formulas dating only from the night before, and which are incontestably human since the one who created them is still alive.
Every sect undergoes these necessities. We find the same in every branch of Protestantism. Their preference for preaching antiquity led only to cutting them off from the entire past. Then they placed themselves before their seduced people, and they swore to them that now all was fine, that the ancient accretions had disappeared, and that the Divine cult was restored to its primitive form.
Since the liturgical reform is being undertaken by the sectarians with the same goal as the reform of the dogma of which it is the consequence, it follows that, as Protestants separated from unity in order to believe less, they found themselves led to cut away in the liturgy all the ceremonies, all the formulas which express mystery. They called the mysteries and the ceremonies superstition and idolatry, everything that did not seem to be truly rational or intellectual. Thus, they limited the expression of faith, obscuring by doubt and even negation all the views which open on the supernatural world.
Thus, no more altars in the Protestant churches, only a table. No more sacrifice, as in every religion, but only a fraternal meal, a banquet. No more church, but only a temple, as with the Greeks and Romans. No more religious architecture, since there is no more history. No more Christian paintings and sculptures, since there is no more sensible religion.
Since the liturgical reform had for one of its principal aims the abolition of actions and formulas of mystical signification (I am always quoting Guéranger from the 19th century, but you know there are some parallels today, it’s very evident), it is a logical consequence that its authors had to vindicate the use of the vernacular in divine worship. This is, in the eyes of the sectarians, a most important item. The cult is no more a mystical and secret matter; the people, they say, must understand what they are singing.
Hatred for the Latin language is inborn in the hearts of all enemies of Rome, of the true Rome. They recognize it as the bond among Catholics throughout the universe, as the arsenal of orthodoxy against all the subtleties of the sectarian spirit. He must admit, it is a masterstroke of Protestantism to have declared war on the sacred language in the liturgy. You see, it’s very up to date, this phrase from about 1840. We have this today.
It is very much good if this continues; if this heresy should ever succeed in destroying it, it would be well on the way to victory.
“Exposed to a profane gaze like a virgin who has been violated, from that moment on, the liturgy has lost much of its sacred character, and very soon, people find that it is not worthwhile putting aside one’s work or pleasure in order to go and listen to what is being said in a way one speaks in the marketplace.”
In taking away from the liturgy the mystery which humbles reason, Protestantism took care not to forget the practical consequence, that is to say, liberation from the fatigue and the burden of the body imposed by the rules of the liturgy. First of all, no more fasting before Communion. We have almost reduced the new law to this: one hour is almost one hour before Communion. So, when the Mass in the family lasts, you can simply eat before Mass. The fast is substantially reduced to this: “Please don’t eat during Mass.” This is our de facto legalistic task, I say, but it is already the liturgical heresy of the Protestants.
I continue: no more fasting, no more abstinence, no more genuflections for the ministers of the temple, no more daily functions to carry out, no more canonical prayers to recite in the name of the Church. Such is one of the principal forms of the great Protestant emancipation. That means to diminish the sum of public and private prayers. The entire liturgical hell is immediate in order to establish its reign for good, the destruction, in fact and in clear principle, of all history in Christianity. For it felt that where there is a pontiff, there is an altar, and when there is an altar, there is a sacrifice and a mysterious ceremony. Luther’s and Calvin’s reforms know only of ministers of God, men who have to prefer, but this is not enough, chosen and established by laymen, bringing into the temple the robe of a certain bastard ministry. The minister is nothing but a layman clothed with accidental functions. In Protestantism, there exist only laymen, and this is necessarily so, since there is no longer a liturgy. End of quotation.
We have always to bear in mind what the Second Vatican Council said about true liturgical reform. I quote: “Both texts and rites should be drawn up in that manner so that they express more clearly the holy things which they signify.”
I repeat, it is very important. Sacrosanctum Concilium, Article 21. The texts in the liturgy and the rites should be in such a manner that they express more clearly the sacred. This is a demand of Vatican II. We have to ask, for example, “How far are the gestures, the words, and the rites in the renewed liturgy? Do they express the sacred or not?” Evidentially, not obviously, but it is against Vatican II, against Sacrosanctum Concilium 21.
Then the Council states: “There must be no innovations in the liturgy, unless the good of the Church genuinely and certainly requires it, and care must be taken that any new forms should in some way grow organically from forms already existing.” This is a very careful formulation.
The whole meaning and aim of creation, and in the first place of the spiritual creatures, namely angels and men, consists in glorifying the triune God through their existence, through their life, and through visible acts of worship. The most sublime act of God’s glorification is the worship of adoration, latria in Latin, which man has to perform according to his nature, that is, both in a spiritual, interior way and in a bodily, exterior way, as explained lucidly by St. Thomas Aquinas.
I quote St. Thomas Aquinas: “Certain sensible works are performed by man, not to stimulate God by such things, but to awaken man himself to divine matters. And his actions, such as prostrations, genuflections, vocal prayers, and hymns, these things are done, not because God needs them, for He knows all things, and His will is in eternity, and the disposition of His mind does not admit of movement from a body for His sake.”
Rather, we do these things for our sake, so that our attention may be directed to God by these sensible deeds, and that our love may be aroused at the same time. We confess by these actions that God is the author of soul and body, to whom we offer both spiritual and bodily acts of homage.
St. Thomas Aquinas, in his Summa Contra Gentiles, states that in order that man may be able to offer God a most worthy worship, God himself became man and taught us by his words and acts how to worship. Our Lord, Jesus Christ, demonstrated by his example that the essence of true worship consists in filial fear and in loving reverence of God. I quote the letter of Hebrews 5:7: “In the days of his flesh, Jesus offered up prayers and supplications, with loud cries and tears to him who was able to save him from death, and he was heard because of his reverence.”
Beautiful. Jesus Christ had reverence in his prayers before the Father. Through his redeeming sacrifice of the cross, Christ, the God-man, made man capable of worshiping God truly by associating the Church with his own highest act of worship, the sacrifice of the cross. The liturgy of the Church is the more true and God, pleasing, the more all of its elements, words, gestures, music, architecture, liturgical objects and paramenta, and of course, the state of mind and soul of the celebrant and of the assisting faithful, correspond to the spirit of Christ the High Priest, to his filial fear and to his loving reverence towards God.
Christ alone is the universal priest of God the Father. As Tertullian, a Christian writer at the beginning of the third century, said, “Catholicus sacerdos Patris est Christus,” a beautiful expression. The entire life of Jesus Christ was a glorification, an adoration of God the Father. He said in his prayer, in John 17:4: “Father, I glorified you on earth.” Therefore, the life and work of Christ constitute a reminder to fallen humanity of the first beauty and of the very first commandment: “You shall worship the Lord your God and him only alone shall you serve,” as found in Matthew 4:10. Giving love to God brings true salvation to man. As the liturgy of the Church says, “Our praises add nothing to your greatness, O God, but profit us for salvation.”
The Church, the bride of Christ, has as her first duty to proclaim and to praise the majesty of God and the wonders of his redeeming work. Christ, the only true worshiper of the Father, infused in his bride his reverential, worshiping spirit. The reverential, adoring, sacred, kingly, Christocentric spirit of the liturgy is part of the spiritual genetic inheritance of the Church since the beginning and throughout her bimillennial history. The Church preserved this spirit of the liturgy and realized it in her rituals, above all, in the rite of Holy Mass, the sacramental celebration of the sacrifice of the cross.
Since the beginning of the Church, this liturgical program sounds as was laid down in the letter to Hebrews 12, 28. This is, for me, a very solid liturgical program. I quote the letter to Hebrews: “Let us offer to God acceptable worship with fear and reverence, for our God is a consuming fire.”
This is the program of the liturgy of the Apostles and of all the saints: “Let us worship with fear and reverence, cum metu et reverentia,” because God is a consuming fire, of course, a fire of love, of majesty, of sacredness. Due to the consequences of original sin, which remain in the sons and daughters of the Church and in her ministers, there has always been throughout the history of the Church the temptation to yield to an egocentric, anthropocentric, naturalistic, and idolatrous tendency in worship. That is always in all of us, human beings, especially in the clergy, to have a temptation to yield to egocentric worship, to anthropocentric worship, to naturalistic worship, to sociological worship, and even to idolatrous worship. This means yielding to a perversion of the meaning of the rite of divine worship.
So that the essential liturgical law proclaimed in the words of the Psalms, the essential liturgical law is, in my opinion, these words of the Psalms: “Non nobis Domine, non nobis, sed Nomini tuo da gloriam.” “Not to us, O Lord, not to us, but to your name give glory.” And through the liturgical reform and the practice in our days, this affirmation of Scripture is oftentimes perverted in the contrary, which would sound, “To us, O Lord, to us and to our name give glory.” This is oftentimes what is happening in our liturgical celebrations in so many places.
The texts and the rites of the official books issued after the Second Vatican Council show, unfortunately, a shift towards an anthropocentric mentality. I speak not of the manner of celebrations which are in every parish different, so that we have today uncountable rites in the Catholic Church. The rite of this parish is one rite, another parish, another rite. But I speak of the official books, I mean, of the texts, of the gestures, which show, unfortunately, a shift towards an anthropocentric mentality. And this is contrary to the basic teaching of the liturgical constitution of the same Vatican Council. The imprecise character of the renewed liturgy leads to a kind of free-style celebration, which destroys the very nature of true worship.
The widespread practice of conciliar liturgical abuses demonstrates the fact of liturgical anarchy in the Church of our day. The true, apostolic, and perennial spirit and practice of the liturgy is, in our days, in some way, in exile. The liturgy is suffering a kind of exile in Avignon. It is going into exile, but the exiles will also finish. They are not forever. And the exile of Avignon lasted for over 70 years. Maybe they are already approaching, I don’t know.
The rehabilitation and restoration of the traditional Roman liturgy by Pope Benedict XVI, and before him, already to a small extent by Pope John Paul II, marks the beginning of the return of this spirit and practice of the Church from exile back to the ordinary life of the Church. The traditional Roman liturgy reflects and realizes, in a most sure manner, the liturgical spirit of Christ himself. And this is nowadays conquering, slowly but steadily, new generations of pious Catholics. This process cannot be reversed because the traditional liturgy is the clearest voice of the Bride of Christ, the clearest voice that was heard and experienced by our forefathers for over a thousand years. This liturgy remains, therefore, always young.
The traditional liturgy remains, therefore, always young and up to date because it constitutes the very living expression of the faith of the Church. One may apply to the traditional Roman liturgy an affirmation of St. Irenaeus of Lyon from the second century, paraphrasing his expression from the book Adversus Haereses. I would like to paraphrase him in this manner; I only substitute one word: “This liturgy, which having been received from the Church, we do preserve, and which always by the Spirit of God, renewing its youth, as if it were some precious deposit in an excellent vessel, causes the vessel itself, containing it, to renew its youth.”
The traditional Roman liturgy, in the objective aspect of its content and ritual, is the most apt manner to renew souls spiritually, and therefore, the Church herself. As we read in the words of the Eucharistic hymn, Sacris solemniis, of St. Thomas Aquinas, Nova sint omnia corda, voces, et opera (“May all things be new, hearts, voices, and works”). The same truth is expressed in the first words spoken in the traditional Roman rite: “Introibo ad altare Dei, ad Deum qui laetificat iuventutem meam.” “I shall go to the altar of God, who gives joy to my youth.” In this way, we begin a ritual permeated with beauty, powerfully summoning us to holiness. The true usefulness is holiness. When we are striving for holiness, we always remain young and useful, and the liturgy is always young.
The perennial, theological, spiritual, and ritual meaning of the liturgy of the Mass becomes more evident and convincing through the numerous witnesses of people of different ages and states of life who love the perennial law of the prayer of the Church, the lex orandi. The traditional liturgy is the perennially young and beautiful voice of the Bride of Christ, which sounds in the same sense, even in different forms, throughout the ages.
What St. Augustine said about the spiritual beauty of the liturgy of the Church and its power in raising hearts up to God remains very moving and ever valid. In his Confessions, he witnessed the beauty of the liturgy in his time. He wrote, and I quote: “How greatly I wept in your hymns and canticles, being deeply moved by the sweet singing of your Church. Those voices flowed into my ears, and from my heart surged waves of devotion. Tears ran down, and I was happy in my tears.”
What is most striking and moving in our days are the voices of young people who the traditional Roman rite spontaneously attracts. There are even very young people here, babies. This is a sign of true youth, also. The traditional Roman liturgy spontaneously attracts them, as truth and beauty always attract sincere hearts and souls.
Such witnesses cause the edifice of the anti-traditional ideas of the liturgical nomenclatura of today to collapse. The voices of the little ones who love the traditional Mass and their witness cause this edifice of the anti-traditional liturgical establishment in the Church to collapse. The traditional Roman rite is the rite of all ages, and therefore, it is the true youth Mass.
May the special fervor of the young lovers of the traditional liturgy reach those in the Church who have the crucial responsibility for the liturgy today. May bishops, and most of all the supreme pastor of the Church, listen to the voice of many young people who bear witness to the up-to-date character and the perennial use of the traditional Roman rite. May God grant that not only the little ones in the Church, the young people, the lay people, be lovers, defenders, and witnesses of the traditional Roman liturgy, the liturgy of all ages, but also, and indeed in the first place, as their office requires, the shepherds of the Church, and especially the supreme pastor of the Church, so that the liturgical life of the Church may keep its bimillennial youth.
May all those who do not yet know the traditional rite of the Mass or who reject it due to ignorance or other reasons, may they also come to experience this form of the Church’s worship and discover in it the beauty of God’s house and the dwelling place of His glory.
Thank you for your attention.