Transcript:
Diane Montagna: Good evening, and welcome to this presentation of the enlightening and timely new book, The Catholic Mass, by Bishop Athanasius Schneider with Aurelio Porfiri, and published by Sophia Institute Press. My name is Diane Montagna. I had the honor of translating the new book, The Catholic Mass from Italian into English, and I will be hosting this evening’s presentation here in Arlington, Virginia, near Washington, D.C., where as you all know and probably keenly feel, the traditional Mass has come under perhaps the most severe restrictions here in the United States after the promulgation of Pope Francis’s apostolic letter “Traditionis Custodes” and the subsequent “Responsa ad Dubia” approved by Pope Francis and published a few months after by the Congregation for Divine Worship.
Taking part in this evening’s presentation are two very distinguished guests. First, the liturgical scholar, Dr. Peter Kwasniewski, has published extensively in academic and popular venues on sacramental and liturgical theology. A lot more can be said, but in fact, he is so prodigious that he seems to have a new, extremely thorough and deeply researched book out every other week. And of course, we are very honored to have with us His Excellency Bishop Athanasius Schneider, auxiliary of Saint Mary in Astana, Kazakhstan. Both of our guests will be speaking this evening, and then we will open it up for a few questions.
A few words about Bishop Schneider and the history of his books. You may be aware of Bishop Schneider’s first book-length interview, “Christus Vincit: Christ’s Triumph Over the Darkness of the Age,” which I was honored to co-author with His Excellency and which, by divine providence, has had a great impact and resonated with so many of the faithful worldwide, and has now been translated into 12 languages. He is also the author of two smaller books on the Holy Eucharist. You might be aware of his excellency’s small book on Eucharistic reverence, published in Italian in 2008 by Vatican Press. How times have changed. It was entitled “Dominus Est: It Is the Lord,” and it led Pope Benedict XVI to restore Holy Communion being received kneeling and on the tongue by himself during papal liturgies in St. Peter’s Basilica.
The subject of this new book, The Catholic Mass, which His Excellency co-authored with the Italian liturgist and musician, and composer Aurelio Porfiri, is foremost on Bishop Schneider’s mind and heart, and his background growing up in the Soviet underground church, which we talked about extensively in the first portion of “Christus Vincit,” makes clear why. He has written a persuasive book on the Mass based on the church’s tradition, the writings of the saints, and her great liturgical scholars. It comes at a time of severe Latin Mass restrictions around the world and, in particular, right here in Washington, D.C., and the Arlington area.
If I might just take a moment if anyone is not aware, Pope Francis, with all due respect, Pope Francis said in his accompanying letter to “Traditionis Custodes” when he was going to describe his motives for issuing this document that it was based on a survey conducted by the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, sent out to all of the world’s bishops, and that he was responding. He was “saddened and dismayed,” I believe that is a direct quote, “saddened and dismayed by the results.” And he said that he is responding to the wishes of the bishops in issuing “Traditionis Custodes.” I was able to obtain a portion, the last portion, of the report that was written based on the survey of the world’s bishops. It is all online. I have published this and talked about it for the past year, but the clear understanding, and what that report that was written by the CDF revealed, is that the bishops wanted to stay the course with “Summorum Pontificum.” So, the idea here in Washington, D.C., or in Arlington, with all due respect for their local ordinaries, the idea that this was based on the will of the bishops is simply not true. I just want to say that, as an aside for anyone who is not aware, or anyone who is listening via livestream.
His new book, The Catholic Mass, reestablishes that the Mass is a thing of beauty. It is the highest form of Christian prayer and serves as a much-needed refresher after decades of reforms and liturgical abuses. It also addresses what His Excellency sees as one of the chief problems of our time, a growing anthropocentrism that has led man to place himself at the center rather than God, even and perhaps beginning in the Sacred Liturgy.
The Catholic Mass is also a hopeful book in that it offers concrete steps on how we can restore the centrality of God in the liturgy and resolve divisions regarding the Mass, namely by integrating elements of the traditional Mass and the new Mass. Though, of course, the “Novus Ordo” needs to move much more toward the traditional Latin Mass than vice versa. For example, the restoration of celebrating the Mass “versus Deum,” also called “orientem,” and the restoration of communion kneeling and on the tongue.
The book also makes clear why the rubrics of the Mass are vital to preserving the authenticity of the liturgy, and why architecture, music, sacred art, and even incense are all crucial means for lifting our hearts and surrendering our wills to God at Mass, which is the sacrifice of Calvary. As Cardinal Joseph Zen, for whom, if I may say so, we pray and who we here publicly support as he faces trial by the CCP, has said of this book, it makes us think about what we may have and also what we may have lost.
It is my hope, and I am sure that it is the hope of Sophia Institute Press, that more clergy and more lay Catholics can grow in appreciation and understanding of this supreme, ineffable, and priceless gift that we have inherited, that is the Catholic Mass. And with that, allow me to introduce our first distinguished speaker, Peter Kwasniewski.
A word about Peter. Peter Kwasniewski holds a BA in liberal arts from Thomas Aquinas College and an MA and PhD in philosophy from the Catholic University of America, with a specialization in the thought of St. Thomas Aquinas. After teaching at the International Theological Institute in Gaming, Austria, he joined the founding team of Wyoming Catholic College, where he taught theology, philosophy, music, and art history and directed the choir and “schola” until 2018.
Today, he is a full-time writer and public speaker whose work is seen on websites and periodicals such as New Liturgical Movement, One Peter Five, Rorate Caeli, Catholic Family News, and Latin Mass Magazine. Dr. Kwasniewski has published extensively in academic and popular venues on sacramental and liturgical theology, Catholic Social Teaching, issues in the modern church, and the history of aesthetics and the aesthetics of music. He is also a composer whose sacred choral music has been performed around the world. He has written or edited more than 20 books, and his work has been translated into at least 18 languages.
Without further ado, may I introduce Peter Kwasniewski:
Dr. Kwasniewski: All right, thank you very much, Diane. It is truly a great honor and joy to be here this evening in the company of His Excellency Bishop. My longtime friend Diane Montagna, my newer friend Charlie McKinney of Sophia Institute Press, and all the distinguished guests and faithful Catholics who make up the audience, thank you for coming tonight to learn about Bishop Schneider’s critically important book, The Catholic Mass. For a book with such a modest and straightforward title, I must say it packs a punch. To my mind, it ought to be required reading for every seminarian, deacon, priest, and religious, as well as any layman with an interest in the sacred liturgy, and that should be all of us.
I would like to open my remarks with two quotations from Sacred Scripture. “Cursed be he that doeth the work of the Lord with slackness,” or as some other translations have it, “negligently” and “worship the Lord in the beauty of holiness.”
The first verse, taken from the prophet Jeremiah, speaks of a terrible danger that faces mortal man in this life, the danger of neglecting the “Opus Dei,” the work of divine worship for which we and the entire cosmos have been created and redeemed, the sin of performing it carelessly or fraudulently. Religion, the virtue by which we give to God what we owe him, the best we can in the best manner, is, as St. Thomas Aquinas teaches, the highest moral virtue. In this sense, offering religious worship is the most important task we have, ranking only behind the acts of the theological virtues of faith, hope for heaven, and charity for God and those who belong to him. Jeremiah is warning us against a cursed “cultus” in which either what we are offering or the manner in which we are offering it is displeasing to Almighty God and brings upon us not blessing but a curse.
The second verse, on the other hand, taken from Psalm 28 or 29 in the Hebrew, speaks positively of the blessed obligation we have to worship the Lord in the beauty of holiness. The beauty required for worship is first and foremost an internal, spiritual beauty, that of holiness, of being in the state of grace. But since we are creatures of soul and body, the beauty of the invisible God and of the invisible soul in which he deigns to dwell are also meant to be reflected outwardly in the beauty of how we worship as rational animals, in the beauty of our churches, our liturgical ceremonies, our sacred music, our vestments, vessels, furnishings, paintings, sculptures, and windows. These things can teach us and tell us wordlessly that God is the ultimate beauty for which we long, for whom we long, that his beauty is luminous, radiant, ravishing, attractive, comforting, and calming, yet also demanding, severe, strange, incomprehensible, and mysterious. He is the God among us, and the God beyond us, Emmanuel, but also the one dwelling in light inaccessible, whom no man hath seen nor can see, as St. Paul says to St. Timothy.
Catholic worship always found ways to express this paradoxical mystery of God’s imminence and transcendence, his supreme holiness that is both fearful and fascinating to us and which calls from us a response of utter seriousness that encompasses our entire being, mind, and heart, flesh and psyche, senses, imagination, and memory. We offer to him, moreover, not only what we are individually, not only what we are as a community at a particular time and place, but also what we have been and will be as members of the one church of Christ, stretching from Abel the just until the last breath of the last man to confess Christ before the world ends.
In particular, we owe him the worship of our forefathers, of our ancestors, our predecessors, the ones who have run the race before us and reached the kingdom ahead of us, and who are therefore more advanced than we are. The continuity of tradition, in other words, is part of what we offer to God in our worship. It is the combined voice of the departed and the living, the many generations, speaking, singing, and keeping silence as one social spiritual entity before the face of God.
To worship God with novelties, inventions, and fabrications in a spirit of momentary spontaneity is to deprive him of the beauty of united, collective, time-embracing, and time-transcending holiness. It is to deprive him of the best that he has inspired over the ages, the gifts he intended to be given and received among ourselves and under his gaze, for his glory.
Tradition is not the lazy repetition of the past on the part of a present generation lacking in creativity or adaptability. It is not a nostalgic hankering after something we no longer have but wish we did. It is rather the attitude of humble receptivity that welcomes, cherishes, and rejoices in the treasury of the church as the family of God and the people of God on pilgrimage through time, carrying in their arms and hearts all the riches bestowed upon them.
It is only the rootless, individualistic, self-sufficient, self-centered, arrogant modern man who cares nothing for his own family heritage, for the history, customs, heirlooms, books, memories, and stories of past generations, who in fact remains alive in God. It is a perfect folly to imagine that the saints of the past are less qualified than we are to determine how divine worship should be conducted. Or to put it the other way around, it is perfect folly to imagine that we are more qualified than the saints of the past to determine how divine worship should be conducted.
Their cumulative testimony is the model, measure, and motivation for our action and suffering, our divine worship, and our discipleship in Christ. This is the Catholic mentality, and it is the exact antithesis of the modern mentality. Tragically, the contradiction between these two mentalities entered into the bloodstream of the Church on earth with the vaunted “aggiornamento” of the Second Vatican Council and the attempted modernization of the Sacred Liturgy thereafter.
In truth, we receive what the Greek tradition calls the Divine Liturgy from God through the church. Not the church of a single day or a single moment, much less the churchmen intoxicated with the “zeitgeist,” but the Church throughout history. We hand it down faithfully. Thus did the Israelites, having received their worship from the hand of God, who revealed the inflexible principles that govern all worship on earth and in heaven. Thus did Israel’s Messiah when he said to his apostles, the first priests of the New Covenant, “Do this in memory of me.” That is, “Imitate me, follow what I do, and pass it on as a living memory, as a making present of this one sacrifice.” Thus did St. Paul when he told the Corinthians, “I commend you because you remember me in everything and maintain the traditions even as I have delivered them unto you,” and who also told the Thessalonians, “brethren, stand firm and hold to the traditions which you were taught by us, either by word of mouth or by letter.”
Not even the apostles rejected the traditional Jewish liturgy that they received. They maintained the daily cycle of the Psalms of David and united the worship of the synagogue and the temple by means of the mass of the catechumens and the mass of the faithful. Jesus no more came to abolish the synagogue and temple worship than he came to abolish the law and the prophets. Quite the contrary, as he fulfilled or brought to completion the law and the prophets, so he fulfilled and brought to completion the verbal worship of the synagogue and the sacrificial worship of the temple. And so, of course, they were meant to cease, but because they had been fulfilled in a new liturgy that was based on the old. He himself, the Word of God, the Word made flesh, the Son offered on the cross for the life of the world, became the substance of the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass, the Mass of the catechumens taking up the synagogue’s prayer and the Mass of the faithful taking up the temple’s holocausts. The tradition of Jewish worship finds its ultimate point of arrival in and yet is surpassed by the unspeakable gift of the Savior’s divine life.
So too, the gift first given sacramentally at the Last Supper and ratified in the once-for-all bloody sacrifice of Calvary finds its full ecclesial manifestation in the organically developed liturgical rites of East and West. There we find that the concentrated meaning placed by our Lord into a few compact and powerful words, gestures, and materials is unfolded by Holy Mother Church under the guidance of the Holy Spirit for our greater access, our better engagement, our further instruction, our spiritual exercise, and indeed our astonishment and confoundment.
For 15 centuries, the church did exactly what I have described, striving to worship the Lord in the beauty of holiness and striving also by the guardrails of custom, Canon Law, and rubrics to avoid doing the work of the Lord negligently. And she did this for 1,500 years without papal intervention. The missal that sat on every Christian altar from one end of Christendom to the other had been put there not by a pope, not even necessarily by a bishop, but by the hands of many generations of clergy and religious, copying out their missals line by line on the skins of animals, binding them stoutly in leather. When Saint Pius the Fifth issued “Quo Primum” in 1570, he was merely codifying, or better said, canonizing what the church in Rome had already traditionally been doing for centuries. So far from being a vindication of any supposed freedom to dispose of liturgy as he pleased, this great Pope rather vindicated the prior unassailable dignity of immemorial tradition, what the Council of Trent called the received and approved rites.
In general, although gradual development is normal and healthy, especially in the direction of addition or expansion to augment the glory of the liturgy, to glorify God and sanctify the people, the “lex orandi,” or law of prayer, already in place is to be jealously guarded and religiously maintained, and novelty in the sense of a sudden and drastic change is to be avoided.
When Pope Benedict XVI famously stated, “What earlier generations held as sacred, remains sacred and great for us too, and it cannot be all of a sudden entirely forbidden or even considered harmful. It behooves all of us to preserve the riches which have developed in the church’s faith and prayer and to give them their proper place. When he famously stated those words, he was not asking us to be obedient to his or anyone’s whimsical dictate or condescending pastoral provision. He was asking us to recognize and remain faithful to a true principle, one that has always been true and will always be true. If it is not true, then we have no reason to trust the church of yesterday, today, or tomorrow. If, on the contrary, we trust the church, then we must embrace its tradition. It is as simple as that.
The great merit of Bishop Schneider’s book, The Catholic Mass, is that it explains with great simplicity, elegance, and thoroughness the true Catholic understanding of the Mass and focuses clearly and cogently on the central question in this regard. As the subtitle says, “Steps to Restore the Centrality of God in the Liturgy.” For as Joseph Ratzinger pointed out, liturgy in modern times is often conducted as if God did not even exist, or as if he has been utterly domesticated and subordinated to our supposed needs, conveniences, and political agendas. God has been marginalized in the post-Vatican II church. He is the most marginalized of the marginalized.
Bishop Schneider sets out to demonstrate how and why the liturgy must be centered on God, becoming once again the Divine Liturgy. His Excellency helps us to see what the liturgy is in its essence and what attitudes or dispositions are appropriate for it. To do so, he must tell us all the dimensions of worship.
Instead of taking a historical approach, as does Michael Fiedrowicz in The Traditional Mass, or a phenomenological approach, as does Romano Guardini in The Spirit of the Liturgy, or a systematic approach, as does Joseph Ratzinger in his own The Spirit of the Liturgy, Bishop Schneider adopts a thematic and spiritual approach. Like the legend that has the 12 apostles each uttering one of the articles of the Apostles’ Creed in turn, or like a question in St. Thomas’ Summa Theologiae divided into articles, the 12 chapters of Bishop Schneider’s book establish the fundamental articles or aspects of the Mass. These are, “The Mass is Prayer,” “The Mass is Adoration,” “The Mass is Ritual,” “The Mass is Sacrifice,” “The Mass is Splendor,” “The Mass is Sacred Action,” “The Mass is Thanksgiving,” “The Mass is Listening,” “The Mass is the Church’s Life,” “The Mass is Salvation’s Source,” “The Mass is Sacred Service,” and “The Mass is the Wedding Feast.”
Some of these aspects may seem to be obvious. Do we not all know that Mass is prayer? But the obvious has never been less obvious than today, as when you are given an option about which gender you are and you have many, many lines that you can choose from. It seems that in many places, prayer is the last word that would come to mind in connection with Mass, alas. And more to the point, mystery is infinitely susceptible to meditation. We need to draw forth what is implicit in our faith and allow it to form our minds and hearts more actively. New lights are to be had if we ponder anew the great truths handed down by tradition. This, in fact, is how theology and spirituality grow over time. It is not the truth that changes, but our apprehension and communication of it.
One way in which this genuine progress occurs is by bringing together an abundance of diverse, well-chosen sources to illuminate that which we already know but wish to understand more deeply. Bishop Schneider, an expert in Patristics and a widely read former professor, pulls out all the stops in The Catholic Mass, regaling us with quotations from church fathers like St. Justin Martyr, Tertullian, Origen, St. Cyril of Jerusalem, St. Ambrose, St. Augustine, St. Jerome, St. Leo the Great, St. John Chrysostom, and St. John Damascene.
I may have missed one or two. He also includes doctors of the church like St. Thomas Aquinas, St. Bonaventure, St. Francis de Sales, St. Alphonsus Liguori, and St. Therese of Lisieux. He includes medieval or early modern authors such as St. Francis of Assisi, William Durand, Johannes Tauler, Denis the Carthusian, St. Leonard of Port Maurice, and Bishop Bossuet. Modern writers like Dom Prosper Guéranger, St. John Henry Newman, St. Peter Julian Eymard, Nicholas Gihr, Blessed Columba Marmion, Blessed Ildefons Schuster, Paul Claudel, Dietrich von Hildebrand, Charles Journet, Romano Guardini, Klaus Gamber, Evelyn Waugh, Fulton Sheen, Joseph Ratzinger, and Martin Mosebach. And magisterial sources like the Council of Trent and a host of popes who teach “una voce,” as well as altogether neglected gems from the discussions that took place during Vatican II. That is a whole, that is a totally neglected area. What the bishops said during Vatican II, they said a lot of good things that, of course, have been completely forgotten or neglected, and Bishop Schneider pulls those out, pulls out some gems from there.
A book like this is an education unto itself, a veritable symphony orchestra of instruments of tradition that surrounds us with the rich sound of Catholicism, the same yesterday, today, and forever. Most refreshingly of all, at least from my perspective as a traditionalist writer, is Bishop Schneider’s fearlessness in bringing forward the traditional Latin Mass as the gold standard, the benchmark, the exemplar, and paradigm of what Holy Mass is, how it is to be celebrated, how it should be understood and approached and lived. The continuing and permanent value of the traditional Roman Rite is taken for granted, as it was taken for granted by Benedict XVI in the face of the bizarre aberration of the liturgical revolution of the 1960s that divorced the church’s life of worship from its own past.
Although Bishop Schneider accepts the validity of the “Novus Ordo” and sees a place for it in the church, he does not vainly imagine it is adequate as it stands, or that it can long survive without the beneficent influence and powerful gravitational force of the classical Roman Rite. For example, Bishop Schneider emphasizes the exemplary perfection of the Latin Mass in regard to Eucharistic reverence and adoration, the complementary roles of music and silence, and the correct understanding of all male sanctuary ministry in its sevenfold realization: porter, exorcist, lector, acolyte, subdeacon, deacon, and priest.
Whoever attacks this traditional form of the Mass, which truly merits the name Roman Rite, is attacking all that is Catholic, the historical, traditional, ancient, and ancestral rituals that expressed, inculcated, and transmitted the Orthodox faith that comes to us from Christ and the apostles. Such a person is attacking the host of saints, the cloud of witnesses, whose faith and charity were nourished on the church’s traditional liturgical rites. From an ecclesiological point of view, nothing could be more self-contradictory than attacking the use of the Roman Rite in its immemorial form. Thus, when Bishop Schneider explains the improvements or changes that must take place to restore the centrality of God in the liturgy, he effectively tells us to “traditionalize,” to “tridentize,” as it were, what we are doing. Anything that is right with our liturgy necessarily has its roots in tradition. We must become familiar with our tradition and give it a warm welcome as befits Catholics. There is indeed no Catholicism without it.
Here, I cannot avoid adding that it is absolutely absurd for the hierarchy of the church to discourage or try to prevent the faithful from attending the traditional form of the Catholic liturgy that attracts them and nourishes them, as Benedict XVI recognized in the letter that accompanied “Summorum Pontificum.” “Immediately after the Second Vatican Council, it was presumed that requests for the use of the 1962 missal would be limited to the older generation, which had grown up with it. But in the meantime, it has clearly been demonstrated that young persons too have discovered this liturgical form, felt its attraction, and found in it a form of encounter with the mystery of the Most Holy Eucharist particularly suited to them.”
May I say something obvious? Liturgy is supposed to attract us and nourish us in the mysteries of Christ. Only a pagan or an infidel or an apostate or a demon would wish to see the suppression of a form of encounter with the mystery of the Most Holy Eucharist, particularly suited to young people, and obviously not only to young people, but to all ages. All the more is such an attack unjustifiable and intolerable when it targets not some kind of wild, experimental, charismatic liturgy, but the most venerable rite of all of Christendom, the immemorial Roman Rite, which is so ancient that its Roman canon predates the Byzantine anaphoras of St. John Chrysostom and St. Basil the Great.
Yes, the Second Vatican Council called for a moderate reform, but what came afterward was by no means a moderate reform, not by any stretch of the imagination. Moreover, in contrast with a dogmatic declaration that is and must be true, a prudential program of reform is neither true nor false, but either successful or unsuccessful. It has no guarantee of success and must be evaluated precisely by its practical outcomes. On that standard, Pope Francis should be reining in the “Novus Ordo,” not the Latin Mass. But we need not dwell on these matters, as they are no doubt familiar to those who are present this evening.
There is nothing more urgently necessary today in the church than overcoming false notions of obedience which play into the hands of the enemies of Christ who wish for nothing more than to sever the church once and for all from the faith and morals and liturgy she once upheld and treasured. It simply cannot be denied anymore that many rulers in the church are abusing their authority.
Our principled resistance to those who are themselves disobedient to Divine Law, natural law, and ecclesiastical tradition, whether this resistance of ours takes the form of open confrontation or a more subtle, indirect effort to bypass and undermine their agendas and enactments, is not a matter of being disobedient. It is recognizing what is inherently right using the twin gifts of faith and reason, and then doing it in the fear and love of God. Obedience is always grounded in reason and in the “Sensus fidei.” It must never contradict them, cancel them out, or trample on them.
Bishop Schneider himself, having grown up in a Soviet Union that relied on obedience to the diktats of the controlling Communist Party, and having later experienced the still more insidious forms of cultural conformism and social pressure at work in liberal Western democracies, even to the liberalization and secularization of the Catholic Church, understands very well the use and abuse of obedience, its role as a tremendous virtue founded upon the truth and aspiring to perfection, or its inverted image, a treacherous vice wedded to self-interest, cringing before power and resulting in a dead conscience.
Returning in conclusion to Bishop Schneider’s book, I would like to draw your attention in a special way to its remarkable cover, which was specially chosen by the author. Here we see a photograph of St. Paul’s Cathedral in Munster, Germany, in 1946, after the Allied bombing of the city. The church has been gashed open by explosions. A gaping wound lets the light of day stream into the apse. Like the Lord Jesus in his passion, the church seems to be despised, abject, and acquainted with infirmity. This is our situation. At the 60th anniversary of the opening of Vatican II, the Catholic Church in the West is in ruins. A new iconoclasm swept through and destroyed the beauty of countless churches and their furnishings. Above all, the icon of the Holy Mass and the other sacramental rites were themselves vandalized almost past recognition. The liturgy was violently removed from its bimillennial arc of providential development, yet all the same, tradition carries on.
In this moving photograph, we are astonished and then consoled to discover that Holy Mass is taking place in spite of everything. The great Mass of the Roman Rite, the priest, deacon, and subdeacon continue to offer the Solemn Mass, heedless of the rubble, the missing walls, the absent faithful, the cold and damp conditions, or whatever other inconveniences or obstacles beset them. They will be faithful to the “Opus Dei,” the work of God, the sacred liturgy, the Divine Liturgy. They have not forgotten the centrality of God even in the midst of war or the ruins of war. They will not be cursed in their negligent “cultus.” They are striving to worship the Lord in the beauty of holiness as best they can, in spite of the odds against them, in spite of the hostile environs.
After benign neglect, after Bergoglio’s backwardism, after whatever this or that bishop has done or failed to do, our local church might feel a lot like that bombed-out cathedral, and we, by the grace of God and by the true obedience that takes the form of courageous adherence to the truth and determined fidelity to tradition, can be like those intrepid ministers in that cavernous church carrying on with the work of God that saves our souls.
Bishop Schneider’s The Catholic Mass is, you might say, a kind of how-to manual on how to avoid the curse of negligence, slackness, and fraudulence, and how to ensure the beauty of holiness. How to offer the pleasing sacrifice of Abel instead of the displeasing one of Cain. Be sure to pick up a copy of the book for yourself and perhaps an extra one to give away as a gift. Keep the faith and fight the good fight. Thank you for your kind attention.
Diane Montagna: Thank you, Peter, very much for an excellent talk. If you have any questions for Dr. Kwasniewski, just keep them in mind or jot them down. We will have some time afterwards. But without further ado, I would like to introduce His Excellency, Bishop Athanasius Schneider, born Antonio Schneider on April 7, 1961, in Kyrgyzstan, USSR. Bishop Schneider’s early years were spent in a Soviet underground church before emigrating with his family to Germany in 1973. In 1982, he entered the Canons Regular of the Holy Cross, originally founded in Coimbra, and received the religious name Athanasius. He was ordained to the priesthood in Brazil on March 25, 1990. Having earned a doctorate in Patrology at the Augustinianum in Rome, he taught at the seminary in Karaganda, Kazakhstan. Appointed to the episcopate by Pope Benedict XVI in June 2006 at the age of 45, he was consecrated a bishop in St. Peter’s Basilica. From 2011 to the present, he has been auxiliary bishop of the Archdiocese of Saint Mary in Astana, Kazakhstan. Without further ado, please offer a warm welcome to His Excellency, Bishop Athanasius.
Bishop Athanasius Schneider: Thank you very much, dear Diane, for your words of introduction, and especially for my gratitude to dear Dr. Kwasniewski for your excellent talk.
I would like to stress in my talk the issue and the topic of the centrality of Christ, as the title of the book suggests, and I consider this aspect the most important. In other words, what is the deepest root of the current crisis within the church? The deepest root is that de facto Christ our Lord was put in the life of the church and in the liturgy at the margin, marginalized. This is the freedom we have to start again on all levels to bring back Christ from the margin, from the periphery, to the center. Otherwise, there will be no renewal of the church. This is the problem.
We have to start, of course, individually, because this is our almost daily experience. Every Sunday, this is the heart of the church, the Holy Mass. And when the heart of the church is beating weak, then the entire body has no energy, and there will be coming and getting sick with several sicknesses. From the fact that we have banished Christ from the center, I think that in the history of the church, this will go down. For 60 years already, since the council, Christ was gradually, gradually banished, banished ever more and ever more and ever more. And now we have reached the heights in this pontificate. They brought other figures in the church in the Vatican, like Pachamama, and the Catholic Church became one of the objects of a supermarket of religions through the interreligious meetings and so on.
Therefore, we have to stress again the centrality that we have to start, of course in the literature, we have to start every one of us in his own spiritual life, especially the priests, to bring Christ back at the center of my life, of my daily life, that the parishioners show through the convents not the television, not the internet. Christ, the Holy Tabernacle, the Holy Eucharist, this should be the center. And then the diocese, not the parliaments. The synodal parliaments are the center. We have to come back to the tabernacle. The entire diocese, the bishops, all kneel down before the Blessed Sacrament and start a prayer, adoration. This will be the true synod, not the other debates. And then the Pope, of course, on the general, on the universal level. I had one experience in Brazil.
I was visiting a convent of sisters who had a school for girls, a boarding school. These sisters still have the traditional Latin Mass; this is their own charism. So, the rule is that all the girls have to participate and assist every morning at the traditional Latin Mass.
There was a small girl from the first grade, maybe she was seven or eight. For the entire year, she was assisting at the traditional Mass every day. Then she went on holiday to visit her grandmother in a parish. This parish, unfortunately, was directed by a very charismatic priest who transformed the Holy Mass into a kind of show, you know, with loud music and clapping hands, with guitars and so on, all this stuff. The girl went with her grandmother to the Sunday Mass, to such a Mass. When the Mass was over and they went out, the little girl, with all her innocence, said, “Great Mother, when will we go to Holy Mass?” The child was thinking, in all her innocence, that this was a show, a theater. This is not a singular case; I think this is in many places. Therefore, this little child understood what is most important, it’s the Lord, it is Christ, not the show.
So, the Holy Mass, the Eucharist, is truly the life of the church. The Church has received and faithfully retained the blessed inheritance of the Eucharistic sacrifice transmitted to her, mindful of the divine commission, “Do this in commemoration of me.” When the storm of persecution was at its height in the first centuries, in the catacomb time of the church, the church went down into the catacombs. She retired into lonely glens and mountain caves in the times of persecution, amid the silence of night and deep underground on stone altars, the church performed the mysterious service of the sacrifice of the Lord on his cross. The Church sent forth her confessors and martyrs, fortified with this sacrifice, with this manner of prayer, to give testimony for the Lord in the world before their persecutors. Following the example of Christ, they sealed their testimony with their blood. The death of the Christians continually became the seed of new confessors of the cross and the Eucharist.
As the Lord had been three days in the grave and afterward had risen in power and gloriously ascended into Heaven, so the church also, after these years of persecution in the first centuries, arose from the bosom of the earth, from the catacombs and the caves, and triumphed over all powers of the world and over Hell. This gives us hope in our time, also. We are in some kind of catacombs, I mean, the traditional Mass in some places. We are persecuted, but now not by the enemies of the church outside the church, but by those who are within the church, who occupy high-ranking offices in the church and use their power to persecute the faithful who have kept their fidelity to the faith and the prayer, the liturgy of old times.
Then the church went into the cities after the persecution, villages and so on, entering into the basilicas and cathedrals, numberless churches. They built altars and celebrated as they did in the stillness of the night or in the catacombs, but now in the light of the open day, in the presence of the assembled congregations, the heritage of the Lord, the sacrifice of His death on the cross. From this time on, the church fulfilled for all ages, the mission of carrying to all countries of the world this most holy inheritance, the Sacrifice of the Mass, the rite of the Sacrifice of the Mass, the Liturgy of the Mass. She gathered nation after nation around her altar, celebrated with them, generation after generation, the sacrificial death of the Redeemer, and distributed to them the body of the Lord. She thereby accomplished the new and eternal covenant, “Do this in commemoration of me,” and fulfilled the testament of the Lord, “It is consummated.”
As the prophet had predicted, the Church offered the new and clean, the true and perfect sacrifice of the new law everywhere, glorifying the name of the Lord in all parts of the globe, from the rising of the sun until its setting.
The sacrifice of the Mass is the center, it is the source for us of a more effective configuration of ourselves to Christ in his sacrifice, both in daily life and in moments of great sacrifice in our own lives with Christ. In Christ and through Christ, the church, during Holy Mass, daily offers herself to the Most High as a living sacrifice, holy and pleasing to God, as St. Paul says.
With Christ, at the sight of the Divine Victim, whose body is daily mystically broken upon the altar, and whose blood is daily mystically shed before our eyes, the church is encouraged and animated to cheerfully drink with him of the chalice of bitter affliction, to joyfully embrace labors, fortified to give testimony for the Lord in the world before the persecutors, following the example of the Lord.
So, we have to again renew the centrality of Christ with him, in him, through him, so that the Holy Mass is truly the center of the life of the church. We would say it is the tree of life of the church. The tree of life of the Eucharistic sacrifice was planted by God in the garden of the church and rears its blooming top high toward heaven, and spreads wide its shady branches over the earth, dropping down graces and blessings on all men.
The liturgy of the Holy Mass is not something that belongs to us, but to God, who invites us to participate in something that is his property. The liturgy is not the property of the Pope or even of the church. It is first the property of Christ, of God, his ownership. We see this in the response of the faithful to the “Orate, fratres” in the Mass, “Suscipiat Dominus sacrificium,” may the Lord receive the sacrifice from your hands, priests, to the praise and glory of his name, to our benefit and that of all his holy Church. The whole church is mentioned here in this prayer. So the Holy Mass includes the whole church.
The Catholic vision is universal, as we see from the church’s inception at Pentecost with the Blessed Virgin Mary and the apostles gathered in the upper room in the Cenacle. This characteristic is distinctive of Catholic worship: the universality.
St. Peter Julian Eymard, a great saint of the Eucharist and a faithful lover of the rite of the Holy Mass, of all the details of the Holy Mass, the beautiful descriptions of how St. Peter Julian Eymard cherished every small detail of the Holy Mass. He observed that when missionaries came to pagan people, they first established the tabernacle. This is the center, the centrality, the presence of Christ as a kind of, he said, command post, to win these pagan souls to God. I quote him, “Every time Christ takes possession of a country, he pitches his Eucharistic royal tent. The erection of a tabernacle is his official occupation in a country.” In our own day, Christ still goes out to uncivilized nations, and wherever the Eucharist is brought, the people are converted to the Catholic faith.
The Holy Mass is not ours, even if today many clerics, high-ranking clerics, think they can manipulate the rite of the Mass at will. This is profoundly wrong. Such an attitude is a reflection of modern times and of its deepest sickness, which is anthropocentrism, a spirit of autonomy, and a loss of the supernatural perspective and vision. The idea that we are the ones who make the liturgy and our failure to understand that Christ is always the main protagonist derive from this illness, anthropocentrism. We are invited to participate in something that has been given to us by Christ and is an organic expression of Christ, the church, and tradition.
We are not the ones who animate, as they say, the liturgy animators or the team of the animators. The true animator of the liturgy is Christ himself. He is the main celebrant. Christ gives the liturgical celebration its true soul, its true spirit, its true spiritual attitudes, in order that a given liturgical action may be pleasing to God. A Holy Mass celebrated by one priest individually is no less spiritually animated than one con-celebrated by many priests.
The most important action in the Holy Mass is Christ’s action, even if the priest celebrates Mass alone. Theologically speaking, we can say that he co-celebrates with Christ, the main celebrant. Our dignity consists in participating in what we have been given. Our dignity does not consist in activism, in the so-called active participation, another spiritual malady of our day connected with anthropocentrism and neo-Pelagianism. We are often accused of being neo-Pelagians, you know, Dr. Wendt, by very high-ranking persons in the church.
So, another spiritual malady of our day connected with this is neo-Pelagianism, which makes us believe that salvation depends on our action, on our animation, and so on, activism. We should heal these diseases through a reform of the reform, as they call it. Our participation in the Mass does not mean that we have to invent something. The deepest liturgical participation consists in joining in the action of Christ. He is the center, with the voice of the church spanning the centuries.
For the Catholic faithful, the greatest action consists in giving themselves spiritually, with all the crosses of their lives, as an offering with Christ. This is true active participation: to give our crosses with Christ in the Mass, with him. This is the greatest activism, to be able, during the Holy Mass, to accept one’s crosses and setbacks in a loving union with Christ. This is true activism, not the disruption of the external rite that often passes as participation. This is the action God expects of us, and which culminates in the worthy and fruitful reception of Holy Communion.
In this regard, Cardinal Charles Journet emphasized that union with Christ through the liturgical rite is ordered to the union of the sanctifying flame. The valid form of worship and the fire of Christ’s love, the container and the contained, are inseparable in the sacrifice of the Holy Mass, but the rite, the exterior part, is given for love and not the other way around. More important than cultic correctness is redemptive charity, and hence, according to the evangelical reversal of values, the last will be the first, and the most humble in worship will be the most elevated in love.
Under this one aspect, which is most important, Holy Mass is, through the repetition of the unbloody sacrifice of Christ, the existential entering of each generation of the church into the drama of the redemptive charity of Christ, the charity which is present in its source and whose place has been marked out in advance in the Holy Mass. The Holy Mass is the fount and source of the church’s supernatural life, for it contains a power that transforms sinful man into a partaker of Divine Love and Divine life.
In 1913, Paul Claudel penned a moving personal testimony about the influence that the church, the liturgy, and particularly the Holy Mass, had on his own conversion and on his rebirth to a true spiritual life. He writes, “The old, the great book that opened itself to me and where I did my schooling was the church. Forever we praise this great, majestic mother at whose knees I learned everything.”
Yes, Christ is the center of our life in the church, and the Holy Mass, his sacrifice, is the true life of the church. Thank you for your attention.
Diane Montagna: Thank you, Your Excellency, for your deep, profound, and inspiring talk.
Before we open things up, we don’t have much time, but for a couple of questions, I think. Where is Charlie McKinney? If I am not mistaken, which he’ll let me know if I am afterwards, the his excellency’s books are on sale, both The Catholic Mass and The Springtime at Never Came. I believe there is a special on you can acquire both books for the low, low price of $30. Is that true?
Bishop Athanasius Schneider: Yes.
Diane Montagna: Yes, okay. Or you can buy an individual one. So anyone has any questions, just raise your hand. Oh yes, Sophia also has Peter Kwasniewski’s books in the back as well.
Do we have any questions? Yes, if you could stand up and perhaps just try to raise your voice a bit so that we can hear you, and I’ll repeat it if you don’t hear in the back. I’ll just repeat the question.
Question: Well, I’m sure the question in so many of our minds and hearts is, after Traditionis Custodes, what now? You know, because we’ve seen, especially in the Diocese of Arlington, with the severe measures, just, you know, Your Excellency, what are the faithful to do now?
Diane Montagna: So the question is, what are the faithful to do after the issuing of Traditionis Custodes, specifically in dioceses such as Arlington, Washington, D.C., could certainly be added to that, where the restrictions have been particularly heavy?
Bishop Athanasius Schneider: Yes, it is a very delicate situation. Well, when the bishops said or stated that the Mass cannot be celebrated in parishes, or maybe people can find another way to celebrate in other places, the Mass, to be creative in some way. Of course, maintaining the reverence and respect for the bishop and praying for him and for the Pope. But maybe seeking other possibilities to continue to have traditional Mass in other places, maybe not in churches. Maybe you can. I will not say to go to the catacombs directly, but maybe in other places, other businesses.
Question: Yes, in the third row, with the new liturgical laws of the two major dioceses here that were just mentioned, have the faithful, in terms of the Divine Office, been left untouched by these decrees as a source of strength? Whether that be chanted by laity on the steps of St. Matthew’s during a pilgrimage this year or in solemn celebrations by the clergy in many parishes. Could you comment on devotions to the Divine Office among the laity as called for in the Second Vatican Council, but ironically, being implemented most often by traditionalists in a time when many of us, in many cases, are in Mass and in exile from our parishes and parish life?
Diane Montagna: Okay, so the question is, the affirmation was made that with the restrictions, particularly in the Arlington and Washington D.C. dioceses, many people have turned to the Divine Office. They can’t. I think that what’s being affirmed there is that when people can’t get to the traditional Mass, so often they’re turning to the traditional Divine Office, whether it’s prayed on the steps of St. Matthew’s, I believe, or elsewhere. So the young gentleman is asking His Excellency to comment on devotion and the importance of the prayer, the Divine Office.
Bishop Athanasius Schneider: Actually, in the book The Catholic Mass, I spoke about this theme, and I recommended that in the parishes should be again restored, the century-old practice in all Catholic, the entire Catholic world of Sunday Vespers, the Latin Sunday Vespers. And the previous generations, with my mother, they had known by heart the entire Sunday Vespers, because there was every Sunday the same Psalms, the same Magnificat, and so on. It was we have to restore step by step these. But of course, the Divine Office cannot substitute the Holy Mass. This, this, we have to keep. But nevertheless, we have to restore this.
Question: What is the state of catechesis in the church in the United States? Some 75% of people do not believe or do not accept the real presence of Christ in the Eucharist. In 1968, in the first grade, when I was six years old, we were given a sense, an understanding of this reality, the real presence of Christ. For 75% at least, not understanding something must be very wrong. So it’s, it’s a lack of catechesis after 1970.
Diane Montagna: It’s catechesis. It’s also being abused for the liturgy, which is, don’t point people to Christ in the aggression.
Dr. Kwasniewski: If I could just build on Diane’s comment, the greatest catechizer is the sacred liturgy itself. It’s not intended to be a form of catechesis. It has a bit of a larger purpose, a greater purpose, but in fact, it catechizes. And in fact, we talk about the Mass of the Catechumens because they, they were those who were being prepared for baptism and so on, were present and being formed before they had to leave. So if the liturgy is not right, if Christ is not at the center, then it doesn’t really matter how much is said in catechism class. Of course, it’s good to have good catechesis, but if the liturgy isn’t backing it up, isn’t supporting it every step of the way, then you have a, what’s, what’s called a performative contradiction, or you have what they call cognitive dissonance. You know, that you have a contradiction there, and that’s, that’s, that’s the, that’s the biggest problem which children can sense.
Diane Montagna: That is, if you teach them one thing in catechism class, and yet at Mass they don’t experience it, and they don’t see their parents or their brothers and sisters or the people around them, yes, active in a way consistent with what they’re learning in in catechism class, chances are they’re going to opt later in life for the way of those around them.
Dr. Kwasniewski: Yeah, it’s just the old saying, actions speak louder than words. You know, I say in one of my books, I say that when children watch Catholics at a traditional Mass, or even at a Novus Ordo Mass, going up and kneeling at the altar rail in adoration, and the priest alone gives Communion to them on the tongue, that speaks much more than any library full of books about what we’re doing and what we believe.
Bishop Athanasius Schneider: An example, several years ago, I was in Italy and visited a parish. There was a group of children preparing for First Holy Communion, maybe they were seven or eight years old. I spoke about the Holy Eucharist, and they were well prepared, I think, by the parish priest. I asked the children, “Children, what do you think? Why does one have to kneel down while receiving Jesus in the Eucharist? Why kneel down?” And suddenly, a small boy shouted, “Because it is Jesus.” This was his answer, more than a book. I was thinking, to convince cardinals and bishops to kneel down, I have to take one hour, two hours, and this small boy suddenly shouted, “Because it is Jesus.”
Question: Peter, you and I have actually corresponded a little bit on this, but in your talk, I found, and I have recourse to take refuge in the Eastern Catholic Church when the quality of liturgy around me has been awful. In one way, it has been almost a curse because it reminds me of how much has been taken away from me in the Latin Rite. Could you speak to how your experience of the Eastern Divine Liturgy specifically helps us to understand and deepen our own understanding of our own rite?
Dr. Kwasniewski: So, the question is about the role of the Eastern Catholic liturgies in Roman Catholics’ lives, especially when the Roman liturgy in a particular area is done badly.
Now I just want to tell a little story from my own life. I loved the liturgy before I ever knew that there was such a thing as an Eastern version of it. But when I discovered the Byzantine liturgy, and I attended it regularly for almost eight years in addition to the traditional Roman liturgy, it actually taught me a lot about what liturgy is. In itself, it taught me what the deepest principles of divine worship are. In fact, it was clearer because it was so different, and the difference of it illuminated my own tradition and made me see things that I had never seen before. That is what led me, at a certain point, to compare what the likenesses, the similarities, and the differences are. I discovered that there is are very profound kinship between all the traditional liturgical rites. As different as they are externally, they have many features in common that separate them from the way that the liturgy is often done, unfortunately, in a lot of places. So, I think it is good for Catholics to seek refuge there, to visit. But it should not have to be our home. I mean, maybe in some special case, God will call somebody to change rites. But our rite is the Roman rite. That is our home, our spiritual home as Roman Catholics, and we need to pray and work that the Roman liturgy will be as glorious and as magnificent as it can be, you know, and not in a sense, have to feel envy about the east.
Question: Hi. I wanted to know, how do you meditate before you take Eucharist? Compare meditation between saving yourself and accepting the Lord.
Diane Montagna: So the question is, what is the proper way to prepare for receiving our Lord in the Holy Eucharist?
Bishop Athanasius Schneider: Yes, the first basic preparation is always to make a good act of contrition, to purify your soul. Well, I mean, it is necessary to go to Holy Confession. And I think when you know that today, I will receive Holy Communion in the morning, already spiritually, to greet the Lord in the Blessed Sacrament, and to prepare myself with some small acts of desiring to receive the Lord, to meet him. So this is not necessarily a specific vocal prayer, but I think with these acts of faith and desiring to meet the Lord, maybe it is also possible to use some vocal prayers, for example, the prayers of the children of Fatima, of the angel of Fatima. “My Lord, I believe I love you,” and so on, repeating these prayers frequently.
Dr. Kwasniewski: One thing I mentioned in the book, “Holy Bread of Eternal Life,” is that if you open up the first page, it has the Byzantine prayer before Holy Communion. “Oh Lord, I firmly believe and profess that you are truly the Christ, the Son of the living God, who came into the world to save sinners, of whom I am the first,” and it goes on after that. That is a prayer that my wife and I fell in love with, and we taught it to our children, and we still pray it even at the Trinity Mass. We are always saying that Byzantine prayer because it is just so beautiful. But there are also parallel prayers in the Roman liturgy, the ones that the priest prays, Domine Jesu Christe. There are three of them right before communion, after the Agnus Dei. And those are also very profound prayers. So the Missal itself, Father of Journey. Cardinal Journey mentioned, Bishop mentioned that. Cardinal Journey said that the liturgy is supposed to prepare us for Holy Communion. And I think that those of us who attend the Latin Mass have experienced how much the texts of the liturgy, when you follow them prayerfully, actually do prepare you for Holy Communion in a very profound way.
Diane Montagna: Well, very good. I think we need to end there. But first of all, I want to thank His Excellency for being here with us and taking the time. Also, thanks to Peter.
Dr. Kwasniewski: I did want to make two brief announcements. The first is that His Excellency will be giving a talk tomorrow night called “The Spiritual Mission of History,” and that is at 7 pm at the Washington Golf and Country Club in Arlington. There is going to be refreshments at 6 pm, and if you want to read more about that, it is Emperorcharles.org. You can find out more information there.
Alright, I want to tell you about an initiative called the Vetus Ordo Society. Ever since Pope Francis issued Traditionis Custodes, Catholics across the world have increasingly seen their access to the sacraments and sacramentals of the Holy Roman Church, celebrated according to the Vetus Ordo, restricted if not outwardly suppressed by an increasing number of diocesan bishops. A famous legal maxim reads, Vigilantibus non dormientibus jura subveniunt, which means, “The laws come to the aid of those who are vigilant, not asleep.”
In application of this legal maxim, lay Catholics whose form of spirituality is the Vetus Ordo, also known as the extraordinary form or the usus antiquior, have two stark choices: either rest, sleep on their canonical or liturgical legal rights, or be vigilant sentinels and diligent guards who defend the precious and inestimable treasure that is the Vetus Ordo, the old order, the ancient rite of the church handed down to us by the apostles and the saints.
I am pleased to inform everyone here tonight that an association of the faithful, called the Vetus Ordo Society, has been formed to help lay Catholics preserve and have restored to them their access to the extraordinary form by using the sacred canons and laws of Holy Mother Church. I especially want to encourage you, especially those who are present here from the Archdiocese of Washington, DC, and Arlington, to go to the table at the back. Canon lawyer Mark Beli is there. He is spearheading this effort in conjunction with several others. Please talk to him. There is a sign-up at the table, and he can give you more information about what his plans are. Basically, to put it in short, he knows how to use Canon Law to influence and to, in a sense, throw a wrench in the works of the attempts to restrict the old Mass and the old sacraments. That is something that is very important for us not to take for granted. Canon law can be used in our favor.
I will end there because we have to finish this event. But please go to the back table and speak with Mark.
Diane Montagna: Thanks to Sophia Institute Press for hosting this evening, and His Excellency will give us his blessing. And then we will end with singing.
Bishop Athanasius Schneider: Dominus vobiscum.
People: Et cum spiritu tuo.
Bishop Athanasius Schneider: Sit nomen Domini benedictus.
People: Benedictus Dominus Deus noster.
Bishop Athanasius Schneider: Et benedictio Dei omnipotentis, Patris et Filii, et Spiritus Sancti, descendat super vos et maneat semper.
Praise be Jesus Christ, Now and Forever!
Salve, Regina, mater misericordiæ,
vita, dulcedo, et spes nostra, salve.
Ad te clamamus, exsules, filiæ Hevæ.
Ad te suspiramus, gementes et flentes
in hac lacrimarum valle.
Eia ergo, Advocata nostra,
illos tuos misericordes oculos ad nos converte.
Et Jesum, benedictum fructum ventris tui,
nobis post hoc exsilium ostende.
O clemens, O pia,
O dulcis Virgo Maria.