'And with your spirit'

Yesterday, the first sunday in Advent, our English-speaking Roman Catholic brethren began using a newly revised liturgy that is closer to the Latin texts than the previous 1973 version in use for nearly four decades. Liturgy Training Publications has posted a comparison of the two texts for those wishing to see the differences side by side. Perhaps the most immediately noticeable change comes with the greeting at the beginning of the eucharistic prayer, which runs as follows in the old version:

"The Lord be with you"
"And also with you."

This now reads:

"The Lord be with you."
"And with your spirit."

This brings the English liturgy into closer conformity, not only with the Latin of the Novus Ordo mass, but with its translation into other languages as well, for example, French and Spanish. This month's issue of First Things carries Anthony Esolen's fascinating discussion of the new English texts: Restoring the Words.

Many other church bodies followed the Roman example during the 1970s, adopting the texts of the ordinary of the mass for their own use in, for example, the Episcopal Church's 1979 Book of Common Prayer, the Anglican Church of Canada's Book of Alternative Services and the Lutheran Book of Worship. Our own congregation yesterday celebrated the Lord's Supper with the now familiar greeting: "The Lord be with you." To which we responded: "And also with you." This new disparity in our liturgies prompts me to wonder whether other denominations will eventually follow the Roman lead once again and bring their own liturgies into closer conformity with the new, more accurate, texts.

At this point I am reluctant to speculate on this question. Official ecumenism has fallen on hard times in recent decades, as various denominations have gone their own way on a variety of divisive issues, seemingly unconcerned with the impact on their sister churches, and sometimes even on their own communions. A more practical consideration is that composers have used the 1973 texts for their own mass settings, which are in use in countless congregations throughout the English-speaking world. Without a Vatican-style authority to impose a different translation on them, force of habit will likely incline them to stick with what they have. In the meantime, as of yesterday we are all just a little further apart, liturgically speaking.

Notre Dame on life

My alma mater, the University of Notre Dame, released an Institutional Statement Supporting the Choice for Life on 8 April 2010:

Consistent with the teaching of the Catholic Church on such issues as abortion, research involving human embryos, euthanasia, the death penalty, and other related life issues, the University of Notre Dame recognizes and upholds the sanctity of human life from conception to natural death.

Although this brief statement is fine as far as it goes, one might question the wording of the title. Why "the choice for life" rather than, say, "the defence of life"?

Chaput on creation, fall and redemption

Permit me to direct your attention to a wonderful article by Archbishop Charles Chaput of Denver, which, but for a few sentences here and there, could easily have been written by an evangelical Christian of the Reformed persuasion: Fire On The Earth: God’s New Creation and the Meaning of Our Lives. I am struck by his redemptive-historical reading of scripture, which many of us may tend to think is the exclusive preserve of the Reformed tradition. Archbishop Chaput is to be commended for disabusing us of this misconception. Here’s an excerpt:

There’s nothing tepid or routine about a real encounter with Sacred Scripture. In his Narnia tales, C.S. Lewis warned that Aslan is a good lion, but he is not a “tame” lion. Likewise, God’s Word is profoundly good, but it is never “tame.” Augustine thought Christian Scripture was vulgar, inelegant, and shallow—until he heard it preached by St. Ambrose; then it grabbed him by the soul, and turned his world and his life inside out. When Jesus said “I came to cast fire on the earth, and would that it were already kindled” (Lk 12:49) he spoke not as an interesting moral counselor, but as the restless, incarnate Word of God, the Scriptures in flesh and blood, on fire with his Father’s mission of salvation.

Scripture is passionate; it’s a love story, and it can only be absorbed by giving it everything we have: our mind, our heart and our will. It’s the one story that really matters; the story of God’s love for humanity. And like every great story, it has a structure. Talking about that structure and its meaning is my purpose here today.

A simple way of understanding God’s Word is to see that the beginning, middle and end of Scripture correspond to man’s creation, fall, and redemption. Creation opens Scripture, followed by the sin of Adam and the infidelity of Israel. This drama takes up the bulk of the biblical story until we reach a climax in the birth of Jesus and the redemption he brings. Thus, creation, fall, and redemption make up the three key acts of Scripture’s story, and they embody God’s plan for each of us.

To those intrigued by this article, I recommend a reading of Chaput’s Render Unto Caesar: Serving the Nation by Living Our Catholic Beliefs in Political Life.

Controversy over abortion remarks

Cardinal Marc Ouellet, the Roman Catholic primate of Canada, has stirred up controversy by reiterating his church’s position on abortion at a recent pro-life conference. In response, Charles Lewis asks: Is the Pope Catholic?

Reforming the Roman missal

Well over a generation ago, in response to Vatican II, the Roman Catholic Church in the English-speaking world formulated vernacular liturgical texts that would come to influence many, if not most, other christian denominations as they undertook their own liturgical reforms. Now the Roman Church is undertaking to replace them with more accurate translations from the Latin texts. Zenit carries this report: Bishops Present Coming Missal Changes. The US Conference of Catholic Bishops has posted a website explaining this "reform of the reform", along with examples of textual alterations.

My question is whether the other denominations, e.g., Lutherans, Anglicans, Presbyterians, &c., that adopted the earlier texts will now follow suit. Because ecumenical relations have been soured by a number of unilateral moves by some of the major denominations, and because some of these have given up the pretence of liturgical unity within even their own ranks, my own guess is that they will not. With no king in Israel, everyone will do what is right in his own eyes.

Catholicism and international relations

For educators attempting to engage their students to think christianly in their respective academic endeavours, Daniel Philpott's essay is a welcome and inspirational effort rooted in the Roman Catholic tradition of political reflection: One Professor’s Guide To Studying International Relations and Peace Studies From a Catholic Perspective. From the introductory paragraph:

Whatever else this passage [Colossians 1:15-20] means, it seems to say that all things, including thrones, powers, rulers, and authorities — that is, politics — were created and redeemed by Christ. There is nothing in the universe which escapes this fact, this logic. Does not this then imply that political pursuits are to be oriented towards Christ and his creative and redeeming work? This may seem like a difficult thing to imagine in a world where Stalin’s logic — or at least the logic of power and interest — seems again and again to prevail, tempting us to conclude that what the Church professes only has a limited and circumscribed significance. But if we believe what the Church professes, then this is not the case. The victorious resurrection of Christ is a total victory, applying to all things, even if it is not yet consummated. And if we believe what the Church professes, then we are called to participate ourselves in this victory.

Obama at Notre Dame

Whether or not it can justly be called America's premier Catholic university, Notre Dame has nevertheless made a unique place for itself in the country's educational landscape. Unlike many vestigially Catholic institutions, Notre Dame prides itself on its Catholic identity and commendably seeks to maintain it. This is what I found during my years there as a graduate student in the early 1980s. What happens at Notre Dame is often a bellwether for American Catholic culture at large.

Nevertheless, a quarter century ago my impression of the university's administration, then headed by its long-serving president, Fr. Theodore Hesburgh, was that, while it tried its best to hold the line on its Catholic identity, it did so with some embarrassment, seeking respectability with the larger educational establishment and even with the popular media. Against the background of an establishment that traditionally viewed Roman Catholics as un-American, Notre Dame has coveted a place for itself as a genuinely American university. Of course, sport has played a big role in this, as any collegiate football fan knows.

As part of its persistent effort to fit in, Notre Dame has invited six US presidents to speak at commencement and has conferred honorary degrees on nine. During my time there Ronald Reagan spoke in 1981, his first public appearance after the attempt on his life nearly two months earlier. In 1984 New York Governor Mario Cuomo, then a presidential aspirant, spoke at Notre Dame, making his notorious "I'm personally opposed, but. . ." speech with respect to abortion, thus antagonizing serious Catholics but receiving Fr. Hesburgh's blessing.


It is thus not surprising that Hesburgh's successor, Fr. John Jenkins, would invite the newly-elected president Barack Obama to speak at commencement this year. What he did not foresee is the controversy this would engender, thus bringing unwelcome negative publicity to the university and to him personally. Initially the Bishop of Fort Wayne and South Bend, John D'Arcy, signalled his disapproval and his intention to absent himself from the event, due to Obama's personal and political support for the pro-choice position on abortion. Many, if not most, of the other American bishops followed suit. Most dramatically, Harvard Law Professor Mary Ann Glendon, former US Ambassador to the Vatican, refused the Laetare Medal which she had been offered by the university.

Obama's address can be seen here in full at Notre Dame's website. To those watching it, the audience's excitement at his presence was obvious. Some 54 percent of Catholics seem to have voted for Obama, and this is reflected in the enthusiastic reception he received. As is his wont, Obama gave a great speech and, knowing his audience, mentioned the 91-year-old Fr. Hesburgh's role in President Eisenhower's Civil Rights Commission and in the eventual passage of the 1964 Civil Rights Act. This magnificent gesture could only endear him to the Notre Dame community, which responded with applause throughout. As for the pro-life protesters who disrupted the event, they came off looking very rude indeed.

The controversy raises at least three issues worth addressing here.

First — and I say this as a Reformed Christian — it is not especially healthy for a university's decisions to be subject to a bishop's veto. A university, even an overtly confessional university, has its own authoritative sphere that ought not to be confused with that of the institutional church. I am with Abraham Kuyper in believing that a christian university best functions free from the unwarranted interference of church and state alike. That said, in this case the diocesan bishop made no pretence of vetoing Jenkins' decision; he simply elected to stay away.

Second, at one time Notre Dame was controlled by an otherwise little known order, the Congregation of the Holy Cross (CSC). Although the university is now governed by a lay board, its self-definition as a Catholic university implies a fidelity to the teachings of Rome. Up to now the president has always been a CSC priest. The very nature of Roman Catholicism implies, not just a confessional orientation, but fidelity to the claims of a particular institutional manifestation of the church. That church has made clear its teachings on the sanctity of human life, and thus the university is presumably bound by them. At the very least, Fr. Jenkins put the American Catholic bishops in a difficult position and forced them to respond in some fashion. Had he invited Obama to speak without offering him an honorary degree, he might have avoided the fuss.

Third and finally, in trying to solidify its place as an American university at home with the larger educational establishment, is Notre Dame in danger of losing its soul, if I may be permitted that overused cliché? Might its quest for respectability come at the expense of its Catholic identity? Of course, Notre Dame is not alone in this, as there are many christian universities in North America, some church-related and some not, that must daily confront this very issue. Shall such universities, for example, simply accept the larger definitions of the academic disciplines, their subject matter, their preferred methods, their general orientations, and so forth? Or are they obligated to subject even these to a biblically-shaped worldview? From my own experience at Notre Dame, it's not clear to me that this way of phrasing the issue would make much sense to people there. In a Catholic milieu the question would once again revolve around church teachings, which, as noted above, are clear on this particular issue while remaining silent on much else.



Whither Notre Dame? I think we can safely say that it will continue to be a force to contend with in the world of football. It is also likely to keep the undying loyalty of Domers past and present, who give generously to their alma mater. But it's an open question whether Notre Dame will survive over the long term as a genuinely Catholic university or, in the short term, whether Fr. Jenkins will keep his job after his inept handling of this fiasco.

Daens

Stijn Coninx's Daens is a must-see for anyone with an interest in the development of Catholic social thought and its reception in an industrializing western Europe at the end of the 19th century. The setting is Belgium in 1893. Fr. Adolph Daens (Jan Decleir) is a priest assigned to a parish in Aalst, the bulk of whose members work in dangerous factories for poverty-level wages. Here accidents and deaths are a frequent occurrence, while the owners and managers choose to ignore the plight of their own employees. Caught in a darwinian struggle for survival, the owners decide to implement the "Scottish system," whereby the men are replaced by women and children commanding a lower wage.

Fr. Daens is scandalized by what he sees and undertakes to improve the lot of his poorer parishioners, successfully working for the universal franchise and then standing for election to the Belgian Parliament in 1894. He meets with success, but at the expense of his good standing in the Church, which defrocks him five years later. He is summoned to Rome to meet with Pope Leo XIII, whose encyclical Rerum Novarum was the inspiration behind Daens' efforts. The Pope declines to meet him personally, while a Vatican official hands him a blunt letter with the Pope's signature informing him that his call to the priesthood must come before everything else.

Among his political opponents is Charles Woeste, leader of the mainstream Catholic Party, whose support base is threatened by Daens' upstart Christian People's Party. The Socialists are another threatening presence, urging the oppressed workers to discard their christian faith altogether and join with them in a common struggle. Although Daens opposes socialism, Woeste and the ecclesiastical hierarchy persist in viewing him as a red priest. Tellingly, Nette Scholliers (Antje de Boeck), who organizes a general strike in support of Daens' efforts, falls in love with Socialist organizer Jan De Meeter (Michael Pas), a development that has its political parallel in Daens' (ultimately unsuccessful) efforts to forge an alliance with that party.

Three features of this film are worth noting. First, like Belgium itself, the film is bilingual, with conversations amongst the lower class occurring in the Vlaamsche taal while the upper crust speak French. This is an accurate portrayal of Belgian society at that time. Whichever language one grew up speaking at home, French was the language of the élites, despite the fact that native Flemish-speakers outnumbered native francophones. This linguistic duality plays a pivotal role when a parliamentary committee investigating abuses in the factories of Aalst is unable to comprehend the complaints of the workers.

Second, one of the characters in the film is the Belgian King Leopold II (Gérald Marti). Although English-speaking viewers of the film are likely unaware of his significance in the history of that country, Belgian viewers would be all too familiar with the infamous monarch, due to his association with the atrocities committed in the spectacularly-misnamed Congo Free State between 1885 and 1908.

It should finally be noted that the film is based on Louis Paul Boon's novel, Pieter Daens (the name of Adolph's printer brother), which means that the film is two degrees removed from the historical events it recounts. Was Daens perhaps less saintly or Woest and the church hierarchy less vicious than they are portrayed here? Are the characters caricatures of their real-life counterparts? Undoubtedly. This points to one of the flaws in an otherwise excellent film, namely, insufficient development of the main characters. I would have liked to know more of Daens' faith, including his love for Christ and his church, and his growing excitement over reading Rerum Novarum. All the same, a film can hardly do everything in 138 minutes. Daens is worth seeing for what it does do, and it does it very well indeed.

The danger of sects

Fr. Raniero Cantalamessa is the preacher for the papal household at the Vatican. In this sermon for the 4th sunday of Easter, he warns against the influence of sects: Sheep that go astray. Though the current Pope is often thought to be a conservative, especially on ecclesiological and liturgical matters, his official preacher refrains from assigning the sectarian label to all Christians outside the Roman fold:

When we speak of sects, we must be careful not to put everything on the same level. Protestant evangelicals and Pentecostals, for example, apart from isolated groups, are not sects. For years the Catholic Church has maintained an official dialogue with them, something that it would never do with sects.

The true sects can be recognized by certain characteristics. First of all, in regard to their creed, they do not share essential points with the Christian faith, such as the divinity of Christ and the Trinity; or rather they mix foreign and incompatible elements with Christian doctrines -- re-incarnation, for example. In regard to methods, they are literally “sheep stealers” in the sense that they try to take the faithful away from their Church of origin, to make them followers of their sect.

The other day one of my colleagues alerted me to this group: the Canadian Centre for Progressive Christianity. Judging from Gretta Vosper's account of what her group believes — or rather, does not believe — it is safe to say that it would quite nicely qualify as a sect, using Fr. Cantalamessa's criteria. One assumes then that a Catholic-Progressive Christian dialogue will not be convened any time soon.

Good night to knight

Fra Andrew Bertie, Prince and Grand Master of the Sovereign Military Hospitaller Order of St John of Jerusalem, of Rhodes and of Malta, Most Humble Guardian of the Poor of Jesus Christ, has died at age 78. The Knights of Malta, or Order of Malta, is nearly a thousand years old and is recognized as a sovereign entity in international law. As such, it enjoys diplomatic relations with a number of mostly, but not exclusively, Catholic states.

Although it is a Catholic order, the Order of Malta recognizes four protestant offshoots, encompassing the Brandenburg Bailiwick of the Knights' Order of the Hospital of St John in Jerusalem (Germany), the Johanniter Orde in Nederland, the Johanniterorden i Sverige (Sweden) and the British Order of St. John. Other claimants to the legacy of the Knights of Malta are regarded as illegitimate.

There is a Cyprus connection to the Knights, who once had their commanderie at Kolossi Castle in Limassol, where they produced the oldest named wine still in existence, Commandaria, a dessert wine for which the island is famous.

James-Charles Noonan, Jr., in The Church Visible: The Ceremonial Life and Protocol of the Roman Catholic Church, devotes several pages to the Death and Burial of the Grand Master and to the Conclave and Election, which are now taking place at the Order's headquarters in Rome. Here is a brief report from the Catholic News Agency about Bertie and the Order of Malta:

Spe salvi

Pope Benedict XVI has just published the second encyclical of his pontificate, Spe salvi, "on christian hope." His first encyclical, Deus Caritas est, "on christian love," was published two years ago. One assumes that his next encyclical will come out in another two years and will be subtitled "on christian faith," to complete what appears to be a series on the three so-called theological virtues.

Orthodox and Catholics to reunite?

The bishops of Rome and Constantinople excommunicated each other back in 1054. Although these actions were rescinded in 1964 during an historic meeting between Pope Paul VI and Patriarch Athenagoras, the Roman Catholic and Orthodox Churches remain out of communion with each other. Perhaps this is about to change, as indicated in this Times Online report: Vatican joins historic talks to end 950-year rift with Orthodox church. The Joint International Commission for Theological Dialogue Between the Catholic Church and the Orthodox Church met recently in Ravenna, Italy, and issued what may or may not be a groundbreaking statement: Ecclesiological and Canonical Consequences of the Sacramental Nature of the Church: Ecclesial Communion, Conciliarity and Authority. From the Times report:

The document suggests that the Pope, always referred to in the text as “Bishop of Rome”, could be the “first” among the regional patriarchs. But this would be only as a primus inter pares, with his authority resting firmly on the support and consensus of the other patriarchs. “Certainly Rome could not be the absolute centre of administration, with authority over all the others,” Greek Metropolitan Athanasios Chatzopoulos, one of the participants of the Ravenna conference, said. “The ‘primus’ would not be able to do anything without the consent of the other Patriarchs.”

Despite the media attention, this does not appear to me to mark a substantive shift in the centuries-old Orthodox position. The Orthodox have always been willing to recognize the primacy of the "Patriarch of Rome," but they will not recognize his supreme authority over the entire church. That's why this headline from The Trumpet is greatly misleading: Vatican Takes Step to Reabsorb Orthodox Church. Moreover, this sentence from the Times is equally absurd: "Healing the schism would in effect turn Patriarch Bartholomew into an Orthodox 'Pope'." There is much greater likelihood of the Orthodox churches fragmenting among themselves than of Bartholomew being accorded popelike powers.

Much still stands in the way of reunion, not the least of which is fractiousness within the Orthodox fold. There is also the question of the number of ecumenical councils recognized by the two communions. The Orthodox acknowledge seven such councils, the last of which occurred in 787. Rome recognizes 21 ecumenical councils, the last being the Second Vatican Council of 1962-65. What would be the status in a reunited church of the 14 councils occurring after the split? This is far from clear. Even decades of negotiations are unlikely to resolve such issues as filioque, purgatory and the extent of the Old Testament canon, because each side has staked a claim to truth from which it would be difficult to back down after nearly a millennium.

Why Ravenna? This city was undoubtedly chosen because of its history as a centre of the Byzantine presence in the Italian peninsula between 540 and 751. The Byzantines left a lasting legacy in the form of art and architecture that graces the city to this day. The ancient church buildings contain renowned mosaics, such as the one of Christ shown above from the Church of San Apollinare Nuovo. It would be most appropriate if unity between eastern and western churches were to begin here. By God's grace may it come to pass.

From Rome to Constantinople

Earlier this year Francis Beckwith left evangelicalism to return to Rome, thus adding to the number of recent medium-to-high-profile converts, such as Sheldon Vanauken, Thomas Howard, Luis Logo and Fr. Richard John Neuhaus. Others, such as Peter Gillquist, have left protestantism to become Orthodox.

There are, however, people who have converted from Orthodoxy to Catholicism and vice versa. One of the latter is "Crunchy Con" Rod Dreher, who tells the sad tale of his own pilgrimage — one that he never intended to make and would prefer not to have had to make. It's strong stuff and a reminder that many converts, far from joyfully following the truth as they see it into a new home, feel driven out of their former communions and suffer accordingly.

Later: Could another conversion be in the works for Dreher? He now appears to be bolstering the presbyterian argument against episcopacy: Faraway, so close.

Seeking unity

Could the head of the Church of Cyprus help to bring reconciliation between the Papacy and the Moscow Patriarchate? His Beatitude, Archbishop Chrysostomos II of New Justiniana and All Cyprus thinks so and has offered his services in a visit to Rome last saturday.

Swimming the Tiber

Here is a name that, admittedly, I had not known before, but this news is making waves in evangelical circles: Evangelical professor becomes Catholic. Christianity Today's David Neff interviews Francis Beckwith about his reconversion and the unexpected reverberations. Here's Beckwith himself on My Return to the Catholic Church. All of this reminds me of the fuss made over Tom Howard's reception into the Roman Catholic Church back in 1985. After reading such stories, I keep coming back to this question: Why Rome and not Constantinople?

Reaction to Pope's speech

Pope Benedict XVI was unwise to quote Byzantine Emperor Manoel II Palaeologos, who had the temerity to criticize efforts to spread faith at the point of a sword. Just because Constantinople was at the time under siege by the Ottoman Turks was no excuse for the Emperor to let his prejudices get the better of him. As for the Pope, he should definitely make a clearer apology.

Communion with Rome

Redeemer alumnus Michael Trolly left a Haloscan comment to my post, Another Catholic Rite?, that I found sufficiently intriguing to warrant reproducing immediately below, with responses:

Yurkus' description of variations within the Latin Church could have added that an Anglican Use within the Latin Rite has been approved in the US; this preserves elements of the Book of Common Prayer within the Latin-rite mass. (There is some hope in the future of an Anglican Rite as a self governing church in communion with the Vatican, on the same basis as the Eastern Catholic Churches.)

One wonders whether the coming reconfiguration of Anglicanism may end up sending a much larger contingent of would-be "Anglican-rite" Christians to Rome or Constantinople than just the few who have been lapping at the banks of the Tiber in recent years. I am struck by how infinitessimally small the various eastern-rite churches are. An Anglican-rite church in communion with Rome could conceivably number in the millions after the coming crack-up.

Also, a group calling itself the "Nordic Catholic Church" has recently been established by Lutherans with help from the Polish National Catholic Church (they also have connections with some traditional Anglican churches.) They might potentially seek some sort of recognition from Rome; the PNCC has had an ongoing dialogue with Rome for a number of years now, and PNCC members are allowed to receive communion in Catholic (i.e. "Roman" Catholic) churches.

Here is an interview in Touchstone with Roald Flemestad about the formation of the Nordic Catholic Church: Out on a Limb in Norway. As institutions, the European Old Catholics are not in communion with Rome, so it's not clear that moving towards the PNCC will bring these dissident Norwegians there either, at least formally speaking. But if the "back door" route Trolly mentions really does exist, then that might provide an avenue for others as well. My understanding is that Orthodox Christians as individuals are also understood by Rome already to be in communion, even if their churches are not.

I mention all of this because it suggests that a "Genevan" rite or use (i.e. permitted variation from another rite) might be a realistic ecumenical hope, if a group of Reformed Christians wanted to go down that route.

I must admit to having made this suggestion mostly tongue in cheek. My sense of the matter is that the establishment of intercommunion between Rome and individual eastern-rite churches was not preceded by intersynodical study committees bent on sorting out myriad doctrinal issues that might stand in the way of reunion. It was effected simply by the eastern-rite churches recognizing the jurisdiction of the Pope, along with acceptance of the filioque clause in the Creed. Was there agreement in all details concerning, say, purgatory and the Marian doctrines? I frankly doubt it.

Yet the Reformed Churches — or at least the more confessional of these — have largely defined themselves over against Rome, for better or worse. Simply establishing intercommunion with the Pope would leave unanswered any number of issues, the least of which would be the extent of the Old Testament canon. (It is striking that some of the eastern-rite Catholic churches accept a larger OT canon than even that established by the Council of Trent. Is Trent normative only within the Latin rite?) It is difficult to imagine a Genevan-rite Catholic church which would not entail an outright repudiation of the very reason for the existence of the Reformed churches, namely, the Reformation itself! Any move towards Rome will be a matter of individual conversions to the Latin rite, and not a Genevan-rite church in communion with Rome.

Your (Dr. Koyzis') adaptation of the CRC eucharistic liturgy does strike a certain chord with me... since the first time I read the text for the "Service of Word and Sacrament" in the CRC hymnal, I've wanted to see a Reformed eucharist celebrated this way. To be "as close as possible" to the universal worship tradition of the church while properly expressing distinctives of a particular tradition or denomination is a tremendous way for protestants to contribute to ecumenical dialogue. I would love to see this idea put into practice.

The CRC used to use a liturgy with 16th-century origins that was excessively didactic and contained little that was recognizable in the larger liturgical tradition of the church catholic. This despite the claim in the fronticepiece of the Genevan church's La Forme des Prieres et chantz ecclesiastiques that its liturgy was "selon la coustume de l'Église ancienne." In 1968 the CRC moved to adopt what in other traditions would be called a eucharistic liturgy more in conformity with this catholic tradition, including the sursum corda, &c. My own adaptation is intended to follow in this path, but with the selected metrical psalms "plugged" into the liturgy in the appropriate places. As to how this looks in practice, it depends on the individual congregation.

Two decades ago I composed settings for part of the "ordinary of the mass", including a Sanctus and Memorial Acclamation. These were sung at South Bend (Indiana) Christian Reformed Church, as well as at two Presbyterian (USA) churches in Indiana and Michigan, for several years. By now I probably have settings for a complete mass, although they still need a lot of work to bring some coherence to the whole.

A tragic anniversary

This month marks the 800th anniversary of the sack of Constantinople during the Fourth Crusade in 1204. Although the Crusade was originally directed at Egypt, the Doge of Venice, Enrico Dandolo, succeeded in diverting it to the fabled first City of what was then still known as the Roman Empire. That Christians would prey on other Christians is, of course, nothing less than a scandal. Much of the booty wound up in the Venetian Republic, including the famous bronze horses that had once graced the hippodrome.


Ecumenical Patriarchate

Hagia Sophia, Constantinople

Greeks have long memories and are still bitter over this offence from the west. In fact, 1204 looms much larger in their minds than 1054, the year in which the churches of Rome and Constantinople formally broke ties. Here is one contemporary account from the Greek side by Nicetas Choniates: "The Sack of Constantinople." In 2001 Pope John Paul II visited Athens and issued an historic apology on behalf of his Catholic ancestors for the Fourth Crusade. It is worth noting, however, that even Innocent III, who was Pope at the time, was horrified by the crusade and subsequently excommunicated the crusaders. Furthermore, since the crusaders also attacked the Catholic city of Zara, along the Dalmatian coast, this tragic episode ought not to be portrayed as exclusively a Catholic-Orthodox dispute.

Two decades ago I was privileged to attend an exhibit at the Art Institute of Chicago titled, "The Treasury of San Marco, Venice." Included was a wealth of Byzantine artefacts from La Serenissima. My enthusiasm at viewing this fantastic collection was tempered by the realization that this was stolen wealth. Nearly a decade earlier I had stood in Venice itself, once a vassal of the Empire but which had broken with it, remaining an independent republic until Napoléon extinguished it in 1797.


Consiglio Nazionale delle Ricerche

San Marco's bronze horses

My genealogical research has revealed that Alexios IV Angelos, the ill-fated Byzantine Emperor who lost his throne just prior to the sack of the City, was variously my 24th, 25th and 27th great grand uncle.

Fr. Neuhaus and First Things

On friday I received in my campus mail box the latest issue of my favourite periodical, First Things, which is published by the Institute on Religion and Public Life in New York and edited by the redoubtable Fr. Richard John Neuhaus. I suppose one might describe it as a largely Catholic journal, with significant confessional protestant and observant Jewish contributions as well. Its tone is probably best described as neoconservative. While I myself cannot in good conscience call myself a neoconservative as such, I am quite happy to admit that thoughtful articles of substance appear in every issue making it well worth reading. Some of these I have discussed in previous entries in this weblog.

Fr. Neuhaus himself is a Canadian-born former Lutheran pastor who has now become a Catholic priest, an ardent proponent of what he calls the American experiment and an insightful commentator on the larger developments in the culture war in that country. His monthly Public Square is, I suppose, the print equivalent of a weblog, drawing readers’ attention to commentaries and articles in other sources and, of course, adding his own assessments, complete with his well-known sense of irony.

Neuhaus’ journey to Catholicism is recounted in “How I Became the Catholic I Was.” Raised within the Lutheran Church - Missouri Synod, one of the more confessional of Lutheran bodies in North America, he eventually found his way into the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America, which he soon judged to be losing its confessional moorings. In 1990, the same year he founded First Things, he became a Roman Catholic. Since he had never married, being re-ordained as a priest posed no obstacle. Pastor Neuhaus thus became Father Neuhaus. It is evident from his writings that he is devoted to the cause of Christ and that his priestly identity is central to his sense of personal calling.

At his best when he is skewering the pretensions of late liberalism in the public square, Neuhaus is a contemporary master of English style and has a keen eye for the absurdities of this ideology, which he treats in his own inimitably witty fashion. He was an early proponent of what would later come to be called civil society, namely, those communal formations and initiatives springing from the initiative of the people themselves, and not from the direction of the state. The essay he co-authored nearly three decades ago with Peter Berger, To Empower People, was an eloquent statement in favour of protecting civil society in all its variety.

One of the enduring themes in Neuhaus’ writings is the rather enlarged role the American judiciary has unilaterally assumed in decreeing sweeping social changes in the face of recalcitrant legislatures. This concern led to the publication of a controversial symposium in the November 1996 issue of FT under the general title, “The End of Democracy: The Judicial Usurpation of Politics.” Among those contributing to this special issue were Robert Bork, who had been Ronald Reagan’s unsuccessful nominee for a Supreme Court vacancy in 1987, Princeton University’s Robert George, and Charles Colson, founder of Prison Fellowship and the Wilberforce Forum. This led to several resignations from the FT editorial board by those who found this issue too inflammatory.

Despite my being a professed fan of Neuhaus’ writings, I cannot call myself an unqualified proponent of his overall approach, which is deficient in a rather basic way.

To begin with, his support for the “American experiment” and its constitutional democracy sometimes appears to outweigh his consciousness of the jural task of the state, which normatively holds for every political community everywhere. Whether or not a state is democratic, it nevertheless carries a divine mandate to do justice to all individuals and communities within its territory. St. Paul could write of even the Roman state possessing a divinely-given task of punishing evil and rewarding good in Romans 13. By concentrating so heavily on the American polity and its particular political traditions, including the liberalism of John Locke and the founders, Neuhaus risks minimizing the universality of this task.

Along with this affection for the American experiment comes what I would label a sort of highbrow populism. In his Public Square pieces in particular one can read, on the one hand, a diatribe against the debased character of contemporary popular culture, and, on the other hand, an invective against the political and cultural élites of his adopted country for pushing secularizing reforms against the presumably less corrupt mores of a confusedly “christian America.” If at some point America ceases to be christian and takes on the more overt secular identity of a France or a post-1960s Québec, Neuhaus will be hard pressed to continue with his present approach if he intends to retain his fidelity to the Christian gospel. I am confident Neuhaus does indeed believe in a transcendent standard of justice, but his principal method of argumentation here is basically historicist.

Moreover, while Neuhaus’ barbs at contemporary liberalism are always well aimed, he must finally be considered a liberal critic of liberalism. That is, he critiques late liberalism – or the advocates of what I call the choice-enhancement state in my book – but without actually repudiating liberal first principles. This becomes clear in his on-going debate with the likes of David L. Schindler and Fr. Michael Baxter in, e.g., “The Liberalism of John Paul II.” Here Neuhaus revealingly writes:

As sympathetic as we may be to some of the determined critics of liberalism, we do well to remind ourselves that all temporal orders short of the Kingdom of God are profoundly unsatisfactory. When we survey the depredations and ravages of our social, political, and religious circumstance, it is tempting to look for someone or something to blame. It is easy to say, "Liberalism made us do it." But liberalism is freedom, and what we do with freedom is charged to our account.

This statement provides a handy means for Neuhaus to avert the attacks of those who properly see liberalism as a larger ideology with its own spiritual underpinnings. But it fundamentally misconstrues the nature of liberalism. Or, as my friend and colleague Al Wolters would put it, it confuses creational structure with spiritual direction. Liberalism is not identical to freedom per se. It is, rather, based on a certain inordinate, and thus idolatrous, love of freedom, with its tendency to reduce the complexity of communal formations to mere voluntary associations.

Unfortunately Neuhaus has not entirely avoided this tendency even in himself. In arguing against US support for the International Criminal Court, he writes: "As stated in the Declaration of Independence, just government is derived from the consent of the governed." This is certainly in accordance with the Lockean tradition as mediated by Thomas Jefferson to the Americans, but one would be hard pressed to find a foundation for this belief in scripture. To be sure, consent is almost certainly a necessary precondition for just government, but it does not stand at its origin. To hold that it does is to risk making the political community into one more voluntary association whose purpose and task are determined by the possibly shifting whims of its members.

This said, I will continue to read Neuhaus and First Things, which have much to offer the discerning christian reader.

The ordinary of the mass

In the western church for well over a thousand years, the historic shape of the liturgy has encompassed a number of elements deemed essential to its proper celebration. Together these have formed what is known as the ordinary of the mass, including in outline form:

     The Confiteor
     The Kyrie
     The Gloria in Excelsis
     The Scripture Lessons
     The Sermon
     The Credo
     The Offertory
     The Sursum Corda
     The Eucharistic Prayer
     The Sanctus
     The Agnus Dei
     The Post-Communion

The Church of England's Book of Common Prayer retained much of this shape of the liturgy; however, under the influence of the continental reformers, it moved a reading of the Decalogue to the beginning of the liturgy and moved the Gloria in Excelsis to the end, where it became a post-communion thanksgiving hymn. The Lutheran churches retained this structure as well, although, with the elimination of a weekly observance of the Lord's Supper, only the ante-communion segment was retained on most sundays.

The Reformed and Presbyterian churches undertook a more radical reform, virtually eliminating the ordinary of the mass and substituting for it the basic structure that Old and Hart describe in their books. It has long seemed to me that, in so doing, the non-Lutheran reformers were doing more than just to reform; they came close to creating a new liturgy -- one that would inevitably seal the 16th century breach within western Christendom. Had they taken a more measured approach, namely, to remedy the defects while preserving what was right and good, they might have seen fit to keep much of what we know as the ordinary of the mass.

Imagine, if you will, an alternative history in which Reformed Christians have grown up singing and loving the Gloria in Excelsis, knowing the Sanctus by heart, praying with heartfelt passion the Agnus Dei, and seeing in these hymns a liturgical treasure shared with all other Christians in the western tradition. There would be one less cause of division among these traditions, even where genuine confessional differences remained, because we would all hold in common something very beautiful and ancient -- a way of worshipping God in spirit and truth.