In defense of indulgences, the buying thereof, and pardoners – and a resolution to restore such disciplines formerly held in disrepute

by J.T.M.G.


[We are all entitled to a little cheekiness, no?]

After putting our daughter to bed, Madame and I had a convivial time with a longtime friend, now a seminarian of the diocese, at the local public house Saturday evening last. (For those of delicate dispositions who might be given to scandal at any suggestions of merriment within the forty days of Lent, I remind them that the liturgical Sunday begins after First Vespers of Saturday evening.) Thereupon we resolved many pressing questions on matters theological and ecclesiastical, and a series of decrees will surely be posted on the Holy See’s website with all due haste, pending the papal rubber-stamp.

For today’s blog, I only bring up one brief remembrance of the conversation, wherein Madame asked, “one of the conditions for gaining a plenary indulgence is to pray for the Pope’s intentions. But what if the Pope’s intentions are evil?” My seminarian friend assured her that this prescription applies only to those intentions that are good. And, I lately discovered that modern technology now allows us to know exactly what those intentions are. The Holy See publishes the Pope’s monthly intentions for the year. We may, therefore, know that the two intentions for this month of March are “that those involved in scientific research may serve the well-being of the whole human person” and “that the unique contribution of women to the life of the Church may be recognized always”; and that our consciences may rest assured that God will transfer our prayers to more fruitful ends if, in fact, He prefers scientists to exploit creation at our expense, or for the state of womanhood to perpetually remain a thankless mode of existence.

 

What are indulgences for, anyway?

Heaven and earth shall pass away,
but political cartoons shall never pass away.

In grade school, we’re taught that the big, bad medieval Church got it in their heads to sell forgiveness of sins for six shillings to pay for their banquets of chestnuts and other such worthy expenditures. As Dr. Luther infamously attributed to Friar Tetzel, “As soon as the gold in the casket rings / The rescued soul to heaven springs”. This becomes doubly confusing for those of us who grew up under the Protestant rhetoric (which our European cousins probably believe has passed into the ages of myth, though it persists quite alive and well in various parts of the States) who know that papists indulge in every sort of vice and debauchery, with the full intent to confess it in church in the morning and do it all over again the next weekend. It’s a wonder no one in grade school or Protestant Sunday school ever asks: “why do the Romish whores even bother to buy indulgences if confession is free?” (One can deduce that confession is free, or else the weekly regimen of sin-confess-repeat would grow to be a monstrously expensive habit.) After all, even the 1-percenters among us would willingly undergo a full audit from the IRS every year if it meant they would never actually have to pay any taxes at the end.

 

The answer to the indulgence question is simple: the Catholic catechism teaches us that sin incurs two consequences from God, eternal and temporal. The punishment for mortal sin without any repentance at one’s final hour is eternal damnation. The sacrament of penance (or reconciliation, or confession; or, as the Modern Medievalist likes to say, “shriving”) lifts the sentence of damnation, but there yet remains the temporal consequence, an impurity of the soul which is washed either by acts of penance while still living on earth, or after death in purgatory. Everyone who goes to purgatory is saved, for they will all eventually pass through the pearly gates, though it’s traditionally understood to be rather less pleasant than the direct route. Of course, the expressway to heaven is fraught with its own inconveniences, such as dying immediately after baptism or while still a child, having one’s head severed by an ISIS thug with a boxcutter, or worst of all, having to die of old age while hashing out a life of heroic sanctity every day for decades on end. For the rest of us, purgatory it is. From the Latin word purgare, meaning “to purify” or “to purge”, purgatory is the name that the medievals gave to that place, or perhaps state, where souls that are not yet ready to fully withstand and partake in the Beatific Vision undergo penance for sins that they failed to make full satisfaction for during life.



I don't suppose EA will consider making this a trilogy...

The “true Christian” here will be quick to pounce with their Scriptural prooftext of choice about Christ’s sacrifice being sufficient for all mankind. The skeptic says the whole business of Christian redemption, whether Protestant or Catholic, is absurd if mass murderers (Hitler is a favorite in these sorts of discussions, but substitute Mao or George W. Bush as your politics dictate) can go on doing their dirty deeds and then go to heaven merely by professing faith in the Savior on their deathbeds. But the Catholic (and the Eastern Orthodox, though they use different terms) knows that, even if the mass murderer in question makes a sincere confession at the last rites, a life so conditioned to sin won’t find eternity with God as a humble servant of the divine will quite as thrilling as the satisfaction of knowing he could order the deaths of a thousand hapless subjects at random before breakfast. No, even we less ambitious sinners are conditioned to imagine heaven as a place where we all wear white robes and play the harp with naked babies, singing the same words of praise over and over again for all time. Quaint. Boring. There’s a reason why we can make a video game about Dante’s Inferno, while Paradiso ignored by all but graduate-level literature students.

So Saint Catherine of Genoa said, as medieval Italian mystics are wont to do,

“As for paradise, God has placed no doors there. Whoever wishes to enter, does so. All-merciful God stands there with His arms open, waiting to receive us into His glory. I also see, however, that the divine presence is so pure and light-filled – much more than we can imagine – that the soul that has but the slightest imperfection would rather throw itself into a thousand hells than appear thus before the divine presence. Tongue cannot express nor heart understand the full meaning of purgatory, which the soul willingly accepts as a mercy the realization that that suffering is of no importance compared to the removal of the impediment of sin.” (Treatise on Purgatory)

No, heaven is no place for us complicated folk with all our baggage about what ought to make a satisfying afterlife. And so, the Church, even in ancient times, understood that there was an intermediary condition of purifying the soul. As Saint Paul wrote,

“Now if any man build upon this foundation gold, silver, precious stones, wood, hay, stubble; Every man’s work shall be made manifest: for they shall declare it, because it shall be revealed by fire; and the fire shall try every man’s work of what sort it is. If any man’s work abide which he hath built thereupon, he shall receive a reward. If any man’s work shall be burned, he shall suffer loss: but he himself shall be saved; yet so as by fire.” (I Corinthians 3:11:15)

 

Dante's Purgatorio

Where did indulgences come from? A brief sketch

Exactly what happens in purgatory has long been a province of speculation for theologians, but somewhere along the way, the Church developed the idea that “time in purgatory”, or the degree of purifying to be endured there, could be docked down by doing penance or other pious actions here on earth. The early Church was already quite accustomed to performing massive amounts of penance that would be extreme by modern standards. Imagine confessing to masturbation and then being barred from receiving Communion for seven years. Nonetheless, these penances were imposed after confession, and not as a condition before being absolved of sin. The ancient Roman penitent who died one year into his penance wasn’t going straight to hell in a handbasket, and yet, his suffering on earth after absolution wasn’t for naught, either. It was to reduce the temporal consequences of sin. After the age of persecution ended, church councils and individual confessors gradually commuted these hardcore penances and substituted other acts of piety in their place. Many of the fathers themselves, such as Saint Gregory of Nyssa and Saint Basil, led the way in easing the penances of former times. (Catholic Encyclopedia, entry on Indulgences)

At last, in the millennium-long tradition of churchmen issuing penances of greater or lesser severity, Pope Urban II took it one step further: in the year of our Lord 1095, before some two hundred bishops at the council of Clermont, Urban called for a military intervention to seize the Holy Land in what would later be known as the First Crusade. And to sweeten the pot? A plenary indulgence: full satisfaction of all the consequences of sin (following confession) for anyone who would take up arms and make the pilgrimage to Jerusalem. It’s a tragedy that history has given us five or more radically different versions of the pope’s speech, so we may never get an idea of just how Urban expressed this idea. The most famous version, chronicled by Fulcher of Chartres years after the fact, has him say:

“All who die by the way, whether by land or by sea, or in battle against the pagans, shall have immediate remission of sins. This I grant them through the power of God with which I am invested.” (Medieval Sourcebook)

Pope Urban II addresses the Council of Clermont

Balderic, archbishop of Dol, recounts Urban’s words as an instruction to the bishops assembled:

“You, brothers and fellow bishops; you, fellow priests and sharers with us in Christ, make this same announcement through the churches committed to you, and with your whole soul vigorously preach the journey to Jerusalem. When they have confessed the disgrace of their sins, do you, secure in Christ, grant them speedy pardon.” (Medieval Sourcebook)

And, according to the Liber Lamberti, one of the decrees of the Council of Clermont was:

“Whoever for devotion alone, not to obtain honour or money, shall set out to free the church of God at Jerusalem, that shall be counted to him for all penance (pro omni penitentia).” (Robert Somerville, The Councils of Urban II, Vol. 1)

In 1187, following the disastrous Battle of Hattin which would result in the loss of Jerusalem to Salah ad-Din, Pope Gregory VIII called the Third Crusade. His bull, Audita tremendi, renewed the promises of a plenary indulgence:

“We promise full remission of their sins and eternal life to those who take up the labor of this journey with a contrite heart and a humble spirit and depart in penitence of their sins and with true faith. Whether they survive or die, they should know that they, after they have made a true confession, will have the relaxation of the penance imposed, by the mercy of almighty God, by the authority of the apostles Peter and Paul, and ours.”

Some authors add that this promise was extended also to those souls who were unable to take up arms but made a significant financial contribution.

The 13^th century saw the rise of lesser indulgences issued by bishops for such events as the dedications of new churches, and just as quickly, church councils had to condemn their abuses. The fourth Lateran Council, held in 1215, declared that for abbots to grant indulgences at all was an abuse, as was the practice of bishops amping up their indulgences with extreme bonuses:

“Moreover, because the keys of the church are brought into contempt and satisfaction through penance loses its force through indiscriminate and excessive indulgences, which certain prelates of churches do not fear to grant, we therefore decree that when a basilica is dedicated, the indulgence shall not be for more than one year, whether it is dedicated by one bishop or by more than one, and for the anniversary of the dedication the remission of penances imposed is not to exceed forty days. We order that the letters of indulgence, which are granted for various reasons at different times, are to fix this number of days, since the Roman pontiff himself, who possesses the plenitude of power, is accustomed to observe this moderation in such things.” (Lateran IV, under 62. Regarding saints’ relics)

What’s this about years, you ask? Until the Vatican II reforms, indulgences that were not plenary (full) were typically parsed in terms of days, months, or years. By way of example, I name the indulgence of 100 days granted by Pope Saint Pius V (Quod a nobis, 9 July 1568) for those who would devoutly pray the Office of the Dead on specified days; at any other time, 40 days. This was admittedly a confusing situation since the language tends to suggest that gaining the indulgence would dock 40 or 100 days off of one’s sentence in purgatory. But no, what the Church means here is that the indulgence is equal to that of doing 40 or 100 days of old-school penance, as was formerly done in the early centuries of Christianity. And now, when we put it that way, spending a half-hour to pray the Office of the Dead suddenly sounds like a really good deal by comparison. For the curious, many more indulgences can be found in a book called the Raccolta (“collection”): an anthology of pious acts that have indulgences attached to them. After Vatican II, the old Raccolta was replaced by a new volume, with new rules, called the Enchiridion. More on that later.

The Jubilee of 1300

It’s vital to understand that, even from the beginning, indulgences were believed to flow directly from the Petrine office, for only the pope held the keys to unlock the heavenly treasury. Just as priests required jurisdiction from the local bishop to hear confessions, and bishops in turn required jurisdiction (even if implied) from the pope, so too did indulgences require papal authorization. And, it was the popes alone who issued the most potent of indulgences, the plenary: full remission of all temporal consequences of sin, without the need to specify days or years. Plenary indulgences were still rare in the High Middle Ages, being attached only to the loftiest of endeavors: the Crusades. The first non-crusader plenary indulgence was attached to the great Jubilee of 1300. In the spirit of the Old Testament’s law of Moses, which celebrated every 50^th year with forgiveness of debts and manumissions of slaves (Leviticus 25), Pope Boniface VIII’s bull Antiquorum fida relatio granted “great remissions and indulgences for sins” for pilgrims who would visit the city of Rome and, particularly, the basilicas of Saint Peter and Saint Paul Outside the Walls. Popes have inaugurated jubilee years every half-century, and often more frequently, ever since, the most recent being the great jubilee of 2000 under John Paul II.

From the 1300’s onward, the business of indulgences gets truly interesting because it becomes just that: a business. Sure, apologists will rightly point out that you can’t strictly “buy” an indulgence; that indulgences are attached to the giving of alms to a charitable cause or other worthy endeavor. This is really semantics because, like it or not, a large part of the later medieval Church’s works were driven by the revenues generated by indulgences. The fantastic Gothic cathedrals with their towers reaching to the heavens and shrines studded with precious stones of every color didn’t all pay for themselves, after all. The difference between Luther and me is that I find the idea rather useful.

In order to raise money for the construction of a new cathedral, a bishop might have commissioned a number of quaestores: purveyors of indulgence certificates. Likewise, hospitals made regular use of quaestores to pay the bills, for this was the age of universal healthcare. Quaestores became the backbone of an economy that paid for the building and upkeep of schools, poor-houses, and so many other vital institutions of the medieval world. Even the building of bridges and highways, or the ransoming of poor Christians from slavery in the Moorish lands, was paid for by the “sale” of indulgences. In English, they were known as pardoners, and no account of this office is more complete than that of the Pardoner’s Prologue and Tale among Chaucer’s merry band of pilgrims. Chaucer’s Pardoner is a wretched man, a charlatan who prowls the countryside, hocking off relics made of pig bones to ignorant peasants, preaching from church to church, and passing round the plate at the offertory for his forged indulgence certificates from Rome, where the Pardoner has likely never even been.

400         Of avarice and of swich cursednesse

                  Of avarice and of such cursedness

 401         Is al my prechyng, for to make hem free

                  Is all my preaching, to make them generous

 402         To yeven hir pens, and namely unto me.

                  To give their pennies, and namely unto me.

 403         For myn entente is nat but for to wynne,

                  For my intention is only to make a profit,

 404         And nothyng for correccioun of synne.

                  And not at all for correction of sin.

 405         I rekke nevere, whan that they been beryed,

                  I care not a bit, when they are buried,

 406         Though that hir soules goon a-blakeberyed!

                  Though their souls go picking blackberries! (Geoffrey Chaucer, The Pardoner’s Prologue of the Canterbury Tales)

In all likelihood, this sort of huckster was indeed a common sight, rather than a mere caricature from a disaffected anti-clericalist. For as many licensed pardoners, there were just as many who acted completely without any authority whatsoever but their own. And while the majority of truly licensed pardoners were drawn from the clergy or religious orders, many, such as probably Chaucer’s Pardoner, were also laymen. And yet, even the dignity of religious life was no guarantee of truthful advertising. Years before the Canterbury Tales were published, Pope Boniface IX condemned both friars and secular clerics who went about absolving sins without even asking for contrition, absolving unfulfilled penances, and reconciling heretics to the Church, all the while proclaiming a false writ from Rome. A century prior, a council in Mainz, in 1244, decreed:

“The 'quaestores' claim to be provided with letters of authorization by the Pope and other prelates, and since many of the clergy cannot distinguish between genuine and fabricated documents, the council insists that no almsgatherer be admitted into any parish until his papers have been examined and their validity certified to in writing by the Ordinary of the diocese. Any infringement of this statute by the clergy will be followed ipso facto by three years' suspension. Those, however, who undertake to make collections without written episcopal sanction, are to be arrested by the secular authorities and handed over to the episcopal tribunal.” (The Church and Abuse of Indulgences, as seen in The American Catholic Quarterly Review, Vol. 46, p. 188)

 

And this is just one of countless examples of censures from the pardoners’ very inception up to the Reformation. Was it only greed that kept the medieval Church from shutting down the business of pardoning down entirely? Were they not, like our college fraternities today (with one story after another of lethal hazing, organized rape, drunk driving, and racist outbursts), a continual source of embarrassment and scandal? History’s most infamous quaestor of all would eventually herald the final death of the institution. Johann Tetzel of the Order of Preachers, actually a quite learned priest and preacher, as Dominican friars typically were, was assigned by Pope Leo X as commissioner of indulgences for all Germany in 1517. His particular goal was to raise money for the construction of the new Saint Peter’s Basilica in Rome, though half of the proceeds were claimed by the archbishop of Mainz to repay debts owed for his purchase of the office. Tetzel was rather aggressive in his marketing, and though it’s unlikely he ever actually said that rhyme which began “as soon as the coin in the coffer rings”, he nonetheless spread the error that an indulgence could be applied toward the souls of dead relatives without any contrition; an error rightly condemned both by Luther and Rome’s greatest theologian of the day, Cardinal Cajetan. But this only scratches the surface of the underlying issues that sparked the Reformation.

An authentic indulgence signed by Friar Tetzel himself

 

Here lie two of history’s greatest ironies. The first: Duke Frederick III, Elector of Saxony, whose protection alone saved Luther from capture and execution, was affronted by Tetzel in no small part because the friar was a competing interest. Frederick wasn’t a Protestant himself. Quite the contrary, he had amassed possibly the largest personal collection of purported relics in Christendom. They numbered 17,443 in 1518, and actually grew another two thousand while the Reformation pressed on. Tetzel never purveyed relics or indulgences in Wittenberg because he was forbidden by the Duke. Citizens of Wittenberg, though, did leave town to buy from Tetzel in neighboring cities and villages, and we can vividly imagine what Frederick would have thought of that. The second irony, by the way, is that these relics were housed in the “castle church” of Wittenberg, where the Duke had placed Luther as a preacher. The money Frederick made from the relics and indulgences is how Luther made his living as a young priest, and is even what paid for Luther’s doctoral studies.

A proposal for rebirth!

The Catholic Church, at the Council of Trent, finally abolished the office and function of quaestor itself, not merely the abuse thereof. A few years later, Pope Saint Pius V went further and forbade all financial transactions involving indulgences whatsoever. The practice of seeking and gaining indulgences continued on for a few centuries in a “purer” way, though with diminishing fervor. After Vatican II, the practice of indulgences, and purgatory itself, has suddenly been shelved as an embarrassing medievalism by virtually all churchmen on the face of the earth. Strangely, this is despite the chief mover of the Council reforms, Pope Paul VI, issuing a quite detailed explanation and defense of indulgences in Indulgentiarum Doctrina in 1967, which even “condemns with anathema those who maintain the uselessness of indulgences or deny the power of the Church to grant them” (really strong language for a man like Paul VI). Even Pope Francis has publically spoken about purgatory at least once.

In tandem with near universal ignorance of the purgatory doctrine is an ever-growing deficit in the Church’s revenues. The consequences have been severe: Catholic hospitals and universities are now for-profit institutions, barely connected to their religious origins and even less distinguishable from their secular counterparts in medicine and academia. What a contrast from the free healthcare given by the Poor Knights of the Hospital of Saint John, or the free tuition for students of the old universities (including, of course, Luther’s Wittenberg)… all supported in no small part by the sale of indulgences. One of the towers of Rouen Cathedral was called the tour de buerre, the “butter tower”, because its construction was funded by indulgences with permissions to eat butter during Lent, which in those days, as the eastern rites still maintain, was forbidden. But as I see it, at least the tower was raised at all. Its like hasn’t been raised in this country for a hundred years.

As I sat with Madame and my seminarian friend last Saturday, I observed that the media casts our current pope as the “pope of mercy”, as though he had invented the idea. But it would be better to say that the first pope of mercy, if such a one exists, was Urban II back at the Council of Clermont, calling that first crusade and promising full satisfaction of penance to all who took up the cross. Every vicar of Christ that ever issued a new indulgence can be described as a pope of mercy. For if purgatory is real, then indulgences, which all flow from the chair of Peter, are ultimately a gift from heaven. It’s tragic that nearly all Catholics are totally unaware of these teachings. Therefore, in the spirit of this blog, applying old-world solutions to new-world problems, I have some ideas to pass down to His Holiness, or anyone else in the Vatican who might be listening…..

 

Whereas, the Catholic Church has, even in our own time, reaffirmed as “a divinely revealed truth that sins bring punishments inflicted by God's sanctity and justice” (Paul VI, Indulgentiarum Doctrina) which is expiated either here on earth through penance or after death through purgatory;

 

Whereas, “the Church also in our days then invites all its sons to ponder and meditate well on how the use of indulgences benefits their lives and indeed all Christian society” (ibid.);

 

Whereas, despite the efforts of the postconciliar reform, the pursuit and even the knowledge of indulgences and the teaching of purgation after death have all fallen to dramatic lows;

 

Whereas, the Church in Rome is currently undertaking plans to jointly commemorate, with the Lutheran Church, the 500^th anniversary of the Ninety-five Theses of Martin Luther, submitted to the archbishop of Mainz on October 31, 1517, which, in part, object to certain practices surrounding indulgences, some which were subsequently upheld as perfectly orthodox and praiseworthy by Pope Leo X and his successors to the present day;

Be it resolved that the bishop of Rome, the Pope himself, lead all other bishops of the world in example by proclaiming a Jubilee year for 2017, beginning on the 31^st of October, to coincide with the birthday of the Protestant Reformation, with a plenary indulgence promising full remission of sins for various devotions and works of piety to be determined by said authorities, such as but not limited to celebrations of difference between our separated brethren:

·         the devout reading of Scripture (especially the seven deuterocanonical books and the epistle of James, whose canonicity Luther doubted);

·         the devout reading of King Henry VIII’s “Defense of the Seven Sacraments” (the same apologetic work against errors of Luther which earned him the title of Fidei defensor by Pope Leo X);

·         and the devout hearing of the sacrifice of the Mass (especially Masses celebrated in Latin, which Luther was quick to jettison).

Be it also resolved that, in order to more effectively spread the message of mercy, especially in those developed and secularized nations of the world which are ignorant or cold to the need for purgation, the disciplinary restrictions laid down by the Council of Trent be relaxed so that bishops may once again commission quaestores (or “purveyors”, or “pardoners”), duly licensed and formed to a right and proper conscience, to travel to the four corners of the earth, armed with the relics of the saints, to bring certificates of remission from the temporal consequences of sin to all believers who might desire them;

Be it also resolved that the apostolate of quaestor, in the spirit of the new evangelization, be open to any and all of the lay faithful, male or female, who might be called to spread the mercy of God in the form of indulgences, as they were in earlier, purer centuries of the Church;

Be it also resolved that the prohibition of Pius V, with respect to financial transactions and indulgences, be lifted so that holy mother Church may more fully enjoy the fruits of the new evangelization and be able to sustain herself in anticipation of future parish closings and expenses to be incurred by the possible relaxation of priestly celibacy.

Things I’ve learned from Eastern Orthodoxy, again: Cheesefare Sunday

Every couple of years, I visit an eastern rite church to see how they do things on the “other side” of the empire. I often consider this exercise to be the closest I’ll get to knowing what it was like to go to church during the Middle Ages because the Orthodox, in many respects, are stuck in the 11th century; and I say that as affectionately as possible.

Yesterday’s victim was a local parish of the Orthodox Church in America (OCA). I’m not too well-read on the history of Eastern Orthodox jurisdictions in the United States, but my understanding is that the OCA started out as a Russian mission in Alaska and grew to embrace a bunch of other Orthodox ethnic groups elsewhere in America. During the Cold War, growing differences between this communion and the Russian Orthodox Church outside Russia (ROCOR) and an influx of Anglo converts to Orthodoxy led to this communion, with the Moscow Patriarchate’s consent, gaining autocephaly and dropping the “Russian” part of the name. As a result, the OCA is the “least ethnic” of all the major Orthodox churches in this country.

I walked in about 40 minutes late, just in time to miss the first sermon (yes, there was more than one). It was Forgiveness Sunday, which is the last Sunday before Lent begins in the east. Eastern fasting rules for Lent are exponentially more difficult than the west’s, so this day is dedicated to getting rid of all one’s dairy stores. Hence, they call it “Cheesefare Sunday” and make lots of pancakes, just like our nearly-forgotten Pancake Tuesday on the day before Ash Wednesday. I stood mostly in the back, but also observed part of the forgiveness rite which follows the Divine Liturgy on this day, and stayed afterward to eat pancakes with the parishioners because I will never say no to free pancakes.

Here follows my observations as an incognito Roman, in a handy numeric list:

1.)    No pews.
Not that I expected there to be, but it’s always striking as a westerner to go to a church that has no furniture whatsoever except for a handful of pews along the walls for the elderly and infirm. The first sermon was just coming to an end, so I saw that a lot of people were just standing from having been seated on the floor like it was story time at elementary school (or, perhaps, like being one of those lucky people listening at the feet of the Lord Himself in those paintings of the Sermon on the Mount). I walked in with Madame and our six-month old daughter, and one of the church ladies immediately spotted us and said, “please help yourself to this seat over here! You’ve got your hands full!” Some folks who were still sitting there immediately vacated the pew to make room for us. I decided not to take advantage of this luxury, but I appreciated the gesture and stood in front of the pew about half the time. I spent the other half perambulating around the church, holding my fussy daughter and showing her the different icons of saints to keep her amused.

What I learned: pews, consciously or not, erect barriers between worshippers. When you stand among other believers in an amorphous crowd, you’re more likely to smile at others as you bump elbows and feel as though you’re part of a true assembly of the faithful. Pews also clutter up space, but when you throw them out, even a small church building (like the one I visited yesterday) can suddenly feel a lot bigger. Western churches, too, were open spaces for most of Christian history. Pews didn’t come fully into vogue until the Protestant Reformation and Catholic Counter-Reformation, both which saw the length of sermons triple or quadruple in length; Protestant ministers emphasized the spirit of the “word” over vain repetitions and readings from a book, and Catholic priests fought back in kind by drilling the catechism into the faithful to dispel the heresies of Luther’s minions. All this preaching required lots of sitting, so bam! Pews came in to save the day. (For Catholics, the growing prevalence of low Mass and the custom of kneeling entirely throughout also ensured a steady demand for kneelers.) But the trends toward the privatization of religion go back a little further. In a few old English churches, we can see the remains of chantries built by wealthy families as far back as the 15th century to give them private worship spaces, e.g. walled off from the unwashed plebs. The “it’s just me and Jesus” mentality, held even by many orthodox Catholics while attending Mass, contributed in some way to the trends leading up to the Reformation.

If I were ever tasked with designing a new church, I would definitely give serious thought to trashing the idea of pews altogether. Though, of course, this is probably why no one will ever ask me to….


2.)    Walking aimlessly around the church is a thing.
Again, this is made possible by ditching the pews. Now, I’ll walk around with my daughter even in a western church to tour the statues during Mass without much regard for whether people in the pews are distracted, but this is much easier to do in an eastern arrangement. There, the church is built to engage people in their surroundings. I noticed, for example, people walking up to kiss the icon in the center of the church at random. At the same time, the congregation as a whole was still more engaged with the priest’s actions behind the iconostasis (by singing the responses and making endless dramatic signs of the cross in sync) than your typical Catholic parish, despite forty-plus years of liturgical experimentation after Vatican II in a crusade to get the peasants to drop their rosaries and prayer books.

How the east is so successful at doing both at the same time (milling about AND being engaged in the liturgy) is beyond me. I can only guess that centuries of privatized worship in the west, starting with the chantries and growing ever further with the pews and the low Mass mentality, ensure that no matter where you stand on liturgy; no matter how many clowns you put in the sanctuary, swooping gestures your lectress makes, or even how many fine Saint Edmund Campion Missals you put into people’s hands; Roman Catholics are usually just going to stay put, mind their own business at Mass, and get the heck out after Communion to catch the game.


3.)    Bad music is everywhere.
I don’t mean to say that I heard anything like “On Eagle’s Wings” or fake folk hymns to get everyone to feel more culturally sensitive; just that this parish, as with every other eastern rite church (Catholic or Orthodox) I’ve ever personally attended, had the same dreary four-part responses throughout the entire Divine Liturgy. Whatever happened to Byzantine chant?

The same thing that happened to Gregorian chant, it seems. I’m still learning about the history of sacred music in the eastern churches, but it seems the tide of modernization did hit the Orthodox in at least one way: in his push to reshape Russia as a modern western nation, Tsar Peter the Great imported the concepts of harmony and multi-voiced choirs from France into his own court chapels, which thence trickled down to the parish level over time. What probably sounds beautiful in the hands of a professional choral music program is easily several degrees less edifying among Sunday volunteers; thus we arrive at the same warbling one might have heard in the pre-Vatican II days from a small Roman parish attempting the Mozart Ave Verum as the that of the choirs singing the responses at these parochial Divine Liturgies today…. those descended from the Russian tradition, at least.


4.)    You can never have too much of a good thing.
In the classical Roman Rite, for example, the incensing of objects and people is governed by very specific rules. A single server gets a single swing. A major minister, like the deacon, gets two double-swings. The Blessed Sacrament and icons of our Lord get three doubles. The congregation as a whole gets three swings total: middle, left, and right. It’s all very hierarchical and reserved.

If any such rules exist in the Divine Liturgy of Saint John Chrysostom, this priest has never heard of them. He came out of the iconostasis to incense the congregation like a madman. Imagine the motion of a quaint suburban lawn sprinkler, but in the form of a heavy, golden mass of fire and smoke, riddled with bells, swinging furiously in one great arc. Dwell on this, and you can understand the fundamental difference between eastern and western liturgy in a nutshell.


5.)    Normal people can like reverence, too.
This is all quite subjective, and I don’t use the word “normal” as though it’s necessarily a positive thing, but in the face of the Divine Liturgy’s sheer intensity (in length, amount of singing, and lack of seating), the people in attendance struck me as quite average. I was the only man below 60 in a suit and necktie, and Madame was the only woman below 70 in a hat. A few other ladies wore headscarves, but most were bare-headed. Even most men singing in the choir were of the jeans-and-flannel-shirt variety. By contrast, a Catholic parish which consciously works toward reverent worship will probably attract a slightly more eccentric crowd, from your prairie skirts, to your bow-tied professors, to your seven brothers all wearing the exact same blue blazer and red necktie. At this Orthodox church, though, there weren’t even all that many men with beards, which I found disappointing. One lady did stop us after the DL, however, to say "you really raised the fashion consciousness of the entire church when you came in here today. I'm glad some people still take going to church seriously!" I wasn't sure how to respond to that.

As I said in the beginning, the OCA is probably the least "ethnic" of all the Orthodox churches here in the States. This parish, as I found from speaking with people at the breakfast, was made up of a lot of converts, including the priest. The ones who stuck out the most, ironically, were the ones who were obviously Russian expatriates. Apparently in the motherland, it's normal for women to dress for church like they're going to the club. Not judging, merely making an observation here. I don't know how they can make all those prostrations in those heels.

Also: during the pancake breakfast afterward, there was one middle-aged fellow with a five-o-clock shadow who greeted me with a thick Russian accent: “hello, my name is Dmitri. Are you Orthodox?” And yes, he was wearing a chain necklace. And he was exceedingly friendly. If this gentleman who one could easily mistake for being an agent of the Russian mob could be so welcoming, Catholics have no excuse for being brusque with visitors after Mass.



I don’t have any profound thoughts with which to conclude this article, except perhaps this: let us western Christians try harder this Lent. It doesn't matter how many or how few show up to church on any given day. When we're there, though, let's try harder to follow the essence of the great commandments, "love the Lord thy God" and "love thy neighbor as thyself", with all heavenly grace. Too often we think it has to be one or the other; and while it's certainly better to err on the side of the first commandment, there's no reason we can't do both, as this humble little parish does.

Gothic splendor and Christian charity at odds?

One of Pugin's Tasmanian churches

I'm going to open this year of 2015 with a short reflection on a paper I read from the Pugin Foundation, given to the Newman Society in Hobart (in Tasmania, Australia). It's called Mr Pugin the Bigot, and you may find it here.

Some background: Augustus Pugin and John Cardinal Newman were, arguably, the two most influential converts to Catholicism in England during the age of Victoria. When it came to how the newly emancipated and restored Catholic faith would express itself, though, these two luminaries were at odds with the other. Newman, father of the Birmingham Oratory, imported Italianate, Baroque architecture into England; stepping into his church brought a taste of papal Rome right to the English Catholic's front door. Pugin, champion architect of the Gothic revival, wouldn't stand for anything except the total restoration of that style which sprung forth from the minds and hands of native Englishmen during the most Catholic centuries, the 14th and 15th. Baroque churches, in Pugin's world, were gaudy imitations of heathen temples. The position led Newman to confide, in a letter to a friend, the title of the article linked above:

"Mr Pugin is a man of genius; I have the greatest admiration of his talents, and willingly acknowledge that Catholics owe him a great debt for what he has done in the revival of Gothic architecture among us. His zeal, his minute diligence, his resources, his invention, his imagination, his sagacity in research, are all of the highest order. It is impossible that any one, not scientifically qualified to judge of his merits, can feel a profounder reverence than I do, for a gift which it has pleased the Author of all Truth and Beauty to endow him. But he has the great fault of a man of genius, as well as the merit. He is intolerant, and if I might use a stronger word, a bigot. He sees nothing good in any school of Christian art except that of which he is himself so great an ornament. The Canons of Gothic architecture are to him points of faith, and everyone is a heretic who would venture to question them."

The author, Brian Andrews, supplies an extreme anecdote for an extreme character:

"One chalice tells us much about Pugin and Willson’s taste. In May 1847 Willson was given a chalice by Pope Pius IX. A typical Classical vessel for its time, it was abhorrent to Willson who took it back to England where Pugin made a new Gothic design. The Papal chalice was melted down, some extra silver added and an inscription engraved on the base of the new Gothic chalice ‘+ Gift of His Holiness Pius the IXth to Robert William + Bishop of Hobart Town + Rome + May + Mdcccxlvii’. Well it sort of was—at least most of the silver!"

(Willson here is Robert William Willson, first Catholic bishop of Hobart, Tasmania. He was a close friend of Pugin's and strong supporter of the Gothic revival in Australia.)

 

Robert William Willson, Bishop of Hobart

 

It's no secret where my sympathies in that whole debate lie, but I also wanted to draw some attention to some anecdotes from the same essay which dispel the whole notion of Pugin as the Grinch of Victorian England. Andrews submits a snippet from the writings of Pugin's son-in-law, John Hardman Powell, shewing the total harmony of someone who lived a fully liturgical, fully charitable life:

'At eight the Chapel bell rang for Compline, which was solemnly recited by Pugin in Cassock and Surplice, followed by the De Profundis, but too rapidly for a stranger to respond to readily. At nine supper in the brightest of Kitchens; the eldest daughter Anne, an elegant maiden was present and Miss Greaves, a family friend, who had kindly taken care of the children after their mother’s death. Rice pudding, Bread and Cheese, Celery and Water, was the simple fare, Pugin with Times in hand commenting on the news of the day.

'In the morning, bell at eight for prayers; Pater, Ave, Credo, Litany, short and quick, “no time for distractions”. The Chapel though small was complete for Mass, with organ in Sacristy … the windows were filled with Stained Glass, St. George, St. Augustine, St. Edmund, St. Cuthbert, with the Family beneath, holding petitions. Though simple, everything was of the best, Oak, Cedar, Encaustic tiles, and a small stove always burning in cold weather: “most people pray better when warm”.

'Pugin gave in Charity “with both hands” on the principle that life was too short for “chasing up only deserving cases” and “everybody must take their chance of being done at times”, in fact he literally gave away his boots more than once and walked home without. At offertories he never counted but took a handful of silver from his pocket. During the famine in Ireland, he sent all he could get together and influenced others to do the same. Shipwrecked foreign sailors were taken into special care, lodgings found, doctor, and sustenance. At that time there was no seamen’s hospital at Ramsgate so Pugin went and by his influence got one organised. Once a barque, full of poor Bremen Emigrants struck on the Goodwin Sands and were towed into the Harbour after great suffering. Finding eighty of them were Catholics he wrote to London for a German Priest and turned the Cartoon room into a Temporary Chapel where they went to confession heard Mass and received Communion. The Blessings they invoked on leaving were a real happiness.

'Pugin set himself to illustrate “True Principles” in the Household life. Reverence, order, simplicity, Holy Mass in the Chapel whenever he could get a priest friend to stay, then plenty of work, good food and exercise, the Church Festivals being holidays in both senses. … After the Church was built he enjoyed going into the choir as Cantor and singing the Mass from his big Gregorian books at the lectern, giving his most sonorous notes at the Credo and his daughter Annie accompanying on the organ over the cloister.'

 

 

The architect applied his concern for social justice to his profession in more than one way. When his friend, Bishop Willson, was sent to minister to the poorest of the poor in Tasmania, Pugin designed all of the furnishings the good bishop would need to set up a new diocese at no charge. And we can see in a sketch like that of two contrasted poor-houses below, from Pugin's Contrasts, that he believed his architectural vision extended not only to the great houses of church and state, but to house the less fortunate more humanely than the "cutting-edge" utilitarianist monstrosities then being built.

 

 

 

I'll end this brief foray into the mind of Pugin with some words from the man himself, shedding some light onto the spirituality behind his design:

 

'And the reason that Catholicism does not produce such glorious piles as in days of old, that it does not number a crowd of devout architects, painters, sculptors, and cunning workmen within its pale, as formerly, is purely owing to the decay of faith and the lightness with which even the majority of Christians regard their religion.

'If the mass of the Catholics of the nineteenth century possessed the same zeal, devotion, reverence and fear of God as those of the thirteenth, the Madeleine would never have arisen for the performances of the same worship as generated the stupendous vaults and towers of Notre Dame; but the latter was the spontaneous creation of the faith, raised by zeal and devotion—the former a cold adaptation of a heathen temple, erected by infidel architects to the purposes of a Christian church. Revive the true Catholic faith and devotion and the flaunting chapel, with all its glare and finery, will soon be deserted for the solemn recesses of the ancient piles, where men can pour forth their supplications in retirement and devotion, content to penetrate the veil of the sanctuary with the eyes of faith, and feel that they are scarcely worthy to kneel on the pavement of that temple where their God deigns to dwell. Restore the old reverence, and gladly will men welcome the old things—arch and aisle, and pillar and chancel, and screen, and worship as their fathers worshipped, who now sleep in Christ; and the green bough will twine in the tracery, and the tapers sparkle round the rood, and surpliced clerks sing in chancel stalls, whilst the saints shrine bright in the mullioned lights—venit hora et nunc est—when the old glory of the sanctuary will be restored and solemnity revived with returning faith.'

'… architecture is the barometer of faith; it is not the arch, the pinnacle, the pillar, that profiteth, but the spirit which produces them; and the revival or decline of true Ecclesiastical architecture is commensurate with that of the true faith. It is for these reasons that we labour for its restoration and not as a mere abstract question of art.'

 

Pugin's high altar, with canopy and Sarum-style curtains, at Birmingham Cathedral

 

A weekend in Dallas: why we need traditional men & boys' choirs

Since I haven't made an update in a few months now, I'll preface this article with a brief recap of my doings and musings over the past two days. Indeed, this was a good weekend for medievalists, worthy of reflecting. Saturday was the feast of saints Crispin and Crispinian, two ancient Roman martyrs whose following became quite popular in later medieval England. The patron saints of cobblers, this feast was a major public holiday for everyone involved in the tanning and leathermaking industry. On the fateful morning of October 25, 1415, the hopelessly outnumbered and exhausted state of King Henry V of England's invading army prompted the Earl of Westmoreland to exclaim, "O, that we now had here but one ten thousand of those men in England that do no work today!" And the rest is "history", of course.

As per tradition every year, I dutifully watch the Kenneth Branagh adaptation of Shakespeare's Henry V and cry "God for Harry, England, and Saint George!" Every year, a French historian or two objects to the celebrating of war crimes or grossly exaggerated kill counts across the Channel, and then an English historian says nay, 'twas not so, we really did slay over nine thousand Frenchies with ten archers and a cheese knife. Saints Crispin and Crispinian themselves invariably get lost in the festivities, so this time, I share with you the following link, proposing the two martyrs as patron saints of catechists.

A good friend of many years, Theodore of the Royalty & Monarchy Site, invited me to travel up to Dallas to attend a concert given by the Choir of Westminster Abbey on Sunday the 26th, which happened to be passing through the Episcopal church where he sings during their tour of the United States. Yes, the same choir that sings at the burial place and coronation site of the kings of England since 1065. The same choir that millions of folks otherwise oblivious to all this stuff heard while watching the wedding of Prince William and Kate Middleton, now the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge. And the same choir that my fiancée and I heard when we visited the Abbey for choral Evensong on Christmas Day of 2011 (we were checking up on stolen property). Theodore probably didn't expect me so willing to attend as to bring the entire family for the ride, but I did, and though it was quite a hectic trip to and fro (six hours each way) with very little time to stop and relax, it was certainly worth it.

Sunday morning began with a visit to the church of Mater Dei, Irving. Though I have numerous friends who are or were seminarians of the Priestly Fraternity of Saint Peter, and have attended Masses celebrated by FSSP priests before, this was the first time I ever actually visited one of their churches. Sung Mass began at 9 in the morning, which despite being the most traditional time to celebrate it (following the divine hour of Terce), is always a maddening proposition for us not-morning folk. It was the feast of Christ the King, which is always on the last Sunday of October in the 1962 calendar and, despite the feast's recent coinage, gave heightened significance to Saturday's royal victory and that afternoon's equally royal entourage. There was a rather lengthy homily on the recent synod on the family in Rome given by Father Wolfe, who I briefly met during a visit to the ill-fated Fisher-More College in Fort Worth a couple years ago. If some homilies are like cotton candy and others are like meat and potatoes, this one was rather like eating a brick that chipped my tooth. Father Hunwicke this, Pope Honorius that, but it seemed to give solace to my fiancée who was entertaining thoughts of converting to Eastern Orthodoxy after the fiasco of the midterm report. After Mass, there was a Eucharistic procession in honor of Christ the King around the parking lot, Benediction, and multiplication of the doughnuts and muffins. The people were friendly, and a few even conversed with me and Lauren. An unfortunate ad for Rick Santorum on a bulletin board in the narthex, and an even more unfortunate painting of the Sacred Heart, detracted from an otherwise edifying experience.

Folks filing back in to Mater Dei after the procession. They did the best they could with this old Korean Presbyterian church building.

After Mater Dei, it was lunch with Theodore, where he, Lauren, and I talked at length about choral music and other matters of import, and then on to the purpose of the trip: to listen to the Westminster Abbey Choir in concert. One thing can be said for the people who built the Episcopal Church in America: they were not stingy in giving. The Church of the Incarnation, from nave to parish hall, was a lot nicer than what I'm used to in an ordinary parish church. Now, I must concur with Lauren, who remarked that the surroundings felt devoid of the presence of God that we feel when inside a Catholic church, but that's another story for another time. Yesterday, I was a guest, supporting an institution I'm quite fond of: the traditional choir of men and boys.

The place was packed to the brim. We were forced to sit in an awkward place in the north transept, unable to really see anything. Interestingly, we were also stuck in the north transept when we heard them at Evensong on Christmas Day at the abbey itself, in 2011.

The repertory was mostly of large texts by 19th and 20th century composers that I didn't know much about, but it began with "Hosanna to the Son of David" by Orlando Gibbons, then two responsories by Thomas Tallis (Videte miraculum from Candlemas, and Loquebantur from First Vespers of Pentecost). There was a huge choral work set to three prayers by Dietrich Bonhoeffer, a Lutheran minister who earned death in a concentration camp for his opposition to the Nazi Party. My favorite of all the texts that I had not heard of before was this bit called "The Twelve" by Wystan Hugh Auden, set to music by William Walton (this sample courtesy of the Choir of King's College, Cambridge):

 I

 Without arms or charm of culture,

 Persons of no importance

 From an unimportant Province,

 They did as the Spirit bid,

 Went forth into a joyless world

 Of swords and rhetoric

 To bring it joy.

When they heard the Word, some demurred, some mocked, some were shocked: but many were stirred and the Word spread. Lives long dead were quickened to life; the sick were healed by the Truth revealed; released into peace from the gin of old sin, men forgot themselves in the glory of the story told by the Twelve.

Then the Dark Lord, adored by this world, perceived the threat of the Light to his might. From his throne he spoke to his own. The loud crowd, the sedate engines of State, were moved by his will to kill. It was done. One by one, they were caught, tortured, and slain.

II

 O Lord, my God,

 Though I forsake thee

 Forsake me not,

 But guide me as I walk

 Through the valley of mistrust,

 And let the cry of my disbelieving absence

 Come unto thee,

 Thou who declared unto Moses:

 "I shall be there."

III

Children play about the ancestral graves, for the dead no longer walk.

Excellent still in their splendour are the antique statues: but can do neither good nor evil.

Beautiful still are the starry heavens: but our fate is not written there.

Holy still is speech, but there is no sacred tongue: the Truth may be told in all.

Twelve as the winds and the months are those who taught us these things: envisaging each in an oval glory, let us praise them all with a merry noise.

(Quite metal, when you think about it.)

The choir stalls at the (Episcopal) church of the Incarnation in Dallas, where the concert was held. Unlike in American Catholic-dom, choir stalls seem omnipresent in Episcopal-land.

The concert ended with an impromptu piece by the Catholic recusant, William Byrd, and as they left, I was more convinced than ever of the need to restore or establish this choral tradition in the Catholic Church, the United States, and the rest of the world. I became smug when I learned that the Abbey Choir's Master of Music, Mr. James O'Donnell, is not only Catholic; he is a papal knight (Commander of the Order of Saint Gregory the Great) and the first Catholic to direct the Abbey Choir since the Protestant Reformation. When the previous Organist and Master of Music was sacked in 1998, all the top musicians and choir directors in the Church of England had been passed over in favor of Mr. O'Donnell, choirmaster at Westminster Cathedral (the chief church of the Catholic Church of England and Wales, oft confused with the Abbey). What an honor, indeed. But let's now get to the heart of the matter: why are these men and boys' choirs so important?

First, they fulfill a function in the Catholic tradition that women simply cannot. Before you jump up and say, "hey, I/my wife/sister/daughter/mother is in church choir" and send me a hatemail, let me be clear: yes, the Church has allowed female altar servers for decades in the modern form of the Mass, and women in lay choirs for over a century; and it's true, there's nothing inherently wrong with women in lay choirs (in civilian dress, typically singing from a loft or otherwise hidden from the public gaze). I'd be happy for all my daughters to join a lay choir when they come of age. A lay choir is nothing more than a specialized subset of the faithful at large, and if the faithful are encouraged to sing the Ordinary of the Mass, as they did in ancient times, there can't be anything wrong with a specialized subset (naturally including women) doing the same thing. There are women in lay choirs in every church I sing at, so if I had a problem with them outright, I guess I'd be shown the door sooner or later.

But as choirs go, the traditional Latin Mass's rubrics only concern themselves with one: the liturgical or ecclesiastical choir*, assumed (just as with altar servers) to all be clerics in cassock and surplice, seated in choir stalls in the sanctuary (or quire, or chancel), the gospel and epistle sides facing one another. And naturally, as women cannot be clerics in the Catholic Church, those who populated the choir were all male. These men and boys alone were expected to sing the five proper chants; Introit, Gradual, Alleuia (or Tract in Lent), Offertory, and Communion; which change every day. For years, our men's schola had to juggle learning five all-new, melismatic chants virtually every Sunday, only to put them away for the entire year until that Sunday occurred again, while also maintaining jobs, children, schooling, or some combination of the above. Sung Masses aren't quite as frequent at the diocesan 1962 Mass here this year, but even so, if our schola wasn't there, there wouldn't be any chant at all.

In the medieval world, on the other hand, this task was generally left to boys and men who dedicated their entire lives to the sacred art of chant: clerks ordained to the minor orders at the parish level (perhaps permanently), monks in their monasteries, students in their college chapels, and canons in their cathedrals. No priest was exempt from the duty to sing. Today we have the expression, "I asked my priest to say Mass for my sick cat yesterday", but in the Middle Ages, you were more like to say that a priest sang Mass for such-and-such an intention, such as not dying from plague or shipwreck. Hence, in Shakespeare's play, on the eve of Saint Crispin's, Henry V gets on his knees and prays for pardon for his father having usurped the crown from Richard II:

O God of battles! steel my soldiers' hearts;

Possess them not with fear; take from them now

The sense of reckoning, if the opposed numbers

Pluck their hearts from them. Not to-day, O Lord,

O, not to-day, think not upon the fault

My father made in compassing the crown!

I Richard's body have interred anew;

And on it have bestow'd more contrite tears

Than from it issued forced drops of blood:

Five hundred poor I have in yearly pay,

Who twice a-day their wither'd hands hold up

Toward heaven, to pardon blood; and I have built
Two chantries, where the sad and solemn priests
Sing still for Richard's soul. More will I do;

Though all that I can do is nothing worth,

Since that my penitence comes after all,

Imploring pardon.

But why boys, you ask? For American Catholics, the answer is easy. "Start 'em young." We Americans have long been used to the idea of the "altar boy", encouraging them from the time they can take directions to serve the altar in the hope of fostering another vocation to the priesthood. Unfortunately, we also have historically tended to throw them right into low Mass where the server assumes many of the duties of the deacon and subdeacon, but the average boy can only learn so many directions and Latin phrases at a time, so we have also gotten accustomed to the fatal double-whammy of 1.) sloppy serving, and 2.) thinking older teenagers and adult men are too old to serve, thus forbidding the problem from ever being solved.

Medieval Christendom had another model: yes, boys served Mass (and even played at being bishop from time to time), but they started with minor positions at solemn Masses such as torchbearing before tackling low Mass, in the unlikely event that they did so at all. But even before boys carried torches, they had to learn how to simply sit in choir and sing the Mass. In those days, singing the entire liturgy from cover to cover was still the norm, and it remains true today that singing is a skill best cultivated from an early age. At the turn of the second millennium, the western Church's bases of influence gradually shifted from the monasteries (those fortresses and repositories of knowledge in a more brutish era) to the bishops and their cathedrals. Everywhere, bishops raced to raise up the tallest tower, the largest nave, the grandest stained-glass windows. But what was the point of developing Gothic architecture, spending millions, and putting thousands of laborers to work on a building that would be empty most of the time? No; the cathedrals of the Gothic age would have the divine hours sung round the clock by the bishop's canons. And who would assist and eventually replace them in their holy duties? The boys of the cathedral school.

Here stood the predecessor of the Tridentine seminary system. Before there were seminaries, Charlemagne ruled that cathedrals in his empire establish schools so that boys may learn to read, write, sing, and go on to serve as the next generation of clergy. The boys sang the daily Masses and Office, and the better they sang, the further the bishop grew in prestige, and the more likely the great nobles of the realm would send their sons to the schools. From these early foundations sprung the first colleges, and the universities of Bologna, Paris, Oxford, and Cambridge. It was also these boys who, together with the men, developed the additional voices to the plainchant which led to polyphony. By the 15th century, polyphonic settings of the Mass were everywhere, and as there were still neither women nor castrati in church choirs of any sort, the treble voices for all these compositions necessarily had to be sung by boys.

The Catholic Church in America has never had a strong tradition of choral music, but now there's a crisis of bad music throughout the entire Catholic world. This was readily apparent when the Westminster Abbey Choir visited Pope Benedict a few years ago and sang Palestrina with the Sistine Chapel Choir, making the Italians look like amateurs and prima donnas at their own game, in their own house. What's worse: the art of singing itself has been resigned, in many Catholics' eyes, to a feminine activity. "My boys serve, my girls sing;" as though there were a great distinction between the two! Thus, if I were to ask someone if they were interested in joining our schola, the answer 90% of the time will be, "I can't sing". Perhaps if they had started learning when they were eight years old, it would be another story. And now we have a problem of many generations of churchmen in America and elsewhere who can't sing, never grew up in a singing environment, and therefore, sing very little or none of the liturgy during their entire priestly careers. All of a sudden, a great tradition of sung liturgy is as dead as the public Divine Office, save for the Eastern rites and a few pockets of sanity here and there. Imagine how different our musical culture would be if every cathedral, if every parish, had a dedicated program for training boys to sing daily services, assisted by a sizable contingent of adult male scholars.

The (Catholic) church of Saint George, Sudbury (London), in the early 20th century. During a nuptial Mass, it appears two cantors, or rulers of the choir, are leading the Gradual with a full, surpliced choir of men and boys before the altar.

It's my general experience that when it comes to Church matters, women tend to be much more willing to volunteer, even if they're juggling multiple young children. They'll do whatever they're asked, behind the scenes, without reward or recognition. Men need to be led by example, to be seen and recognized for their service. Certainly less noble, and yet, there's the paradox that no matter how intensely religious a mother is, if a father is inactive in his faith, their beliefs are unlikely to be passed on to the children when they come of age.

Therefore, I propose an experiment for all churchmen and altar guild leaders who recognize the problems in our musical culture:

1.) Let traditional choir stalls, or at least a few movable seats, be placed within the sanctuary of every parish (for those with rails and claustrophobic sanctuary spaces, this may necessitate moving them forward).

2.) Since altar guilds usually have many more servers on the roster than can actually serve on any given Sunday, let all those who are not scheduled to serve a specific position be assigned to sit in choir. This way, new servers can witness the ceremonies of the liturgy up close before taking them up themselves, and so that they can also lead the laity in the proper sitting, standing, or kneeling postures, rather than the confusion that abounds in so many places I've attended (true that in the traditional Latin Mass, there are no rubrics for the laity, but I've seen people awkwardly split between standing and kneeling after the Canon, for example, for lack of direction rather than strict personal preference).

3.) Let all the male singers of the choir also don the cassock and surplice, properly called "choir dress", and take places in the sanctuary, leading all the other servers in choir to sing the Mass; at least the Ordinary chants (Kyrie, Gloria, etc.) whenever they are sung in plainchant. If you place boys in altar service with the hope of raising vocations, they'll need to know how to read square notation as much as the prayers at the foot of the altar.

4.) By starting to train boys to sing at a young age, hopefully as they grow into adults, the community will always have trained chanters ready to step in and lead the chants of the Mass, rather than work the same three or four dedicated chanters one Sunday after the other!

I'm just pontificating from my proverbial armchair here, but it seems like this model, as it was practiced in the great cathedrals of the medieval world, would go a ways toward restoring liturgy worldwide to its ideal, normatively sung form.


_________________________

*The liturgical or ecclesiastical choir was defined as such by Pope Pius X in his 1903 motu proprio on sacred music, Tra le sollecitudini:

"With the exception of the melodies proper to the celebrant at the altar and to the ministers, which must be always sung in Gregorian Chant, and without accompaniment of the organ, all the rest of the liturgical chant belongs to the choir of levites, and, therefore, singers in the church, even when they are laymen, are really taking the place of the ecclesiastical choir. Hence the music rendered by them must, at least for the greater part, retain the character of choral music." And, "On the same principle it follows that singers in church have a real liturgical office, and that therefore women, being incapable of exercising such office, cannot be admitted to form part of the choir. Whenever, then, it is desired to employ the acute voices of sopranos and contraltos, these parts must be taken by boys, according to the most ancient usage of the Church."

The facial expression here has a certain semblance to Lady Mary Crawley's.

The front door, the great threshold for the unchurched seeker: an important but oft-overlooked place to for a church to put in its finest craftsmanship.



During the reception. Thanks again, Theodore.