Part 10: “Eastern Presuppositions” and Western Liturgical Renewal

Western Virtues

Why, then, this renewed western nostalgia for a better liturgical past, this idealization of Trent or the east? I think that Latin Catholics, largely ignorant of the riches of their own living tradition, make the mistake of looking elsewhere for what they already have in their own closet. I am dismayed at how

utterly incapable contemporary western Catholics are of understanding and marketing the riches of their own tradition.

Stuck in the late middle ages and stymied by this medieval captivity, the Catholic west has stalled the great movement of patristic ressourcement initiated in postwar France by authors like Congar, Danielou, and de Lubac, the heroes of my youth. (Mine too–Gerard Serafin!)

How many ever dip into a volume of the great collection Sources chritiennes or 7he Fathers of the Church?

I say: Turn again to the fathers and mystics at the root of the unparalleled Latin tradition. Meditate on the Rule of St. Benedict, and the great Bernard of Clairvaux. Read de Lubac’s Exegese mideivale.

Let us rediscover where we came from before it is too late. The west does not need to turn east, nor does it need to return to a medieval or Tridentine past. It needs to return to its roots. Latin Christianity is just as apostolic, ancient, traditional, patristic, spiritual and monastic as that of the east. I am not really convinced all Catholics know and believe this.

That does not mean we have nothing to learn from the east. One can learn from everyone. If the eastern churches are beginning only now to face the problems of modernity, it is the fault of the circumstances in which these churches have been forced to live, either as minority confessions in an at-best tolerant Islamic world, or for the past three generations under Communist persecution.

But it would be wrong to think that eastern Christianity does not have within itself the spiritual means to cope with modernity. As we have seen, eastern liturgy–and liturgy is simply the mirror to eastern Christianity’s inner world–has preserved from the storehouse of its past elements that are not only desperately needed, but also of great appeal to modern men and women: an attachment and profound rootedness in what is best in its own past; a deeply reverential spirit; a sense of the utter transcendence and holiness of God; a high Christology; the only truly integral and effective pneumatology in Christian history; an emphasis on the local church; and the consequent synodal or sobornal structure of church koinonia and governance.

But the east also needs the modern and typically “western” virtues of flexibility; the ability to cope with change as a law of our modern culture; objectivity, openness, fairness, self-criticism; and a sense of the unity of modern global culture in which no one is or can remain an island. If Christianity is to survive as a viable lifestyle attractive to modern men and women, it will not be as an obscurantist, anti-intellectual culture of folklore and ritualism, sustained by the rejection of modernity and change.

This is true for all of us: the choice is there for those able to make it. In the meantime, what the west needs to do is not turn nostalgically to the east for solutions to its own problems, but to penetrate once again into the riches of its own storehouse, to bring out from it things both old and new. A Christian culture that produced Chartres and Mont Saint Michel, Cyprian, Augustine and Cassian, Benedictine monasticism and Citeaux, Francis of Assisi and Dominic, Ignatius of Loyola, John of the Cross, Charles de Foucauld, the two Saint T(h)eresas and Mother Teresa, and Popes John XXIII, Paul VI, and John Paul II, does not have to apologize to or imitate anybody except Jesus Christ.

Notes

• Peiraiki Ekklesia

70:177 (March, 1997), 74. Those who watched on television the Pope’s historic visit to Romania in 1999 will not have failed to notice that the Orthodox patriarchal Divine Liturgy on Sunday, May 9, in the public square, was celebrated versus populum. The so-called “Innovators” or Ohnovlentsy tried to introduce the same practice into the Russian Orthodox Church in the 1920s, but the radical stance of that Soviet controlled splinter movement led to its rejection by the Orthodox despite the fact that, as is usually the case with self-proclaimed reformers, some of its ideas were not without merit.

• See Robert F. Taft, “Eastern Catholic Churches(Orientalium Ecciesiarum),” in Adrian Hastings, ,

Modern Catholicism: Vatican II -and After

(London: SPCK/New York: Oxford University Press, 1991), 135140, esp. 135-36.

• ProsperGueranger, Institutions liturgiques, 2nd , 4 vols. (Paris/Brussels: Societe generale de librairie catholique, 1878) 1:226-27

• , 1:229

• , 1:23 1

• See Anselm Strittmatter, “Missa Treverensis seu Sancti Simeonis Syracusani,” Studia Gratiana 14 (1967), 495-518, esp. 508, note 9; Angelus Walz, “Pelargus, LThK 8:251-2; idem, “Ambrogio Pelargo a Trento,”in Il Concilio di Trento e la riforma  Atti del Conpengo storico internazionale. Trento 2-6 settembre 1963 (Rome: no publisher given, 1965): 11, 749-66.

  • Inthis same context we should place the 1563 editio princeps of the Apostolic Constitutions (Venice: Ex officina Jordani Zilati, 1563) by the Spaniard Francesco Torres (d. 1584). Torres, whose name is usually Latinized as Franciscus Turrianus or Torrens was born at Herrara in the diocese of Valencia, c. 1509; assisted at the Council of Trent as papal theologian; entered the Jesuits in 1566; and died at Rome in 1584. See Marcel Metzger, ed., Les Constitutions apostoliques, vol 1. SC 320 (Paris: Cerf, 1985), 75;

Giovanni Mercati, “Note on the Manuscripts of the Apostolic Constitutions used in the editio

Princeps,”Journal of Theological Studies

15 (1914),453-54. Torres later published the first Latin translation of the same invaluable document (Antwerp: Ex officina Christophori Plantini, 1578) See Carlos Sommervogel, Bibliotheque de la Compagnie de lesus. 11 vols. (Brussels: 0. Schepens/Paris: A. Picard, 1830-1932) 8:115, no. 3.

• SeePaul Peeters, Loeuvre des  Subsidia Hagiographica 24 (Brussels@ Soci@t6 des Bollandistes, 1942).

• GiuseppeMaria Croce, La Badia Greca di Grottaferrata e la rivista “Roma e l’Oriente.” 2  (Vatican City: Libreria Editrice Vaticana, 1990): 1, 13-15, note 60.

• Beyondthe Catholic world, which is the focus of our interest here, by the end of the same nineteenth century we witness another swing of the pendulum, as the Anglicans and Orthodox enter the field. The Oxford school of eastern liturgy develops as part of the Oxford Movement for re-catholicizing the Church of England (Hammond, Swainson, Brightman, Conybeare). More important, the great Russian Orthodox school is born, the first serious and systematic study of liturgy in the Orthodox world apart from Petro Mohyla and the Reform of Nikon in the seventeenth century.

Names like Almazov, Dmitrievskij, Krasnosel’tsev, Muretov, Orlov, Petrovskij, Skaballanovich, Turaev, have rendered it hazardous today to undertake any serious scientific study of Byzantine liturgy without knowing Russian. On this school, see the excellent new study of Peter Galadza, “Liturgy and Life: ‘I’he Appropriation of the ‘Personalization of Cult’ in East-Slavic Orthodox Liturgiology, 1869-1996, Studia Liturgica 28 (1988), 210-23 1.

The Russian Orthodox school was not without its limitations, determined by ideological a prioris. Elements in Italo-Greek manuscripts which departed from Orthodox usage were sometimes viewed as “latinizations,” when, in fact, as we know from our modern studies of the history of the Byzantine rite, periphery manuscripts far from the center simply preserve older usages. I detail all this in Robert F. Taft, The Byzantine Rite. A Short Histoiy (Collegeville: Liturgical Press, 1993); also available in French: Le rite byzantin. Bref historique (Paris: Cerf, 1996), and Italian: Storia sintetica del rito bizantino. Collana di pastorate liturgics 20 (Vatican City: Libreria Editrice Vaticana, 1999).

• In postwar Germany, however, where the Baumstark school of comparative liturgy began to usetexts rather than rose-colored glasses as the lenses through which to view eastern liturgy, things began to acquire a more realistic perspective. On Baumstark and oeuvre, see Fritz S. West, Anton Baumstark’s Comparative Liturgy in its Intellectual Context (Ann Arbor: University Microfilms International, 1988); idem, The Comparative Liturgy of Anton Baumstark (Bramcote: Grove Books, 1995); Comparative Liturgy: Years after Anton Baumstark (d. 1948). International Congress at the Pontiftcio Istituto orientale/centro di Studi Ezio Aletti, Rome, 25-29 September 1998, Gabriele Winkler and Robert F. Taft, eds., Orientalia Christiana Analecta (Rome: Edizioni Orientatia Christiana, forthcoming); Robert  Taft, “Anton Baumstark’s Comparative Liturgy Revisited,” to appear in the volume just noted; idem, “Comparative Liturgy Fifty Years after Anton Baumstark (d. 1948): A Reply to Recent Critics,” Worship 73:6 (November 1999), 521-540. As the writings of West have shown, Baumstark, too, had his ideological presuppositions, and his work must be viewed in the context of the intellectual history of his day.

• Frederick McManus, “Back to the Future: The Early Christian Roots of Liturgical Renewal,” Worship 72 (1998), 386-403.

• , 386.

• , 387.

• Pius V, Quo primum, July 14, 1570, cited in ibid.,

• lbid,

• Robert F. Taft, “Response to the Berakah Award: Anamnesis,” Worship 59 (1985), 304-325, here 311-314;reprinted as chapter 15 of idem, Beyond East and West: Problems in Liturgical Understanding (Rome: Edizioni Orientalia Christiana, 1997; second, rev. enlarged ed).

• See Robert F. Taft, “The Divine Office: Monastic Choir, Prayer Book, or Liturgy of the People of God? An Evaluation of the New Liturgy of the Hours in its Historical Context,” in Rene Latourelle, ed., Vatican II: Assessment and Perspectives Twenty-five Years After (1962-1987), 3 vols. (New York/Mahwah,NJ: Pautist Press, 1989) 2:27-46; reprinted as chapter 14 of Taft, Beyond East and  In this case the lack of success was–as I explain in that study–due in part to the reformers’ refusal to accept recommendations based on eastern precedents.

• OlivierRousseau, OSB, Histoire du mouvement  Lex orandi 3 (Paris: Cerf, 1945], 188; English translation, The Progress of the Liturgy (Westminster, Md.: Newman Press, 1951).

• Elias D. Mastrogiannopoulos,He Nostalgia tes Orthodoxias (Athens: Zoe, 1956); English ,

Nostalgia for Orthodoxy (Athens: Zoe, 1959).

• See for instance Richard Clogg, Studies in the Greek East in the 18th and 19th Centuries.

Variorum Collected Studies Series (Aldershot: Variorum, 1996).

• Edward W. Said,Orientalism (London: Routlege Kegan, 1978).

• Thisis an idealization of which I, too, have been  See, for example, Beyond East and West, 145.

  • Homi!yon the Martyrs, PG 50:663-4 (= CPG 4359); Robert  Taft, The Liturgy of the Hours in East and West: The Origins of the Divine Office and its Meaning for Today (Collegeville: Liturgical Press, 199’3; second, rev. ed.), 170.

25 -De Helia et ieiunio 62, CSEL 32.2:448-49 = PL 14:719AB.

• Confessions 2.2, CSEL 33:114-16.

• Sermo 55, 1-5, CCSL 103:241-44 = SC 243:476-

• Sermo 225,4, PL 38:1018. See Sermo 252, 4, PL 38:1174; In ep. Joh. tract. 4, 4, PL 35:2007; see

Sermo 252, 4, PL 38:1174.

• In Mt hom. 19, 7-9, PG 57:283-

• In Mt hom. 32133, 6, PG 5 7:3 84-

• Sozomen,Historia ecclesiastica

VIII, 5.2, GCS 50:357,1 I15 = PG 67:1528BC; a less circumstantial account of the same in Socrates,

Hist. eccles.

VI, 5.5, GCS neue Folge 1:317 = PG 67:673B. On the location and posture of the preacher in this period, see Alejandro Olivar, La predicacion cristiana antigua. Biblioteca Herder, Seccio de teologia y filosofia 189 (Barcelona: Herder, 1991), 72636; see Chrysostom, In Ioh hom. 3, 1. PG 59:37.

• Desacerdotio V, 8, Jean Chrysostome, Sur le sacerdoce (Dialogue etHomilie), , Anne-Marie Malingrey. SC272 (Paris: Cerf, 1980), 302-5 = PG 48:677.

• Origenhad made the same complaint over a century  See In Gen hom. 10, 1; In Er hom. IZ 2, GCS 29:93, 263-64. Caesarius of Aries complains of the same abuse repeatedly. See Sermones 55, 1, 4;

72,

1; 73, 1-5; 78, 1; 80 1; CCSL 103:241-44, 303, 306-9, 323, 328-89 = SC 243:476-85; 330:180-81,

190-99,237-44,256-57.

• Thisproblem was evident also in  See Chrysostom, De baptismo Christi 4, 1, PG 49:370-71 CPG 4335), and in Egypt, at least according to Ps. Eusebius of Alexandria (5-6th c.), Sermo 16 De die dominica,

PG 86:416 (= CPG 5525); see Francois N. Nau, “Notes sur diverses homolies pseudoepigraphiques, sur les oeuvres attributes A Eusuebe d’Alexandrie et sur un nouveau manuscrit de la chaine contra Severianos, ” Revue de lorient chritien 13 (1908), 406-434. Caesarius in Arles ran out after them, according to his Vita 1, 27: Passiones vitaque sanctorum aevi Merovingici et antiquorum aliquot, ed. B. Krusch. Monumenta Germaniae Historica, Scriptores rerum Merovingicarum III (Hanover: Hahn, 1896),46667.

• See the Chrysostom citations that

• In Mt hom. 73174, 3, PG 58:677.

• In Acts hom. 24,4, PG 60:190.

• In Acts hom. 29,3, PG 60:218; see also In Mt hom. 19, 79, PG 57:283-

• In I Cor Hom. 36,5-6, PG 61:313-

• In Mt hom. 88189, 4, PG 58:780-8 1, see also 676-

• In Mt hom. 73174, 3, PG 5 8:67

• in ps. 39, 8, CCSL 3 8:430-3 1. 43 III, iii.5, CCSL 27:29.

• On this question see Robert F. Taft, “Russian Liturgy, a Mirror of the Russian Soul,” in Studi albanologici,balcanici, bizantini e orientali in onore di Giuseppe Valentini, I. Studi albanesi, Studi e testi VI (Florence: Leo S. Olschki Editore, 1986), 413-435.

• Joseph Ledit,La plaie du cote (Rome: Pontificio Istituto Orientale, 1970).

• Forinstance, Taft, The Liturgy of the Hours,  17; idem, Beyond East and West, chaps. 3, 8, 9; idem, Eastern Rite Catholicism: Its Heritage and Vocation (Glen Rock, NJ: Paulist Press, 1963; reprinted New York: John XXIII Ecumenical Center, Fordham University, 1976/Scranton: Center for Eastern Christian Studies, University of Scranton, 1988).

• Joseph A. Jungmann, “The Defeat of Teutonic Arianism and the Revolution in Religious Culture in theEarly Middle Ages,” in idem, Pastoral Liturgy (New York: Herder and Herder, 1962), 1 -101. More recently and at greater length on the same cultural shift, see James C. Russell, The Germanization of Early Medieval Christianity (New York/Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1994)

• Misselchaldeen (Paris: Eglise catholique chaldeenne, 1982), 50; Frank  Brightman, Liturgies Eastern and Western (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1896), 254.

• Thisanswer is often attributed to Hillary, but its true source is the British climber Mallory, who lost his life on Everest in June of 1924.

• SeeClaudio Gugerotti, I riti di ordinazione e la Cilicia  Orientalia Christiana Analecta (Rome: Edizioni Orientalia Christiana, forthcoming).

• Robert Taft, “Praying to or for the Saints? A Note on the Sanctoral Intercessions-

Commemorations in the Anaphora: History and Theology,” in Michael Schneider, Walter Berschin, eds.,

Ab Oriente et Occidente (Mt 8, I 1). Kirche aus Ost und West. Gedenkschrift fur Wilhelm N yssen (St. Ottilien: EOS-Verlag, 1996), 439-455.

• On this, see Robert F. Taft, “The Epiclesis Question in the Light of the Orthodox and Catholic Lex OrandiTraditions,” in Bradley Nassif, , New Perspectives on Historical Theology: Essays in Memory of John Meyendorff

(Grand Rapids, MI/Cambridge, UK: Eerdmans Publishing, 1996), 210-237; idem, “Ecumenical Scholarship and the Orthodox-Catholic Epiclesis Dispute,” Ostkirchliche Studien 45 (1996), 201-226. 53 Taft, The Byzantine Rite, 35. 54 Rousseau, Histoire du mouvement liturgique, 188.

55- Henri de Lubac, Exegese medeivale. Les quatre sens de literature, part 1, vols 1-2, part II, vols. 1-2. Theologie 4 1, 42, 49 (Paris: Aubier, 1959-1964). See Medieval Eegesis. Vol. 1: 7he Four Senses of Scripture, trans. Mark Sebanc (Grand Rapids, Mi.: W. B. Eerdmans, 1998).

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