For those who understand German: Martin Mosebach and Robert Spaemann square off against two “liturgists” last August 20 in Frankfurt!

Debate on youtube.

On September 14 and 15, the St. Gregory Institute will hold a symposium at St. John the Evangelist Church in Stamford on the implementation of the reforms of Pope Benedict XVI. Practical, scholarly and philosophical discussions will be led by Rev. Richard Cipolla, chaplain of the St. Hugh of Cluny Society, Rev. Robert Skeris of Catholic University, Paul Weber of Franciscan University, and Scott Turkington and David Hughes, Connecticut organists. For more information, including a schedule of events, please go to the website http://www.stamfordschola.org/.

Here is the initial English review of the 2003 German edition of Mosebach’s “Heresy of Formlessness” published in www.catholicreform.org on September 20, 2003. How far we have come at least in some respects – and how prescient was Mosebach in the light of later developments! The Ignatius press translation includes additional material by Mosebach not in this German edition.

The “Haeresie der Formlosigkeit” by Martin Mosebach

By Cedric Echecs

Early this year a book dealing with Catholic tradition and liturgy was prominently and favorably reviewed in the leading German language newspapers. The American observer may be surprised to learn that the work reviewed is neither a summons to ongoing revolution nor a product of clerical academia singing the praises of the status quo. His astonishment would increase when he ascertains that Haeresie der Formlosigkeit makes the most succinct and cogent argument for the traditional Roman rite yet to appear in any language. And this work is the achievement of a novelist, a profound thinker and a “Traditionalist” Catholic!
There certainly have been books examining critically Vatican II and the accompanying liturgical reforms – even if sometimes in a guarded and indirect manner. As you might expect, the most insightful works, the ones that lay bare the intellectual fallacies underlying the whole enterprise, tend to come from the pens of unbelievers and liberals: one thinks of Alfred Lorenzer’s Das Konzil der Buchhalter (1984) or Eamon Duffy’s The Stripping of the Altars (1992). Yet Martin Mosebach, noted novelist and essayist, writes as an active and unapologetic Roman Catholic. His case for the Roman liturgy derives from his own emerging awareness of Tradition, as a Christian adrift in the Church in the Modern Age.
This short (171 pages!) work is a primarily a collection of essays, some of which Mosebach has previously published or given as lectures. Such a dry description hardly does justice to the author’s intense yet engaging style. His work is a joy to read: when necessary Mosebach drops the essay form to quote one of his own novels or to cite an amazing poem against the architecture of the “Conciliar Church”!
Perhaps it is his method of approaching the subject matter which makes this work unique in the traditional oeuvre. Mosebach starts his analysis not with concepts but by recreating in lucid prose concrete situations familiar to most traditional Catholics. In a large German city, a priest reluctantly goes through the duties of celebrating an indult Mass for a supposedly benighted congregation in the most god-awful chapel the bishop could find. An entirely average, not-too-pretty parish church of around 1900 endures the iconoclasm of the liturgical revolution. A Catholic makes a retreat at Fontgombault to discover not just the traditional liturgy but also a Benedictine world of hospitality, ceremony and courtesy embracing the entire day.
From these experiences, Mosebach builds a series of powerful philosophical arguments for Tradition. His key point, to which the title refers, is the essential importance of form to worship. Mosebach denies the liturgical reformers’ central dogma of an unchanging (?) theological “substance” contrasted with an infinitely fluid form wholly at the disposal of the hierarchy. As an artist he finds it easy to make the case for form, indeed, he repeatedly emphasizes the analogy between liturgy and the perfection of a work of art. Where form is bad we can infer lack of substance. The author has a keen sense for the “little things.” The now discarded preparatory rites for the Mass – the prayers, physical preparation of the altar and vesting rituals prior to the celebration itself – all serve for Mosebach as a revelation of the presence of God, a careful marking off of a holy place. The “repetitive” signs of the Cross during the Canon each are imbued with specific theological meaning. Much in the manner of the Church Fathers, he draws a whole wealth of meditation on the role of Our Lady from the seemingly arid Gospel genealogies of Christ.
There is so much more. Mosebach understands that veiling a mystery is a much more effective means of revealing it (to the extent a mystery can be communicated at all) than to attempt to strip it bare and transmit it through rational discourse. In the Benedictine rituals of prayer and hospitality, Mosebach finds an authentically didactic function of the Traditional rite: gradually to educate each individual to be able to transform the entire day into liturgy. He shows that “active participation” in liturgy is the exact opposite of the current sense of priest and congregation singing and reciting as many things as possible aloud together. The Traditional liturgy allows for many ways of participation for a multitude of different souls.
It is revealing that the author is not one of those nostalgically “attached to” the Traditional rite. His own experience of the Traditional liturgy as a young altar boy in the last years before the Council reforms left him ignorant and indifferent. In common with so many others, he had learned nothing about the Mass beyond a set of arbitrary and irksome rules and duties. The author’s present insights result rather from some thirty years of gradual reflection and his own experience of the Traditional liturgy today as the worship of an obscure and despised minority.
Liturgy is the revelation of God to man. It also is a sacrifice offered to God. Mosebach shows how the objective, impersonal form of the Roman Rite and the Gregorian chant reflects these two truths. He considers how other features added to the liturgy even in the traditional rite – such as the singing of hymns and preaching – detract from the essence of worship. In his understanding of liturgy, Mosebach draws frequent inspiration from the relatively intact tradition of Eastern Orthodoxy.
We may disagree with one or the other of the author’s always creative observations, such as his claim that the priest should utter all liturgical prayer to fully reflect the role of Christ as Mediator. So, for the celebrant to sit down to let the choir sing the Credo or Gloria is a flaw in Mosebach’s eyes – surely a curious and mistaken notion! Yet, when Mosebach critiques the sermon (“homily”) as an unfortunate break in the flow of the liturgical action, let’s remember that those sympathetic unbelievers Mencken and H.P. Lovecraft made exactly the same point more than seventy years ago!
I have said that this work is not polemical, but Mosebach by no means pulls his punches or ducks honest speech about the current situation. No more frank and damning indictment of the sins of the clergy exists than that found in the pages of this work, e.g.: “In ancient times the interruption of a tradition by the ruler was called tyranny. In this sense, Paul VI, a modernizer and believer in Progress, was a tyrant.” Mosebach speaks calmly and fearlessly, without stridency yet free of any need to justify the deeds of ecclesiastical politicians of the past or present.
Mosebach acknowledges that the Roman Rite today is very much a marginalized, disfavored and minority phenomenon. It inhabits isolated chapels and shabby parishes supported by those without wealth or influence in Church or society. Humanly speaking, it would seem that it should disappear with the last generation to have lived it as the sole form of worship in the Western Church. Yet Mosebach’s last message to us is one of hope. He understands that the present (“modern”) age is but a second in relation to eternity, and that the last word has by no means been spoken regarding that form of worship that uniquely corresponds to the religious nature of man. Mosebach’s convictions would seem to lead to another unstated yet inevitable conclusion: the renaissance of the Roman Rite ultimately can only be as a law for the Church, not as a concession to an eccentric minority. These reflections of the author on the future of the Roman Rite, informed by bitter realism yet calmly trusting in Divine providence, are yet another of many virtues which make Haeresie der Formlosigkeit such a rare work.
It would be a crime if a book of this merit were not made available immediately in an adequate translation to the English-speaking public.
Cedric Echecs is a corporate attorney in New York

What follows is my humble translation of the initial report on the “Great Debate” between traditionalists and progressives held Monday in Frankfurt.

To Strengthen the Sacred: a Topical Forum points out Different Paths

An Audience of 400 present at a Discussion on the Reintroduction of the Old Mass

By Doris Wiese-Gutheil

Frankfurt. A topical news forum of the Frankfurt cathedral circle ”Church and Science’ showed that there are totally different ways to revitalize the Sacred in the Catholic Church. On Monday, August 20, around 400 attendees crowded into the main auditorium of the “Haus am Dom” to experience the disputation between recognized experts on a hot topic: “Reconquering the Sacred” and the reintroduction of the Latin mass according to the Tridentine rite. Quite a few others capitulated and left in the face of the overcrowded auditorium.

The remaining 400 nevertheless persevered courageously despite the crowding and heat, enthralled by the exciting and at times caustic discussion. The liturgist and Church historian Arnold Angenendt (University of Muenster) right away aptly characterized the scene as: “Two for, two against – there’ll be fireworks!” Even though both theologians, Angenendt and Albert Gerhards, a liturgist at he University of Bonn, made efforts to reconcile the contradictory positions – as did the philosopher Robert Spaemann – many a cutting word was said.

In particular, Martin Mosebach, the author from Frankfurt and the recipient of this year’s Georg Buechner prize, defended vehemently his love for the old Roman liturgy – just as he had already expounded it in his 2002 book “the Heresy of Formlessness.”
The 56 year old lamented that as a Catholic who hadn’t gone to church between 1962 and 1975, he had found nothing the same upon “the return of the prodigal son.” The Second Vatican Council and the liturgical reform of the 60’s had destroyed the “essence of Catholic Christianity”; the Church today only hangs on to “dwarf forms.” Such a loss, according to Mosebach, is “disastrous for a religion whose core idea is the word Tradition.” Mosebach’s hope is that the Tridentine rite, which Pope Benedict XV legalized again at the beginning of June, will serve as the standard for the New Rite. Even so, the New Rite – in the German language and with the priest facing the faithful – remains the main form of the Catholic mass, also according to the will of the Pope.

The philosopher Robert Spaemann also lamented the “liturgical reform dictated from above” of 40 years ago, carried out in part “dogmatically and with brute force.” It could not stop the disintegration of the church; rather it pushed the adherents of the old Latin Mass onto a “fringe of indecency.” Nevertheless, the 80 year old made a plea that both sides refrain from persecuting each others’ opinions. The pope in his decision deliberately wanted to assure that “the confrontation ceases.”

The two liturgists Angenendt and Gerhards indeed demonstrated various historical errors in the arguments of Mosebach and Spaemann. The rite of the mass was not at all a ”treasure” passed down unchanged for 2000 years but had been reformed again and again, often for the better – for example, when Christianity freed itself from the idea of female impurity, when the canon of the priest was changed or when the “active participation” of the faithful was revitalized. In the mass one must always struggle to “express the Sacred more profoundly.” According to Gerhards, however, it’s not just the old rite that achieves this: “it takes place through the disposition of the Faithful.”

Source:

http://www.bistumlimburg.de/

The Society has the great pleasure to announce the visit to New York and Connecticut of Martin Mosebach and Father Uwe Michael Lang. Martin Mosebach is an eminent German novelist and essayist. In October of this year he will receive the Georg Buechner prize-the highest German literary award. Mr. Mosebach has written and spoken extensively on Catholic issues, particularly relating to the Traditional liturgy. His Heresy of Formlessness, on the liturgy, was published in English translation last year by Ignatius Press. Father Lang is a priest of the Brompton Oratory in London and the author of an influential study on the position of the celebrant in the Roman rite: Turning towards the Lord: Orientation in Liturgical Prayer. (Foreword by Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger) This year Fr. Lang has relocated to Rome to take up an appointment at the Pontifical Commission for the Cultural Patrimony of the Church.

Fr. Lang and Mr. Mosebach will be speaking at three separate locations. Fr. Lang will introduce Mr. Mosebach and situate his work for us in the context of the post-Summorum Pontificum world. Mr. Mosebach will read from his Heresy of Formlessness. There will be time for questions at the end of the presentation.

The following events are scheduled in conjunction with the visit of Mr. Mosebach and Fr. Lang:

Friday, Sept. 7, New Haven, Connecticut
St. Mary Church Hall, 5 Hillhouse Avenue
7:30 PM: Presentation by Martin Mosebach and Fr. Lang.
directions: http://www.stmarys-priory.com/directions.htm

Saturday, Sept. 8, New Canaan Connecticut
New Canaan Public Library, 151 Main Street
5:30 PM: Presentation by Martin Mosebach and Fr. Lang.
Link to directions

Sunday, Sept. 9, New York, New York
Church of Our Saviour, 59 Park Avenue at 38th Street
5:00 PM: Solemn High Mass in the Traditional rite.
6:30PM: Presentation by Mr. Mosebach and Fr. Lang in the undercroft of the church.
Link to directions

The Society of St. Hugh of Cluny was formed shortly after Pope Benedict’s Motu Proprio, Summorum Pontificum was promulgated on 7 July 2007. The Society chose as its patron saint Hugh of Cluny (1024-1109), the great abbot of Cluny. It was St. Hugh who understood so deeply the centrality of the liturgy both in the Church and in the culture. His zeal for the reform of the Church was always centered in his love for the liturgy. His attention to the beauty and splendor of the liturgy at Cluny that spread throughout the Church in Europe, became a beacon and a real force in the reform of the Church and society.

We believe that Summorum Pontificum is the magna carta for the return to beauty, splendor, reverence, mystery and deep participation in the Holy Mass. We believe that Pope Benedict has given the Church, especially the Catholic laity, this means and summons to recapture the Tradition, not in some nostalgic or reactionary sense, but rather to rediscover the organic and living organism of the Roman rite and thereby reform and enrich both the Church and the surrounding culture.

The Society is open to all Catholics who wish to support the recovery of Catholic liturgy and the reform of Church and society. The Society will support practical means of meeting this goal: training of priests to celebrate the 1962 use; supporting conferences on traditional liturgy and music, and the role of the arts in liturgy; sponsoring lectures and colloquia on topics relevant to the goals of the Society.

Intercessio nos, quaesumus, Domine, beati Hugonis Abbatis commendat: ut, quod nostris meritis non valemus, eius patrocinio assequamur. Per Dominum nostrum Jesum Christum, filium tuum, qui vivit et regnat in unitate Spirius Sancti, Deus, per omnia saecula saeculorum. Amen.

Father Richard Cipolla, Chaplain

We would like to give advance notice that Martin Mosebach, the eminent German novelist, will be visiting Connecticut and New York City in early September. He will read from his major work on the Tradional Roman rite “The Heresy of Formlessness” (Ignatius Press). He will be accompanied by Father Michael Lang of the Brompton Oratory. The society will be sponsoring this trip. We will be publishing full details of the individual events as they become available.

Registration is easy: send an E-mail to hughofcluny@gmail.com. In addition to your e-mail address you may include your mailing addresss and telephone number. We will add you to the Society’s contact list.