Another article from Antiphon
“Liturgy and Beauty” by M. Francis Mannion
A particularly delicious excerpt:
The liturgy of Eastern Christianity has traditionally accorded far more attention in theory and practice than has the West to the divine beauty of Christian worship. Eastern liturgical history contains striking accounts of liturgical occasions as sacramental encounters with God’s beauty. In the late tenth century, we are told, the grand prince Vladimir from what is today the Ukraine was planning to introduce his people into the civilized world. So he sent ambassadors in search of a religion of truth and beauty. The ambassadors came back and reported negatively about Jewish, Moslem and Latin worship. The last they described as without fervor, cold and dead. But of Byzantine worship, they reported that the liturgy was so beautiful that “we did not know if we were in heaven or on earth, for on earth there is no such beauty. . . . Only one thing do we know: that God was living there with men, and that their form of worship is the best of all. We cannot forget this beauty” (Nicholas Arseniev, Russian Piety [London: American Orthodox Press, 1964], 85).
It surely could not be said that the liturgy of the West lacks beauty or is unconcerned about beauty although philistinism in liturgical guise is far too readily identifiable today and modern liturgical practice is not generally known for an ethos of beauty, glory and solemnity. Western liturgy has had and continues to have its glorious expressions: Chartres Cathedral, Michelangelo’s Sistine Chapel, the Abbey of Melk, Palestrina, Mozart, Britten, Vaughan Williams, Cranmer’s English, and Evensong at King’s College in Cambridge. Yet beauty in Western liturgy is all too often regarded as accidental to the liturgy. The truth and greatness of worship are accorded considerable emphasis and expression, but its beauty is not. Insofar as beauty is attended to and nurtured in present-day Western liturgy it is too often through the sentimental and superficial idioms of therapy and entertainment.
Much that is troublesome about Catholic liturgical life today may be regarded as a failure in the art of the beautiful. This includes slapdash ceremonial practice, poor clerical presiding, incompetent lay ministry, uncompelling and disengaged homilizing, texts and prayers that are rationalist and cerebral, functionalist and minimalistic conceptions of the liturgy.
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4 Comments
Peace, AAE.
I find Mannion’s Eurocentric orientation in your quote to be very telling. He is an American, but yet he gives not one example, even of a traditional Gothic church, to tout as representative of a beautiful American expression.
His last paragraph you quote here could be said about any rite done poorly. Is it a uniquely American trait? Is it due to the efficiency orientation of modern culture? Does he have no example, not even from Chicago (music from St Peter’s in the Loop, for example, or the long tradition of Proulx-guided music at the cathedral) that is our “American answer” to King’s College Evensong?
Yearning publicly for beauty and quality is nothing new to reform. EACW advocated these over twenty years ago.
American culture, sorry to say, lacks beauty. What is considered “high” culture in the US has always been imported from Europe, be it classical to the post modern culture, US culture has always been more about function over form.
As for EACW, all it was was a document that came out of a committee that has no binding force whatsoever, and I am glad the internet has helped shed a very bright light on that fact.
Peace, John.
I would tend to disagree with you on many (though admittedly not most) aspects of American culture. If we’re talking music, we can discuss people like Hovhaness or Copland, or even hail back to white and negro spirituals. European influence, yes. But import? No. For architecture, we can discuss California Mission design, and even modern churches like St Benedict’s in Chicago. Shakers managed to bring functionalism into their furniture design and create simple things of great beauty and appeal. I have no problem with a nod to our European forebears so long as we don’t accept every European product as worth copying or imitating.
Every Vatican II document was done by committee. If you count all of the pope’s footnotes in his Eucharist encyclical, he relied on others a great deal for his presentation. EACW does make excellent points about beauty and quality. Overall, it is a document pilloried more for what it says than how many people said it.
Peace, Todd.
I didn’t read too much into Mannion’s failure to cite American examples of beauty. As far as I’m concerned, he indicts the entire Roman rite with a special emphasis on the approved English translations.
The USCCB has said on its website that EACW doesn’t have the force of law in and of itself, but is only a commentary. (Read the full statement).
For what it’s worth, I believe EACW is pilloried more for the extreme renovations invoked in its name (sometimes horrible) vis à vis its actual authority (only its citations from authoritative documents, and even then when taken in their proper contexts).
I agree with you that what Mannion said about the Roman rite done poorly can be said about any other. However, the last two points he cites seem to be unique to the Roman Rite seen through the ICEL prism (at least I hope it’s unique). Fr. Fessio says as much about the translations in the article I posted after this one.
I hope the East has been taking notes from what’s happened in the West since the Council.
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