Led by the Star of Beauty to the Love of Beauty Unseen: The Epiphany of Christ in the Ancient Roman Liturgy

Photo by John Aron: LMS Pilgrimage to Chideock, England, with the ICKSP

In Plato’s famous dialogue on love, the Symposium, Socrates relates the “tale” he learned from his teacher Diotima of Mantineia. She tells him that love is caused by the beautiful, and that the ultimate goal of our love is absolute Beauty itself:

He who has been instructed thus far in the things of love, and who has learned to see the beautiful in due order and succession, when he comes toward the end will suddenly perceive a nature of wondrous beauty (and this, Socrates, is the final cause of all our former toils)—a nature which in the first place is everlasting, not growing and decaying, or waxing and waning; secondly, not fair in one point of view and foul in another, or at one time or in one relation or at one place fair, at another time or in another relation or at another place foul, as if fair to some and foul to others… but beauty absolute, separate, simple, and everlasting, which without diminution and without increase, or any change, is imparted to the ever-growing and perishing beauties of all other things….

The Four Qualities of Liturgy: Validity, Licitness, Fittingness, and Authenticity (Full Text of Dr. Kwasniewski’s Lecture)

Below is the full text of a lecture given at Queen of Peace Parish in Patton, Pennsylvania, on September 21, 2020 (video at YouTube). If we want to overcome the impoverished state of liturgical discourse, which results from focusing on only two categories (validity and licitness) and arrive at a fuller, more accurate picture, we must also consider fittingness and authenticity/legitimacy, which are two other irreducibly distinct perfections of liturgy. At the end, I offer a chart that categorizes liturgies — Eastern and Western, Catholic and Protestant, old and new, etc. — in terms of the four qualities. The text was first published at New Liturgical Movement; the chart, however, has been updated.

Los cuatro postes (Ávila)

The Four Qualities of Liturgy: Validity, Licitness, Fittingness, and Authenticity

Dr. Peter A. Kwasniewski

Queen of Peace Parish, Patton, PA

September 21, 2020

The celebration of the traditional Roman Rite Mass is becoming more and more common; it seems that its popularity has been an unintended consequence of both the chaos of the current pontificate and the disappointment of many Catholics with their pastors and parishes during the COVID pandemic. “Enough is enough!” is a frequently heard reaction. People are looking for worship that is reverent, prayerful, God-oriented, and deeply refreshing, and for priests who are truly committed to the care of souls. This, of course, is the work of the Holy Spirit, tugging at the heartstrings of baptized and confirmed Catholics, in whom there was planted the seed of Trinitarian life, which urges us to enter into the divine mystery.

However, there are certain difficulties in our situation, too. A vast amount of information, good, bad, indifferent, and inaccurate, circulates on the internet. Lay Catholics are seldom equipped to be able to understand what they’re reading about, especially when we get “into the weeds” of liturgical history and reform. How are blogs going to equip us with the ability to navigate thorny questions about the pope’s authority, the Church’s fidelity to tradition, the duty of obedience (and the limits thereof), and so on? There is a great need for careful, thoughtful, well-informed presentations on liturgical matters, so that we can deepen our understanding of the complex issues involved, without losing the simplicity of our faith, or the spontaneity of our interior life as we strive to be the saints Our Lord is calling us to be.

After many years, I have come to the realization that a lot of the time, people are talking past one another in liturgical discussions, and that is because they are talking about different aspects or properties of the liturgy, while failing to make the necessary distinctions. There are, in fact, four properties that are always supposed to belong to any liturgy: validity; licitness; fittingness; and authenticity. All of them are important, none of them is dispensable. They are meant to work together, in harmony, to bring us the fullness of divine worship intended by Christ for His Church. The problems we have experienced in recent decades have a lot to do with an exaggerated emphasis on one or another of these qualities, at the expense of the rest. I will begin by defining each one, and then talk about how they are related.

Interview with Dr. Kwasniewski at O Clarim

From O Clarim:

A NOBLE BEAUTY – Exclusive interview with Dr Peter Kwasniewski

Aurelio Porfiri

We celebrate this year the 10th anniversary of the motu proprio Summorum Pontificum, a document released by Pope Benedict XVI that liberalized the use of the pre-Vatican II Missal.

If we want to know something more about the Extraordinary Form of the Roman Rite (the pre-Vatican II Mass), we could read Noble Beauty, Transcendent Holiness (2017, Angelico Press) by Peter Kwasniewski, a very well known scholar in the field of liturgy. Dr Peter Kwasniewski, choirmaster at the Wyoming Catholic College (USA), certainly presents very strong arguments to defend his position, as can be seen in the following interview.

Porfiri: Your book uses the phrase “noble beauty” in its title. How would you describe the noble beauty of the liturgy?

Kwasniewski: There are many different kinds of beauty. There is the simple, domestic beauty we associated with well-made furniture, carpets, blankets, plates, and books. There is an austere beauty, such as one might find in the cell of a Carthusian. There is rugged beauty, such as we see in the landscapes of Iceland or Canada or Alaska. But there is a noble beauty that we associate with sovereignty, majesty, occasions of great public solemnity. The liturgy is our courtly audience with the king of heaven and earth. It should be characterized by a tremendous sense of spaciousness, elevation, dignity, and splendor. That is what I am driving at in my title.

Porfiri: What is your ideal reader? How you imagine your audience?

One reader described me as “giving old arguments new juice.” I was born well after the Second Vatican Council ended and after Paul VI had already promulgated a new Mass. All of the traditional things I love are things that almost went extinct. My friends and I had to stumble upon them and discover them anew. I see it with fresh eyes: I have no nostalgic memories. For this reason, my writings seem to speak especially to young people who are in the same boat. This book is largely an “apologia” for the ancient liturgy and the whole world-view it embodies—which is definitely not that of modernity. My ideal reader? Someone who has an open mind to the proposal that the past generations might have had more wisdom than we do.

Read the rest at "O Clarim."

Breathtakingly Beautiful Christianity

Santa Croce, Florence

"No religion has ever expressed as much beauty as the Christian religion with its infinite quantity of wonders."

Vittorio Sgarbi

Italy's most famous, most brilliant and most controversial art historian and critic

Guest Op-Ed: Beauty as an essential element of the sacred liturgy

By Veronica A. Arntz

“O Lord, I Have Loved the Beauty of Thy House”

Beauty as an Essential Element of the Sacred Liturgy

In Sacramentum Caritatis, Pope Benedict XVI writes, “Beauty…is not mere decoration but rather an essential element of the liturgical action, since it is an attribute of God himself and his revelation” (art. 35). Beauty, therefore, is not merely an external; rather, beauty is inseparable from the liturgy itself. To say this in the abstract is one thing, but to understand it in the concrete is much more difficult. To understand how beauty is an essential element of the liturgy, we will look to Joseph Ratzinger/Benedict XVI’s writings to elucidate three main indicators of beauty: liturgy must be Christocentric; situated within the long-standing, sacred tradition of the Church; and permeated with beautiful music. 

Church and State together for beauty and the good of Mankind: President of Gabon supports new Church for Traditional Roman Rite

Communiqué of the Presidency of the Gabonese Republic - January 20, 2015 

Libreville, January 20, 2015 - Thanks to the vision and the personal support of the President of the Republic, not only the Catholics of Libreville, but all Gabonese - known for their love of beauty and the arts - will soon enjoy a masterpiece of architecture at the STFO district: the parish church of Notre Dame de Lourdes and its façade decorated with blue tiles.

Guest Op-Ed: Cupich should embrace Catholic heritage, forgo false humility

By Anatole Upart

University of Chicago Art History Doctoral student

Special for Rorate Caeli

When a leader of a polity assumes the office, the power of the office often comes in a specific architectural form: a residence, headquarters or a palace. Whether that leader personally dislikes old palaces is not important. What is important is that he or she would transition into the role, previously occupied by someone else.

The last thing the new president, king, pope can do is to refuse the symbolic trappings of the office and impose his own personal preferences. That is why Chicago's new Catholic archbishop, Blase Cupich, should move into the official residence, not into the rectory of the Holy Name Cathedral as he recently indicated. It signals the beginning of his new job in the same way the relocation to the White House starts the presidency and the move into Vatican Apartments mark the Papacy.