The supreme literary vindication of Summorum Pontificum: Fiedrowicz’s comprehensive guide to the Traditional Mass — now in English

I am delighted to announce to Rorate readers the publication by Angelico Press of the long-awaited English edition of Michael Fiedrowicz’s masterful work, The Traditional Mass: History, Form, and Theology of the Classical Roman Rite (first published in 2011, and now in its fifth German edition).

I’ve been blessed with the opportunity to read this book twice and really absorb its content (and on that basis, I provided an endorsement for the back cover). I can confidently say there’s nothing comparable to it out there in the English language, in its comprehensive scope, depth of research, and insight into every aspect of the liturgy. It is a compelling apologia for the superiority of the old rite at every level and on every head. The author’s judgments are perfectly weighed, polished, sober, and clear; there is not a touch of exaggeration or unfairness. The result is both triumphant and devastating.

In these strange times, when we see the number of traditional Masses at an all-time high (thanks to a proliferation of private Masses), the CDF issuing decrees that acknowledge with perfect clarity that the old Mass is here to stay for the future of the Church, and an ominously-worded questionnaire sent out to all bishops about the implementation of Summorum Pontificum, we may have many questions and a few anxieties, but we also enjoy a towering certainty: interest in and adherence to the traditional Mass will not subside. On the contrary, it will continue to grow, seminarian by seminarian, priest by priest, and even quite possibly bishop by bishop as the champions of rupture retire and churchmen with less rigid ideas about the “success” of the liturgical reform and the “outdatedness” of our heritage take their place.

Fiedrowicz’s work arrives, therefore, at exactly the right moment. If you are going to read just one serious book on the TLM, this is the one. In addition, I recommend purchasing copies for every priest you know who already offers the usus antiquior — indeed, for every priest who is, or may be, interested in learning more about the very Roman rite for which he was ordained.

Table of Contents

Book Suggestions: Dogma, Liturgy, and Poetry

I have been remiss in reviewing good books sent to me by publishers. In fact, I am remiss even in announcing books that I have reprinted myself! So I will take some time now to recommend these works to Rorate readers.

Two Fine New Reprints of Works by Msgr. Joseph Clifford Fenton

I am pleased to announce, once again, reprints from Cluny that deserve the attention of thoughtful traditional Catholics everywhere, especially in seminaries and house of formation. Please note that these editions are not mere facsimiles but entirely and handsomely re-typeset. What follows is based on the press release from the publisher.

Monsignor Joseph Clifford Fenton represents the faithful, orthodox, and learned theological voice for which so many Catholics today are searching. Msgr. Fenton completed his theological studies before the Second Vatican Council (completing his doctorate in sacred theology under Fr. Reginald Garrigou-Lagrange, O.P., in Rome). He would also go on to serve the Council in the capacity of theological peritus. Indeed, in his person and in his work, Msgr. Fenton represents something very close to what Joseph Ratzinger would later express as the “hermeneutic of continuity.”

Guest Post: Why I Love the Work of Thomas Aquinas

       By Dr. Christopher Malloy

I was recently asked why Thomas is so crucial to theology. I replied by indicating why I love his work so much.

Above all, I love Thomas’s thought because I find so many of his judgments to be considered, grounded, and true. His dexterous precision is coupled with keen attention to things. Thus, his terminology is clear; you can grasp what he is aiming at. Such clarity I used to flee, thinking it meant shallowness. I now think it is limpidity in service of communion, relationship.

However, unlike some logical experts, Thomas attends to things and does so with a profound, searching gaze. Hence, he alights upon essential features and thus achieves lasting insights. A false generalization has exceptions. A profound observation lasts, while admitting of sundry realizations which are not exceptions. Indeed, they can more truly instantiate the insight.

I believe Thomas achieves profound observation. A friend of mine, now a nun, and I both agreed on the following image: Reading Thomas on some problem (free will, e.g.) is like having your gnarly hair combed. Another friend said that after reading Thomas’s observations, one can look at the real with him and say, “That’s what it is, isn’t it?” All those “disputed points,” all those “qualifications”, all that “hair-splitting”: In fact, it is simply a tour of the real. It is Aquinas taking you on a field hike, pointing things out. It is you, watching the real with him, and falling in love with it. It is finding God’s mind in things.

The Church and Asmodeus - Part 5, conclusion

By Don Pietro Leone

A spiritu fornicationis

libera nos, Domine

(invocation from the Litany of the Saints)

V

CONCLUSION

The intention in writing this essay was to investigate how the concupiscence of the flesh, or, more particularly, the spirit of fornication, or impurity, has been able to penetrate the mind of the contemporary Church. We have been at pains to trace it back, through various canons of the New Church Law and various doctrines of recent Magisterium, to the Second Vatican Council, where the spirit of Fallen Nature made its official entry into the Catholic Church.

This spirit of impurity corresponds to the World’s vision of sexuality. Quoting our earlier analysis of this vision, and alluding briefly to the period extending from the last Vatican Council to the present pontificate, we shall proceed to examine how and to what extent this spirit informs the encyclical Amoris Laetitia.

A. ‘Sexuality does not have a particular finality. Its use is pleasurable and a means for expressing love between two persons, not necessarily married to each other’

The Church and Asmodeus - Part 3 (and the fallacy of Theology of the Body)

By Don Pietro Leone

A spiritu fornicationis

libera nos, Domine

(invocation from the Litany of the Saints)

III

RECENT CHURCH MARITAL DOCTRINE UNTIL POPE FRANCIS

       2.  MORTAL SIN AND HOLY COMMUNION

The Traditional Doctrine

The Church has always warned faithful against receiving Holy Communion in the state of mortal sin. In the Maundy Thursday liturgy and in the Feast of Corpus Christi, the Church in Her Old Rite liturgy presents for our meditation the passage from chapter 11 of the First Epistle of St. Paul to the Corinthians 11 warning against the reception of Holy Communion to one’s damnation. On the latter feast, St. Thomas Aquinas himself, its author, pointedly repeats the phrase in the Communio prayer; and in the sequence Lauda Sion he unambiguously declares:

Sumunt boni sumunt mali, sorte tamen

İnaequalis, vitae vel interitus.

Mors est malis, vita bonis: vide paris

Sumptionis quam sit dispar exitus.

The good receive, the evil receive, but their destiny is different: life or death. Death is for the evil, life is for the good: see how unequal is the end of an equal reception.

Book Review: The Church of Christ by Msgr. Joseph Clifford Fenton

The Church of Christ: A Collection of Essays by Monsignor Joseph C. Fenton. Ed. with an introduction by Christian D. Washburn. Tacoma, WA: Cluny Media, 2016. 362 pp. Paperback. $24.95. Publisher's page / at Amazon.

This collection of essays from one of the greatest American theologians, Msgr. Joseph C. Fenton, makes an urgent and marvelous contribution to the renewal of Catholic theology today. The hermeneutic of rupture has been utterly disastrous. The needed renewal urged by the Second Vatican Council must be pursued once again. The thoughtful, balanced, orthodox, and acute analysis of Msgr. Fenton serves as a prime example of the kind of renewal that was and remains desirable, one in organic continuity with the great tradition, committed to the unchanging dogmas of the Church but open to new insights and corrections in matters purely speculative or hypothetical. Fenton is also clearly a man of prayer, a theologian on his knees yet one who truly practices the rigorous scientific discipline of dogmatic theology. This collection of essays is absolutely essential reading for any serious student of ecclesiology. It will serve as a corrective to the misbegotten attempts at renewal which suffer from an unwillingness to embrace all the unchanging dogmas of faith. It will also invite a return to that thoughtfulness and nuance which in fact informed pre-conciliar theology, a thoughtfulness open to legitimate development.

OP-ED: "To Ross Douthat, With Affectionate Correction", by Fr. Richard Cipolla - Church Crisis, the True Battle, and Sacred Liturgy

To Ross Douthat, With Affectionate Correction

Fr. Richard G. Cipolla, DPhil

Paolo Veronese - The Wedding Feast at Cana (1563) - Musée du Louvre

It is certainly true, as has been observed on Rorate Caeli, that Ross Douthat’s Erasmus Lecture for First Things has caused quite a stir in traditional Catholic circles.  Msgr. Pope’s article bemoaning the lack of growth in the presence of the Traditional Mass in the Church has also gained the attention of Traditional Catholics, but that article lacks the depth and urgency that is contained in Douthat’s lecture. Many of us have admired his Op-Ed pieces in the New York Times, often wondering how he achieved his position amidst the quintessential Liberal Establishment embodied by that paper of record.  His skirmish with the Catholic theologians (and I have refrained from putting theologians in quotation marks out of some sense of objectivity, despite my belief that there may no longer be any Catholic theologians, for Catholic theologians have to be immersed in the Tradition, and there do not seem to be any who are so today) is an example of the proper role of the laity in the Church as encouraged by the Second Vatican Council.