Here's my DMN column on tradition from today's paper -- the column I blegged for help on a couple of weeks ago. Thanks to everybody who participated, especially the Lutherans who wrote in. I had to take the Lutheran passage out on the final edit, because the piece was too long. I also had to omit a part about the "emergent church" for the same reason. Anyway, here it is. I end by quoting from Philip Larkin's great sacramental poem "Church Going," which comments (in its final lines) on tradition from the point of view of a cyclist who stops by a country church in an age of unbelief:
Once I am sure there's nothing going on
I step inside, letting the door thud shut.
Another church: matting, seats, and stone,
And little books; sprawlings of flowers, cut
For Sunday, brownish now; some brass and stuff
Up at the holy end; the small neat organ;
And a tense, musty, unignorable silence,
Brewed God knows how long. Hatless, I take off
My cycle-clips in awkward reverence,
Move forward, run my hand around the font.
From where I stand, the roof looks almost new-
Cleaned or restored? Someone would know: I don't.
Mounting the lectern, I peruse a few
Hectoring large-scale verses, and pronounce
"Here endeth" much more loudly than I'd meant.
The echoes snigger briefly. Back at the door
I sign the book, donate an Irish sixpence,
Reflect the place was not worth stopping for.
Yet stop I did: in fact I often do,
And always end much at a loss like this,
Wondering what to look for; wondering, too,
When churches fall completely out of use
What we shall turn them into, if we shall keep
A few cathedrals chronically on show,
Their parchment, plate, and pyx in locked cases,
And let the rest rent-free to rain and sheep.
Shall we avoid them as unlucky places?
Or, after dark, will dubious women come
To make their children touch a particular stone;
Pick simples for a cancer; or on some
Advised night see walking a dead one?
Power of some sort or other will go on
In games, in riddles, seemingly at random;
But superstition, like belief, must die,
And what remains when disbelief has gone?
Grass, weedy pavement, brambles, buttress, sky,
A shape less recognizable each week,
A purpose more obscure. I wonder who
Will be the last, the very last, to seek
This place for what it was; one of the crew
That tap and jot and know what rood-lofts were?
Some ruin-bibber, randy for antique,
Or Christmas-addict, counting on a whiff
Of gown-and-bands and organ-pipes and myrrh?
Or will he be my representative,
Bored, uninformed, knowing the ghostly silt
Dispersed, yet tending to this cross of ground
Through suburb scrub because it held unspilt
So long and equably what since is found
Only in separation -- marriage, and birth,
And death, and thoughts of these --for whom was built
This special shell? For, though I've no idea
What this accoutred frowsty barn is worth,
It pleases me to stand in silence here;
A serious house on serious earth it is,
In whose blent air all our compulsions meet,
Are recognised, and robed as destinies.
And that much never can be obsolete,
Since someone will forever be surprising
A hunger in himself to be more serious,
And gravitating with it to this ground,
Which, he once heard, was proper to grow wise in,
If only that so many dead lie round
Tradition
Sunday May 27, 2007
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Rod Dreher is an editorial columnist for the Dallas Morning News, and author of "Crunchy Cons" (Crown Forum), a nonfiction book about conservatives, most of them religious, whose faith and political convictions sometimes put them at odds with mainstream conservatives. The views expressed in this blog are his own.
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The problem (which, having no controlling theological authority, haunts Protestantism even more than Catholicism) is that one man's adiaphora is another man's dianpheronta (apologies if I've misspelled those) -- that is, one person regards one thing as essential, while another considers it inessential.
FYI - the Traditional Latin Mass does not date to the Council of Trent. It is actually much older than the Divine Liturgy of St. Chrysostom. The Roman Liturgy is by far the oldest liturgy. Your readers would not know that based on your article, which suggests that the Traditional Latin Mass is only a few hundred years old.
Irenaeus, I agree with your point, in principle. But judging by this thread and many others there doesn't seem to be all that much control at times!
Even in the Tridentine Mass the Kyrie is retained in Greek, as you know. Actually, according to liturgical scholars such as Fr. Adrian Fortescue, the Greek Kyrie in the Roman-rite liturgy is not a retention of something earlier, but rather a later addition borrowed from the Byzantine liturgy, at a time when Latin had already begun to be used as the general liturgical language in the West.
David, that's fascinating! I've honestly never heard that before--thanks for the correction!
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