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.
