Today I can present the ninth paper in the series of Position Papers produced by FIUV, the Una Voce International Federation, on the subject of silence.
As the paper notes, the silence of much of the traditional liturgy is something which never fails to make an impression on newcomers, and I am sure it is one of the most appreciated features of the Traditional Mass for those familiar with it. Words come to an end; something more important, more profound, takes over.
It is not difficult to find material from the recent Magisterium, and from the works of the present Holy Father, in favour of silence, and a number of them are cited in the paper. It would almost seem that, no sooner had silence been drastically down-played in the 1970 Missal, than its loss was regretted. As so often with these papers, it is the traditional liturgy which fulfills what is demanded in many of these documents. I was particularly struck by the words of Pope Paul VI, writing in 1975 (
Evangelii nuntiandi 42):
We are well aware that modern man is sated by talk; he is obviously often tired of listening and, what is worse, impervious to words. We are also aware that many psychologists and sociologists express the view that modern man has passed beyond the civilization of the word, which is now ineffective and useless, and that today he lives in the civilization of the image. These facts should certainly impel us to employ, for the purpose of transmitting the Gospel message, the modern means which this civilization has produced.
What 'modern means' might that be? Perhaps the ancient Mass.
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| Silent prostration at the beginning of the Liturgy of Good Friday: the FSSP in Reading, England |
This paper is available as a pdf here; the full set can be downloaded from here.
Comments can be sent to positio AT fiuv.org
The flow of papers is going to slow over the Summer. I hope that the next paper, on Western culture, will be published in mid August.
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Silence
and Inaudibility in the Extraordinary Form
1
A
marked characteristic of the Extraordinary Form is the use of silence, particularly
the silent Canon, which contrasts with the practice of the Ordinary Form. It is
a natural parallel to celebration ad
orientem, which, like it, developed and spread in
the early centuries of the Church. The
use of silence in the Extraordinary Form is complex, however, and indeed silence
is not excluded from the Ordinary Form. Without attempting an exhaustive
account of the subject, this paper will limit itself to certain generalisations
about the place of silence in the Extraordinary Form.
2 Silent
prayer was one of three aspects of the ancient Latin liturgical tradition
criticised by the Jansenist Synod of Pistoia of 1786, a criticism itself
condemned by Pope Pius VI. It
is grouped with ritual complexity and the use of a non-vernacular language, but
silence might seem the most profound challenge to the Enlightenment principles which
motivated Pistoia. For
it would not seem to make the liturgy more immediately comprehensible to the
Faithful if it were simplified and translated into the vernacular, if the
prayers were still said inaudibly. Although the Faithful, even with a limited
liturgical formation, will be familiar with the content of Ordinary prayers
said silently,
it is clearly necessary to go beyond a functionalist and didactic model, and
consider the symbolic significance of silence, in order to understand its role.
Inaudibility
It
is worth noting briefly the case of prayers said, not silently, but
nevertheless inaudibly. This happens in a Sung Mass, when the singing of the
Introit and Kyrie obscures the Preparatory Prayers and those immediately
following them, even if they would otherwise be audible. Similarly, the singing
of the other Proper and Ordinary chants obscure the priest’s reading of the
same texts.
4
The
traditional practice creates a very intimate relationship between liturgical
music and the liturgy. Pope St Pius X in his Motu Proprio on Sacred Music, Tra le Sollicitudini, explained that singing
should not unnecessarily exceed the space created for it by the liturgy.
Such spaces would be reduced considerably if the celebrant did not read the texts
which the choir is singing, and eliminated altogether if singing were not
allowed to obscure other prayers. When singing does exceed this space, Pius X
warned,
the liturgy in
ecclesiastical functions is made to appear secondary to and in a manner at the
service of the music.
5
The
principle of inaudible prayer by the celebrant while singing is going on is maintained
in the 1970 Missal, with the Offertory, which may indeed be said silently even
if there is no singing.
Silent prayers of the priest
6
In
another category are those prayers which are in a certain sense personal to the
sacred minister saying them, notably when he implores the purification and
graces to perform a rite worthily. Examples would include the ‘Munda cor meum’
before the Gospel, the ‘Lavabo’ before the Canon, and the prayers said at the
priest’s Communion. Pope Benedict XVI comments:
The silent
prayers of the priest invite him to make his task truly personal, so that he
may give his whole self to the Lord. They highlight the way in which all of us,
each one personally yet together with everyone else, have to approach the Lord.
The number of these priestly prayers has been greatly reduced in the liturgical
reform, but, thank God, they do exist…
7
The
silence of these prayers is a dramatic indication of the intimacy of the
priestly task: they are addressed to God alone. As Pope Benedict indicates,
this is important to stress both for the priest himself, and for the Faithful
who are to associate themselves with him and follow his example of humility
before God.
The Silent Canon
8
In
a category of its own is the Canon of the Mass. While the Sanctus is sung, at a
Sung Mass, during the Canon,
the words of Consecration themselves take place during a privileged period of
silence, during which nothing may be sung and the organ may not be played. This
silence is heightened by the ringing of the bell to signal, first, the
approaching Consecration, and then the double Consecrations themselves. Later,
if singing is not taking place, the celebrant can be heard to say, in a more
elevated voice, ‘Nobis quoque peccatoribus’, the opening words of a prayer for
the clergy,
which serve to emphasise the priest’s unworthiness, following the moment of his
closest identification with Christ. The otherwise complete silence of the Canon
gives it a particular sacred atmosphere, and raises it, in importance, above
what goes before or comes after it. It recalls the words of the prophet Habbakuk,
used in a hymn of the Liturgy of St James with a well-known English
translation: ‘the Lord is in his holy temple. Let all the earth keep silent
before him.’
Again, the book of Wisdom:
For while all
things were in quiet silence, and the night was in the midst of her course, Thy
almighty word leapt down from heaven from thy royal throne, as a fierce
conqueror into the midst of the land of destruction.
.
This
part of the Mass naturally reminds us of the High Priest passing into the Holy
of Holies in the Temple, the mediation of Moses, hidden by the cloud on Mount
Sinai, and the silence of Calvary, broken only by the Last Words. The sense of
the priest passing out of the ordinary world, into another realm in which to
meet God, is strongly underlined in an iconographic way. Such parallels have
been noted by the Fathers and Doctors of the Church, a tradition summarised by St
Robert Bellarmine.
1
As
noted above on the priestly prayers, silence indicates that the prayer is
addressed to the Father, and not to the congregation, but this time this is not
because of the personal nature of the petition, but because of its uniquely
sacred nature. The importance of the prayers of the Canon lie in what they
bring about on the altar: they are, above all, performative, not informative or
didactic. As Blessed John Henry, Cardinal Newman, expressed it:
Words are
necessary, but as means, not as ends; they are not mere addresses to the throne
of grace, they are instruments of what is far higher, of consecration, of
sacrifice.
1 Before his
election, Pope Benedict XVI more than once suggested that the Canon be said
silently in the Ordinary Form.
He comments:
Anyone who has
experienced a church united in the silent praying of the Canon will know what a
really filled silence is. It is at
once a loud and penetrating cry to God and a Spirit-filled act of prayer. Here
everyone does pray the Canon together, albeit in a bond with the special task
of the priestly ministry. Here everyone is united, laid hold of by Christ, and
led by the Holy Spirit into that common prayer to the Father which is the true
sacrifice—the love that reconciles and unites God and the world.
The value of silence
1 Blessed Pope
John Paul II wrote, in Spiritus et Sponsa
(2003), of the importance of silence, in relation to the re-evangelisation
of the West.
One aspect that
we must foster in our communities with greater commitment is the experience of
silence. We need silence “if we are to accept in our hearts the full resonance
of the voice of the Holy Spirit and to unite our personal prayer more closely
to the Word of God and the public voice of the Church.” In a society that lives
at an increasingly frenetic pace, often deafened by noise and confused by the
ephemeral, it is vital to rediscover the value of silence. The spread, also
outside Christian worship, of practices of meditation that give priority to
recollection is not accidental. Why not start with pedagogical daring a
specific education in silence within the coordinates of personal Christian
experience? Let us keep before our eyes the example of Jesus, who ‘rose and
went out to a lonely place, and there he prayed’ (Mk 1: 35). The Liturgy, with
its different moments and symbols, cannot ignore silence.
As has been
discussed in Positio 2,
and contrary to the Enlightenment assumptions of Pistoia, the liturgy
communicates not only at the verbal level but non-verbally: as Bl. Pope John
Paul II expressed, with symbols, of which silence is a powerful example.
Silence communicates the sacrality and importance of key moments in the liturgy
with great force, even to the people of our own day.[18]
1
Pope
Benedict XVI has argued that ‘for silence to be fruitful, …it must not be just
a pause in the action of the liturgy.’
What is needed, as he puts it in the passage quoted in paragraph 10, is a
‘filled silence’: a silence during which there is something specific and
appropriate to meditate upon. There is a certain parallel here with the singing
which takes place, in accordance with the teaching of St Pius X, not in a pause
in the liturgy, but while it continues. The silence of the priestly prayers and
the Canon, in the Extraordinary Form, provides this ‘filled silence’ in a way
which is both natural and symbolically charged.
U.S. bishops’ relief agency gives $5.3 million to major contraception-providing charity
July 17, 2012 - In the epic battle between the American Catholic bishops and the Obama Administration over being forced to pay for contraceptive coverage, the efforts of the bishops have been undermined time and again by individual Catholics and Catholic entities that support contraception. One major example of this is within the Bishops’ own jurisdiction.Catholic Relief Services (CRS), “the official overseas relief and development agency of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops” has recently given millions to an organization that doles out contraceptives, including abortifacient ‘emergency contraception.’The most recent CRS annual returns (2010) indicate that the largest CRS grant — $5.3 million — went to CARE, an international “relief and development organization,” that actively promotes and provides contraceptives for women in developing countries, and supports pro-abortion groups and legislation.According to the 2010 990s, CRS gave $5,380,466 to CARE, which is noted on page 86 of the filing....The HLI [Human Life International] president noted that that CARE has made “‘reproductive health’—which typically includes contraception as well as abortion—a cornerstone of their ‘development’ strategies.” Because the revenues that CARE receives are fungible, he said, any funds given them would automatically support their whole program—including abortion lobbying and contraception.
