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This is a few days old, but when I saw it this morning, I was so tickled by it that I’d like to repost it here. This is an excerpt (posted on Fr. Z’s blog) from St. Peter’s Church bulletin in Mount Clemens, Michigan; Fr. Mike is writing to explain why he is denying his parishioners’ request for a regular celebration of the TLM:
I have other problems with the issue of allowing the Tridentine Mass. Celebrating Mass in Latin is not the problem. The Tridentine Mass, however, reflects an ecclesiology, a view of the Church, that is no longer the official ecclesiology of the Church. For example, those who left the Church of their own free will do not accept the teachings of the Vatican Council on the role of the laity in the Church. [I guess he's thinking of the SSPX.] They do not accept the role of women in the Church. They do not believe in a viable ecumenical outreach to those of other religions. They certainly do not believe or accept the interpretations of Scripture or the magisterium of the Church as they have been shared with us. They believe that the Church is the pope, the bishops, the priests and then the people. The Vatican Council taught that the Church is the People of God. There is a lot more to the reality of the Church reflected by the Tridentine Mass than most people are aware of.
This Fr. Mike is no dummy - he may be a limp-wristed clergyperson and an heretic to boot, but no one is pulling the wool over his eyes by using the Tridentine Mass to sneek evil, outdated, insensitive-to-gender-roles theology back into the Church.
This story attracts my attention partly because I’m from Michigan. For a long time, there wasn’t much of traditionalist Catholic good happening there. There were more than plenty of traditionalists in Michigan, including a right of SSPX, indy seminary, but no supportive bishops. I have some hope that the situation in Detroit is starting to turn around: Cardinal Maida won’t be there much longer and at least two of the auxiliary bishops are supportive of the old rite. This doesn’t guarantee happiness in the future, but I think that Summorum pontificum will help things continue in the right direction in that archdiocese. Better, some liberal prelate might well think, to contain the evil of the TLM in some one parish, even a personal parish, rather than to allow it to metastasize in parishes here and there throughout the archdiocese. Granted, Summorum pontificum says that this is out of the ordinary’s hands - but not really. Just think of all the ways a bishop could make life miserable for a parish priest (including removing him altogether) if the bishop were so inclined.
But it sounds like the situation in the Diocese of Gaylord, which makes up much of the northern half of the lower peninsula is still awful. As far as I know, there are no indults in that diocese. Plus, it’s sparsely populated and so hard to get enough TLM agitators in one place at one time - you know, ubi coetus continenter existit and all that.
Michigan isn’t a small state and, as I’ve said, it has a sizeable traddie population, but there is not a single diocesan or otherwise regular old Mass parish. No Institute, no FSSP. Yet. Last year, the FSSP came to Flint, MI to celebrate a pontifical high Mass with Bishop Mengeling of Lansing in honor of the indult community’s (in Flint) anniversary. That’s another good sign.
Until how long, O Lord, will the Fr. Mike’s and their “official ecclesiology” plague the state?
St. Louis-Marie de Montfort,
Pope St. Pius X,
St. Joseph,
St. Ambrose of Milan,
St. Thomas Aquinas,
St. Francis (and St. Clare),
St. Catherine of Siena,
St. Alphonsus Ligouri,
St. John Chrysostom,
Is the conservative Novus crowd finally waking up?
Hello, Karl Keating? Hello, Archbishop Bruskewitz?
Fr. Mike’s comments belie the notion that this is all about the liturgy — this is about doctrine: Catholic Doctrine versus heretical doctrine.
The Fr. Mikes of the Church are men holding to heretical “ecclesiologies” with the powers of Catholic priests.
Someday, when this crisis begins to turn around, every priest ordained after 1963 will have to go back to seminary.
(the comment about every priest ordained after 1963 going back to seminary was stated originally by the late great Fr. John A. Hardon, SJ)
While it’s not at all improbable that Fr. Mike is a heretic, I still don’t fully understand JSP’s remark: what, specifically, did he say in that excerpt that amounts to heresy? It’s foolishness to be sure, but at least in name he seems to think he’s holding to the authority of the Magisterium. That seems to me more like confusion than out-and-out heresy.
Also curious to me is the gleeful way in which you trumpet that the conflict is not just about liturgy. No doubt many doctrinal issues are also at stake in the battles between traditional and liberal Catholics, but for Heaven’s sake, don’t lose sight of the importance of liturgy! It is the liberal Catholics who wish to see liturgical celebrations as merely instrumental activities of secondary importance; this is why they think they’re justified in tinkering with them to serve their own various ends. (It’s also probably why they often seem fairly unconcerned about the frequency with which their members attend. I’ve had liberal Catholics tell me that “helping the poor”, or somesuch thing, is their substitute for Mass, and many seem to think this an admirable sentiment.)
Traditional Catholics give liturgy the central place that it deserves within a Catholic life. One of the best things we can do for ourselves (and others) is to persuade Novus Catholics that our love of the Latin Mass is not a Trojan horse to be used for advancing other ends. It is absolutely genuine, and they don’t know what they’re missing.
Clara, I’m kind of surprised by your reaction.
Of course he’s a heretic: he thinks that the Church’s ecclesiology can change - it changed from the position that the Roman Catholic Church is the mystical body of Christ to some other position more agreeable to the liberal mind (so he would say). His thought that de fide teaching can change and his new belief about the Church are both heresies.
Second, JSP is agreeing with me agreeing with Fr. Mike - it’s not all about the liturgy - it’s especially about the doctrine! Lex orandi, lex credendi: the two have a symbiotic relationship. The Fr. Mikes are really scared not of Latin and incense (though that’s scary in its own way), but of antiquated and outmoded theological positions (so he thinks). Both liberals and conservatives know this and so they recognize what a powerful weapon the Mass can be.
I concur with JSP: the battle is ultimately about dogma more so than about liturgy. It is true that liturgy is imporant, but it is important primarily as the way in which grace and truth are communicated to the faithful. The liturgical revolution rested on false theological positions — false views of grace, truth, ecclesial communion, etc. So it is good to see people coming out and saying that there are different theologies at war here. One of my professors here at Cornell (a wayward Catholic, I’d say) said that he thought it was disingenuous for people to champion the Traditional Latin Mass while pretending to be fine with the “new theology.” As he put it, “just admit you like the old theology better!” Which I do! Except I maintain that it is a battle between good and bad theology (or orthodoxy and heterodoxy/heresy), not just a difference of “old” and “new.” Hopefully the Motu Proprio truly will provide a “Trojan Horse” of tradition that can get past the conciliar and post-conciliar “Great Facade.” I would have preferred a Jericho-like trumpet blast, but even Josue had spies . . .
That is not to say that the Mass is merely a means to an end — no, it is not. But it is part and parcel of an entire theological controversy. Call the error “neo-modernism,” “liturgical neo-Jansenism,” or whatever you will. The folks who designed the new “lex orandi” were propagators of a new “lex credendi.”
And, as Fr. Feeney, used to say, “By the way, speaking of how to pray, dogmas come first, not liturgies.” Liturgies are expressions of dogma, not vice versa, even if the dogma itself concerns the reality of the Eucharistic Sacrifice. To phrase it differently, the man-made elements of liturgy — the Traditional Latin Mass, the Novus Ordo, the Byzantine Rite, the Coptic Rite, etc. — are judged by their ability to convey the divine truth of the divinely-instituted Sacrament.
This discussion reminds me of an argument that was bandied about multiple times with my college friends: which comes first, philosophy or poetry? Is poetry just obscurely worded pretty-talk for truths that are most simply and directly expressed in philosophical treatises? Or does poetry (as poets like to claim) have the power to capture certain ideas with a beautiful completeness, next to which the words of the philosophers are only a pale, insubstantial shadow?
I’m inclined to think that there’s some truth in each position. And while I don’t doubt that dogma and liturgy are connected on a deep level, I don’t know that one should be definitely subordinated to the other as a conveyor of truth. There are some respects in which liturgy falls short of expressing eternal truths, and there are some respects in which words and formulas fall short. For best effect, we need both. To explore this much further would get us into many complex philosophical questions, and it would take too long to do that here. But I do think that dogma and liturgy are both necessary to us if we are to stay strong in the faith. A person who affirms Catholic dogma without understanding the importance of liturgy is liable, eventually, to get his theological principles confused. A person who loves liturgy while spurning orthodox Catholic teachings will end up betraying liturgy too (like the high Anglicans, who have all the “smells and bells” of beautiful liturgy even though their services are at bottom just a sham.)
My own reasons for associating with traditional Catholics, as opposed to, say, conservative Novus Catholics, are primarily liturgical. Some Novus Catholics, of course, are off the deep end in any number of ways, but I’ve also known some are truly devout and theologically orthodox. They affirm the authority of the Magisterium, they are loyal to the pope, they stand by Catholic theological dogma and they take the Church’s moral teachings as imperatives that guide their actual lives. Though I sometimes tut at their lack of familiarity with the larger history of the Church, I appreciate the fact that they are not generally beset with the bizarre reactionary whims so often seen in the traddies. I can respect this sort of Catholic, and I like to think of them as friends and allies.
But they have a deficient appreciation for good liturgy. They do not fully grasp the goodness of the old devotions and the incredible beauty and power of the Mass. Traditional Catholics have a greater appreciation (though all of us, no doubt, are gravely deficient in this area) of what it means to stand in terror and awe before Almightly God. That’s what keeps me here, anyway.
I have to disagree with the estimable Fr. Feeney there. Liturgy emphatically did, and does, come before dogma; not strictly logically, perhaps, but in practice, in the hearts of the faithful, and in their souls. We learn to pray from the Mass, and are strengthened in it by praying well. Even the devils know the dogma, better than we; but they don’t pray the Mass.
Yes, this is one of those areas where there is useful disagreement.
Upon reconsideration, perhaps the dichotomy liturgy/dogma is not the operative one. Obviously people get their greatest catechism from Mass (homilies, the Gospel readings, the Credo, feasts of particular dogmas, etc.) and other liturgical prayers. Truly there is no way to splice the two neatly — some of the first testimonies for some dogmas is in the liturgy. For instance, the Immaculate Conception and Assumption.
Would the dichotomy pastoral/doctrinal work better? The liberals at Vatican II claimed that they were just making a more pastorally-sensitive application of the same doctrines. But after forty years, we see that the concerned parties see different doctrinal positions and programs behind the respective liturgies. So perhaps the revelation is less that the conflict is “dogmatic” instead of “liturgical” but rather that it is also “doctrinal” (involving very many distinct doctrines expressed in/through the liturgy, NOT just doctrines concerning the liturgy itself) instead of merely “pastoral.” The letter on the proper interpretation of “subsistit” followed soon after the Motu Proprio for a reason.
So it may have seemed that the easy subordination of liturgy to dogma made the liturgy merely a pastoral phenomenon, when in fact it is more than that. The sacraments and prayer are the realities whose truth is related in dogmas. Those who believe that pastoral needs can justify wholesale liturgical innovation really do end up affecting the Faith of those subjected to the reforms.
I don’t think, Ambrosi, that Fr. Feeney would disagree with you for a second. We might distinguish two kinds of priority, right? Actually prior in time (or something) for an individual person as he sits down to pray; or priority with respect to the theology which informs the prayers he has received.
In one of his very good books, Ascent to Truth, Merton emphasizes that in the mystical prayer/contemplative system of St. John of the Cross, dogmatic theology is the necessary ground and foundation of the contemplative prayer that is to be built on top of it. This kind of priority, I imagine, is what Fr. Feeney had in mind when he said that dogma comes first.
In the Grammar of Assent, Newman says that he is of the opinion that the Quicumque vult is the most beautiful of liturgical hymns/prayers. This is an admirable, almost perfect instance of “lex orandi, lex credendi” and it’s hardly the case that the liturgical aspect of the Athanasian Creed somehow is prior to the dogmatic part of the creed.
What Fr. Mike is concerned about here, what I’m concerned about, along with TP and JSP, is the sense in which dogma is necessarily prior to liturgy. We don’t deny that there is another way in which liturgy first steals upon the heart and our sense of beauty and may win us towards the Faith. All of us agreed in this matter, though, reocgnize that one great power of the Catholic Mass is the precisely the fact that dogma has, as it were, a logical priority in it.
Yes, the logical priority of dogma to liturgy was probably what the ever-controversial priest had in mind. I am glad that St. John of the Cross, Fr. Merton (about whose earlier works I hear consistently good things of late), and (soon-to-be-blessed?) Cardinal Newman all provide further corroboration of that point.
Mind you, Fr. Feeney thought the crowning work of St. Thomas Aquinas was not the Summa, but rather the Mass and Office of Corpus Christi.
I don’t think there can be any doubt that liturgy is pedagogically prior to dogma in at least the great majority of individual cases. But, as my comment shows, I’m skeptical as to whether dogma has logical priority, as Iosephus claims. What does that even mean, exactly? Eternal Truth is the ground on which both dogmatic statements and liturgical rites are formed. You might say that truth is logically prior to both. But are the former more directly representative of truth than the latter? That is not clear to me at all. I think TP hits nearer the mark when he says, “The sacraments and prayer are the realities whose truth is related in dogmas.” I would add, though, that some elements of liturgy are representative of truths in something like the way that language is representative. In those cases, they may just be different forms of expression which are each, in their own way, equally true.
Certainly, it is right to say that much more is at stake in liturgical disputes than aesthetic gratification! What is at stake is no less important than Christian truth. Iosephus might come back and say that I am muddying the waters with a sense/reference distinction that is peripheral to the main point. But I think it’s important, because there are too many people already who are inclined to think of liturgy as being fundamentally instrumental and, hence, of secondary importance. Instead of saying, “This dispute isn’t just about liturgy,” I want to say, “This is first and foremost about liturgy… and liturgy is about eternal Christian truth.” As we see, those who lose hold of liturgy tend to lose hold of dogma too, and this is not surprising since the two are so intimately connected.
As far as Fr. Mike being a heretic, I never said that he wasn’t. If we really got him to state his views with full philosophical precision, they probably would be heretical, but part of the point is that he probably wouldn’t be able to be that clear even if he wanted to. As it is I find his statements too mushy and vague to really convict him. Iosephus says, “he thinks ecclesiology can change, which is heretical.” But what does he take the term “ecclesiology” to include, and how does he think it’s changed? It’s not always easy to distinguish between willful heresy and extreme confusion. But this point of debate is rather less interesting than the other.
Also, if I may say so, I think it’s lovely that we’re finally having a conversation in which multiple contributors to this site are involved! We used to do that quite often, but it has become a rare occurrence of late, and I’m sure none of our much-valued visitors will begrudge my saying that I sometimes miss talking to my friends in way we used to do.
Logical anteriority of dogma to liturgy: St. Thomas knew the Church’s teaching on the Eucharist before he wrote the Mass and Office for Corpus Christi. The people who wrote the Breviary accepted the Church’s canon of 150 Psalms, not 200 psalms, not 100 psalms, before they arranged them. The people who designed the first basilicas had a clear notion of the distinction of clergy and laity when they assigned the sanctuary to the former and the nave to the latter. The bishop who promulgated the first liturgical feast day of the Immaculate Conception had to know it was a legitimate devotion and true Tradition before he did so. The baptismal formula is trinitarian because the Gospel (and before it, formal tradition) said that Our Lord instituted it that way.
Logically, we can infer the beliefs of the composers upon which their compositions depend if they are to make sense. Though the individual believer today, the average participant in the liturgy, may not have any belief in the Assumption that temporally preceded his act of prayer to Maria Assumpta (i.e. he probably first learned of the Assumption via the Rosary), the belief in the Assumption was anterior both logically *and* temporally to these prayers. I.e. the Apostles witnessed the Assumption and told people about it before anyone could meditate upon it in prayer. Doctrine came first, via preaching, which is how Faith comes. And in the old days the catechumens were excluded from the Mysteries since they wouldn’t understand them before they’d been catechized.
Though Our Lord established the Sacraments and taught us how to pray, most prayers and most of the liturgy are man-made. That does not mean “unnatural” or “innovative” or “revolutionary” but just that — man-made. Even biblical elements such as the Our Father and the Sanctus, Sanctus, Sanctus are not necessary to make the Mass a Mass. Somebody thought they should be there, rightly, and so they were put there. Even the words of Consecration are not exactly the same in all the rites of the Church — remember the controversy around “mysterium fidei.” I am not mandating innovation now that we have a great and solid tradition. Rather, I am pointing out that *temporally* the authors of the liturgy needed to have Faith in the truths of the Church before they composed and promulgated liturgies, prayers, etc., that assumed those truths as premises. And, *logically* all such prayers presume theological positions.
So when I say “dogma,” I am not talking about this or that dogmatic pronouncement, but rather the simple declarative truths pronounced thereby. The Mass and Feast of the Assumption came out long before 1950, but the simple truth finally (in both senses) declared solemnly in 1950 was logically anterior to the celebration of said truth in the life of the Church. And temporally speaking the Assumption occurred (thereby making the declarative statement “Maria assumpta est” true) before its anniversary could be celebrated.
To put it another way, the theological virtues in their proper order are faith, hope, and charity. The liturgy is the greatest celebration of both charity for God and for neighbor, and charity is a greater virtue than is faith. Yet faith is necessary in order to have hope, and hope is necessary in order to have charity. What is faith? Not just trust in God’s mercy, but assent to all revealed truths. These truths are expressed as simple declarative sentences, i.e. dogmas.
And before anyone jumps on me for saying that most prayers are man-made, I should have said that a great many are. Obviously the Magnificat, Nunc Demittis, etc., are in the Bible and hence divinely inspired. My meaning was that the arrangement of even biblical material in the liturgy and breviary is contingent. The Ruthenians, Chaldeans, and Romans all “pray the Bible” in their Breviaries, but not in the same order. My point is that the organizers all had to have at least implicit Faith in the scriptural canon of the Church (i.e. in specific dogmas) before they organized their respective Divine Offices.
Heretic or not, “Fr. Mike” Cooney is the brother of Gaylord Bishop Patrick Cooney. It would not be illogical to conclude that certain philosophies are shared.
Which came first, the Chicken or the Egg? The golden egg laid after the Council came from a committee which included 6 Protestant ministers. It is because some of the 20th century Reformers of the Liturgy were attuned to Universal Salvation that Pro Multis was translated to “All”; that Requiem Masses became canonized processes known as Masses of the Resurrection where everyone is invited to come up to Holy Communion regardless of living in sin or heresy. If you don’t believe in the saints anymore, just drop them from the Confiteor and the Canon, drop some of them from the liturgical calendar and change all their feastdays. Throw their statues out of Churches and white wash their distracting pictures. Look about you at the Liturgy and realize; “We’re all Saints and we’re all Church. When they do get a special day list them simply, like Monica, widow. If you believe that Christ died once for all men and that the Mass is thereby redundant then drop references to the Mass as sacrifice and emphasize the Last Supper and the communal sharing of one bread. If you don’t believe in the Real Presence stop all those genuflections, hold up the Blessed Eucharist and blatantly proclaim, “Christ will come again.” After Mass turn the Church into an auditorium for “Superstar.” Etc. etc.
Undoubtedly, we pray the way we believe.
Ah! that is an interesting detail, Alex. Helps explain a few things.
As bad as Michigan may have it at times, though, I don’t think that we can compete with Florida where all the bishops (essentially) have rejected the motu proprio.
“What is faith? Not just trust in God’s mercy, but assent to all revealed truths. These truths are expressed as simple declarative sentences, i.e. dogmas.”
Yes, but truth is also expressed in liturgy. You seem to be taking dogma as being essentially synonymous with truth, but surely that can’t be right. If it were, that would contradict the Catholic teaching that the Church has had all the truth from the beginning, because the process of formulating dogma has obviously been gradual. No: I say that dogma is a particular sort of philosophical formulation of truth, whereas liturgy is a different form for expressing it.
“the Apostles witnessed the Assumption and told people about it before anyone could meditate upon it in prayer. Doctrine came first, via preaching, which is how Faith comes.”
I thought we’d already agreed that liturgy very often precedes dogma in the pedagogical sense. And who’s to say that the Apostles, after witnessing the Assumption, didn’t begin by bursting out with a spontaneous hymn about it? That’s what Our Lady did, when she first saw St. Elizabeth, rather than sitting her down and explaining things in plain speech. And the ecstatic prophesying of the Day of Pentecost may have resembled liturgy more than dogma.
“You seem to be taking dogma as being essentially synonymous with truth”
Yes.
” I say that dogma is a particular sort of philosophical formulation of truth, whereas liturgy is a different form for expressing it.”
“Maria assumpta est” is not particularly philosophical. It is the simplest possible expression of what happened. I do not see how declarative propositions are necessarily “philosophical” by nature.
“And who’s to say that the Apostles, after witnessing the Assumption, didn’t begin by bursting out with a spontaneous hymn about it?”
No doubt they did, upon recognizing the *fact* “Maria assumpta est,” which IS the dogma of the Assumption. If they did not know this fact, they could not have expressed it in hymns. And that hymn may have been used to convey the fact to others. But the dogmatic *fact* (Maria assumpta est), which is part of the depositum fidei, is the logical premise for the hymn.
“If it were, that would contradict the Catholic teaching that the Church has had all the truth from the beginning, because the process of formulating dogma has obviously been gradual.”
As I said earlier, I am not talking about this or that dogmatic formulation, but the truth conveyed thereby.
If “Maria in caelum assumpta est” is merely an “expression” of the truth of the Assuption and not the very truth of the Assumption itself, then what is the “truth” of the Assumption that is anterior to the dogmatic proposition “Maria in caelum assumpta est”?
“That’s what Our Lady did, when she first saw St. Elizabeth, rather than sitting her down and explaining things in plain speech. And the ecstatic prophesying of the Day of Pentecost may have resembled liturgy more than dogma.”
Logical anteriority: These “ecstatic prophecies” basically are dogmatic propositions as such. “The Lord is with thee. Blessed art thou amongst women, and blessed is the fruit of thy womb.” That’s as basic as it comes — not philosophical at all. God revealed to St. Elizabeth basic dogmatic truths: “Your cousin is the Mother of your Lord.” These were also prayers, as the Creeds are also prayers. Simple dogmatic statements can be liturgical, yes. These prayers convey that St. Elizabeth recognized a situation and rejoiced in it. If she did not recognize the situation, i.e. the contents of God’s revelation to her, as true, she could not have rejoiced. What is so difficult here? I need to believe in God’s mercy before I can praise it. “Before” here is logical, not temporal, for I might praise it the first instant I recognized it. But the praise is a response to recognition of the real situation. All I am saying is that St. Elizabeth rejoiced because of what was going on — and she could not have rejoiced unless she knew it.
1.) ““You seem to be taking dogma as being essentially synonymous with truth”
Yes.”
2.) “As I said earlier, I am not talking about this or that dogmatic formulation, but the truth conveyed thereby.”
I don’t think that there is a real contradiction between my two statements. It took a long time for the Church to formulate and define dogmas, but those definitions are nothing but statements of what has always been in the depositum, implicitly if not explicitly. Some dogmas logically imply other dogmas. Belief in the Immaculate Conception may logically be inferred from the All-holiness of Mary. The content of the 1854 definition did not “develop” — it was always in the deposit of faith that the Blessed Virgin was conceived without sin.
I am not certain that anything terribly important depends on our debate here… but as a philosopher I have to insist that there is nothing “absolutely simple” about formulating truth in dogmatic sentences. As I already said, if it were absolutely simple, how could we explain why it took centuries upon centuries to get it all worked out that way (and of course, there is no reason to believe that more dogmatic pronouncements will not continue to be made in the future) when the Church had the full repository truth from the time of Christ. Some dogmatic expressions may seem simple, but try doing a little systematic theology and you’ll quickly realize that many are not. Just think of all those carefully crafted explanations of transubstantiation or the two natures in the one person of Christ. These dogmas have been worded very carefully, and with philosophical precision.
What, by the way, do *you* see as being at stake here? Why is it so important to insist that dogma is identical to truth and not merely a correct expression of it?
“What, by the way, do *you* see as being at stake here? Why is it so important to insist that dogma is identical to truth and not merely a correct expression of it?”
Well, I assume that I see the same thing being at stake as you do in taking the opposite viewpoint — the truth of the matter is at stake. Which is why I’m being tenacious — not upset, just tenacious.
I agree that some dogmas are phrased with precise philosophical terms — “hypostasis,” “ousia,” “substance,” “accident,” etc. It might take centuries to find the right words to define the Eucharistic Real Presence in Aristotelian terms. But once you know the terminology, the statement expresses (i.e. is) merely what the Church has always had in the depositum, implicitly (i.e. logically) or explicitly.
On the other hand, I know that some dogmas are not philosophical. Hence, it is not something essential to dogmas that they be philosophically-worded. I provided one example that merely answers the question “where is the body of the Blessed Mother physically located?” Do we agree that philosophical wording is not a *necessary* attribute of dogmas?
One major problem I have with your position is this: I do not understand what the “truth” of this or that dogma is other than the dogma itself. Let me concede for the argument that a dogma is merely an “expression” of a truth. So what is the truth beyond the dogma? It sounds as though the truths of the faith (which I normally call dogmas) are now placed in some non-intellectual, pre-intellectual realm. This sounds all rather mystifying, obscure, and neo-Platonic.
Obviously the event of the Incarnation is different from my description of the Incarnation, but don’t we usually treat language as a “transparent” medium for the sake of communication? This all reminds me of that famous painting of a pipe, with the caption “this is not a pipe,” i.e. it is just a painting of one. “Tim is my brother.” “No, Tim is the *proper noun* by which you designate your brother.”
TP, I must say that I applaud your valiant effort in this controversy.
I will read responses here, but I think I have devoted enough time to explaining what I hold is the truth here. First, liturgy presumes dogmas, or dogmatic truths, or truths in the depositum fidei. Second, for our purposes here, I don’t see how too fine a distinction between the “truth” of Purgatory and the “dogma” of Purgatory affects the fact that Requiem Masses logically presume (i.e. they make sense only if there is) Purgatory. Upshot: liturgical tampering touches upon dogma, *including dogma concerning the liturgy itself, itself important!*, but also other dogmas contained in or assumed or propagated by the liturgy. So you can’t mess with the liturgy without messing with a lot of other theology as well, seeing as so many people (all of us, really) *are* dependent upon the Mass for their knowledge of doctrines (i.e. if Purgatory isn’t mentioned at funeral Masses, they think Purgatory is gone now).
Note: I found this on my clipboard today; the website was having technical difficulties a few days ago so I didn’t get to post it. The discussion is pretty much dead, which is fine. But as long as it’s still there, I might as well post it.
Not to stir the fire unnecessarily, but I meant to say that, even through we generally take language to be transparent, I think this often involves a bit of suspension of disbelief. Language is impoverished in many ways, and we can’t always express the truth of the matter fully. Philosophers will sometimes get into analysis of the gap when they discuss sense and reference and these sorts of things. But even without delving into that, we can approach the issue intuitively, can’t we? We can all think of times when words don’t seem enough to capture the whole truth, and surely great theological truths will be like this if anything will. That doesn’t mean that dogma is false; only that it is, in some senses, incomplete, and thus not synonymous with truth.
If that is right, then you can presumably see why I wouldn’t want to think of it as “logically prior” to liturgy. What is logically prior to the liturgy is the truth itself – for example, the actual Assumption is prior to the liturgy, but not the statement “the Blessed Mother was assumed.” When we think of it in the way TP suggests, the dissatisfaction that we sometimes feel over the inadequacies of dogma to express the greatness of theological truth, are then foisted off onto liturgy also. Liturgy really seems to lose some of its power when you think of it as a dogma-pageant. (Of course, we’re also overlooking the genuine metaphysical events that take place in the Mass if we think of it that way.) Dogma and truth cannot be identical, because the former must, by definition, be linguistically formulated, whereas the latter need not. Dogma thus inherits all the limitations of language.
Anyway, thanks to Tobias Petrus for sticking this one out. I suppose we’ve each made our positions sufficiently clear now, and we agree on the more fundamental point – that dogma and liturgy are connected on a deep level, and both are very necessary to us as Catholics.