A while back, I read The Heresy of Formlessness by Martin Mosebach, a marvelous book about the crisis in the liturgy and in the Church. At the time, I planned a lengthy review, but months have now intervened and now, lest the opportunity slip completely from me, I thought I should scratch together at least a sketch of why I think this book is such a fine one.

Mosebach is a novelist, in Germany, and thus writes with an author’s eye and pen, rather than with a philosophers sharp quill and deduction. Which is not to say the book is fluffy or poorly reasoned; in fact, quite the opposite. Unlike many of the diatribes of traditionalists bewailing the failed state of things today — and despite the sad necessity of such cris du coeur — Mosebach takes his reader on a journey through the affective dimension of contemporary Catholic life as viewed by one steeped in the broad tradition of the West and thoroughly transformed by Christ and his Church.

There is argument here, but not the typical kind. Mosebach’s evident purpose is to give a warm robe to the sometimes dry subject of correct liturgical praxis and theological orthodoxy. We need excoriators of the false in the new and scholars of the minutiae of the old; but we also need compelling testaments to the life of beauty and joy that follow from the humble heart guided by the age-old practices of the Faith. It’s similar to the 118th psalm: a book-length celebration of the joy of a life lived according to the new law, written for today’s Church, which has fallen into a state of affairs not unlike Judaism just before King Josiah reformed it, where everything seems to have been forgotten.

One of the most winning and compelling points that he makes is to admit what a sad state of affairs it is, for a well-lived Catholic life, to have to be debating these matters at all. How ridiculous and destructive it is, he points out, that ordinary folk merely trying to live in Christ should have to pore over liturgical documents and become amateur scholars merely to retain the heritage that is theirs by right.

In short, this is a fine book to read: for those who already agree, to be consoled and informed, yes, but also to be reminded of what the wonderful fruit of final success in restoring tradition shall be. But it is perhaps even a better book for the literate and well-meaning but dubious modern who wonders what all this traditionalism business is about. If I had the guts or position, I might ask someone like George Weigel to give it a read (though Fr. Fessio’s rather lame Foreword suggests that some good people just won’t “get it”). But, my dear reader, what are you waiting for? Buy it yourself!