The Apostolic Blueprint for a Parish, the Model of Christian Community in the Modern Age

There is lots of discussion today about the loss of community and how our parishes, even those that seem well attended, don't seem to be the beating heart of an authentic Christian community any more, as they ought to be.

A common response is to look to the monastic model as an antidote. My sense is that the current interest in the much vaunted Benedict Option, in which hope for the West is placed in a Benedictine led spiritual revival is as much about fulfilling a desire for Christian community as it is for the transformation of the culture. Others have painted a picture of the medieval village with its houses clustered around the monastery as the families walk to Vespers in the gothic abbey church.

The disadvantage for such an arrangement can be that the spiritual heart is a religious community which, by its nature, is separated from the rest of the world and therefore also from the lay people who identify themselves as part of the lay extension of that community. This is not an insurmountable problem and there is nothing wrong with this if those involved don't mind this and if the fruits of it are positive, but given the low number and often the remoteness of monastic communities, even if we put aside the difficulties, it isn't a realistic option for most until they can retire to rural France...or Oklahoma..or wherever it may be.

I have seen people try to create lay communities of working people and their families by trying to encourage those who join to live a compound of homes where all subscribe to some modified Benedictine rule. The drawback here is that it is difficult to overcome the conflict between the demands of community and of family life - there is often a tension between the two. Some seem to manage it, but others in extreme cases can have a cultish feel to them. Such communities are by necessity strongly heirarchial if they are to avoid falling into anarchy - ultimately someone or a small group of people are in charge over decisions in daily living that effect others - this immediately creates conflict because that community authority or influence will tend interfere with, or even undermine, the natural authority of parents in the family.

Such a conflict rarely arises in parish life because beyond attendance, the parish itself does not impose rules at all beyond what the Church as a whole requires. There is no rule for parish life, that I am aware of, in the way that there are rules for religious communities. But this is also the source of a weakness for the parish as a basis of community. The connection is usually so loose that it is rare, nowadays at least, for people to feel bound to it at all.

This is where the need for a set of principles for parish community might come useful and this is what I heard described recently.

St Elias Melkite Catholic Church, in Los Gatos, California had their annual visit from the bishop, Most Reverend Nicholas J. Samra Eparchial Bishop of Newton recently. I attended Vespers and beforehand he spoke encouraging words, exercising his pastorial role as Bishop. The subject of his talk was how a parish can be a genuine community or as a put it, part of the Church and not simply a social club.

He began by going back to scripture and in particular he analysed the growth of the early Church as described by the Acts of the Apostles. He pointed out how the descriptions of the early gatherings seemed to point to four ministries that we should replicate today.

First (of course!) worship: Divine Liturgy (or Mass) and the Divine Office in the Church. Then he spoke of the need to take that worship back into the home by the establishment of the Domestic Church where the occupants of a house (not always families, this can be people living on their own or single people sharing somewhere) pray the Divine Office to their icon corner. St Elias's pastor, Fr Sebastian Carnazzo has produced free booklets which he gives to everyone who walks into the church called Daily Prayer for Melkites. This give a simple stripped down version of the more complex, monastic derived full Morning and Evening Prayer, which families can do and by which they participate in the fuller monastic influenced form that a church might do at Vespers or Orthros. In doing this they are dispersing the liturgy across time and space and taking the Church out to their homes.

Second is social - he talked of the regular organization of social events and especially meals connected to the worship and how newcomers should be spotted and invited to attend the coffee social/meal after the Liturgy. Again, this structure of communal meals after worship can be replicated in the home. There is something wonderful about a social event in a home which is Vespers followed by a meal. He spoke also of how an apparently thriving parish can, detrimentally, also have this social element emphasized at the expense of the others so creating a social club and not a church. In the long run a parish that does this will die. When it is done properly, the hope will be that this will naturally generate friendships and social cohesion beyond the church, so creating a social fellowship amongst the parish community which supplements and derives its strength from those parish based social events and ultimately the fellowship of the Spirit and the liturgy.

Third is education. He spoke of how great a need there is for constant mystagogy of adults and instruction of the children and that churches should hold classes for both. The children, he said, should be instructed in the church, in the ideal, by a couple so that it establishes as a habit in the children the practice of looking to parents in the home for education and instruction. And that, of course, is the next step here - the education of the children in the home by the parents.

Fourth is charity - almsgiving. This is the spirit of love by which people donate time and money for the care of others in the church, in the community and beyond. Some of that time will be spent in contributing freely to ministries that provide these four parish functions. Again, we see the model being set in the parish, and then supernatural transformation of those involved so that they take their enhanced capacity to love out to their fellows. This dispersed charity, if I can call it that, participates in that which should be at its greatest in the parish.

Bishop Nicholas suggested that apart from the functions that are necessarily performed by a priest, these are ministries that lay people should take responsibility for. And in the ideal they will never be onerous for anyone. As he described it, this is a natural organization of community and each of us has charism that suits us to work within one form or another of these ministries. In short, we are made to be members of the Church and if not religious, very likely part of a parish, so when we find our natural niche by which we contribute most powerfully to parish life, we will flourish in a special way as part of it. This would be a true flowering of a liturgically centered 'charismatic' movement. Furthermore when you have people who are doing what comes naturally to them as part of these ministries, then we shine with the light of Christ and people will see something in us, and this will in turn attract them to parish life.

What he was presenting was a simple 'rule' for parish life. A set of guidelines by which if the congregation chooses to participate is likely to lead the establishment of a thriving church which can happen in cities and town wherever church and the population happen to be; and when each is in place the fifth element occurs spontaneously - evangelization.

He was in fact outlining a simple template for the project management of the new evangelization!...which is the same as the old evangelization, and is in fact the oldest evangelization.

It occured to me also, that this is a possible pattern for communities that are not monastic but perhaps bound together in some other way. Little neighborhood groups of families and single people - maybe in an apartment block - can each have their own domestic churches in their separate home and apartments, but then gather together from time to time as little parish sub-communities gathering in the home of one, reinforcing this parish template for community in all.

I think this may be a practical answer to the desire for community in modern man. Most of us are meant to be parish people, not monastic people (which is a special calling) and when life is organized on the pattern of the ideal pattern we will flourish and evangelize others.

The more it is replicated outside the church in different social groups the more it will create a bond of community for that particular grouping, while simultaneously priming those who have never been to church for participation in the parish community; and further developing the bond to it in those who already have a parish life.

Amongst those who are thinking about the decline of community and Christian culture in the West there is a tendency to assume that the establishemnt of the post-Enlightenment model of a city is the one of the culprits - perhaps industrialization and electronic communication, and the existence of giant connurbations of millions of people is part of the problem. This is the back-to-the-land, recreate-a-village outlook. There may be something to this, but I do wonder sometimes if this is not based upon an idealized view of what villages and working on the land used to be like. My instincts tell me that the sense of alienation arises not so much from the environment, as it much is within the person who is alienated. If I feel alienated then I must become more of a community person; it is by offering fellowship and community to others that I feel part of a community myself. This therefore, can happen wherever there are people. I should redirect my work into an effort to participate in the church-as-community in the fullest sense.

Again, this doesn't mean that we all need to live in a village or even within walking distance of our local church; that parish community can be dispersed quite wide permeating a wider population base and still be strong. The old maxim - you get what you give - seems to be the operating principle here and in a city there always people nearby to whom I can offer community. Regardless of whether or not they accept it, I will change in the effort to bring it to them. Certainly, I should admit, Bishop Nicholas's address made me ask a few questions of myself.

The paintings are all by LS Lowry, who made his name painting the industrial landscapes of the mill towns in Greater Manchester in England after the Second World War.

Talk in Louisville, KY, Saturday, April 8th

For any who are interested and are within striking distance of Lousiville, I am will be speaking at the Immaculata Classical Academy this coming Saturday evening at 7pm as part of their speaker series. Details can be found on the poster below. Hope to see some of you there.

Literature, History and the Human Story as Manifested in the Culture

I recently heard a lecture as part of his Pontifex Univeristy class entitled The Bible and the Liturgy, given by Fr Sebastian Carnazzo, in which he explains how the Bible is primarily a liturgical document. This is an inspiring class that, for me, connects the whole educational ethos of Pontifex in the bible and the liturgy - in accord with the Catholic understanding of education ultimately the role of our teachers is to direct all of us to the Teacher who offers divine wisdom.

The study of Scripture in the classroom is valuable, of course, but as the lecture explains, primarily it is to the degree that it deepens our reception of the Word in a liturgical setting. Through the readings and chants of the words of Scripture in the Mass, Divine Liturgy and Divine Office, we are evangelized and catechized most powerfully. We are formed for supernatural transformation through Christ, and as evangelists who carry the word out to the unevangelized and uncatechized in the world.

The sources Fr Carnazzo uses to support this idea are the writings of the Church Fathers, the descriptions of the historical and current practices of the Church, especially in Her worship, and Scripture itself, as well as two recent books, The Bible and the Liturgy, by Jean Danielou, and Baptismal Imagery in Early Christianity by Robin Jensen.

There has been so much in this course that was worth highlighting, but I want focus particularly one aspect which I found enlightening, namely, the Biblical descriptions of evangelization. This is done through the description of salvation history as the part of the ongoing story of humanity in which we are protagonists right now.

Fr Sebastian described to us how at various times, Patriarchs, Prophets, Apostles and Saints of the early Church addressed the gathered people and told them their story. It would be modified according the assumed knowledge of those listening, sometimes starting with a description of the Creation, at others with Abraham. So, for example, we might think of Joshua talking to the Israelites before crossing the Jordan, or the martyr St Stephen addressing the Jews before he was stoned to death. The point was to make those listening, Jew or Gentile, understand that this is their story too, just as it is our story. The consummation of this story is in the reconciliation between God and man, through the Church, by the death of the old self - united to Christ crucified - in baptism; and by the rebirth of the new self - united to Christ’s resurrection and partaking of His divine nature - through Confirmation and the Eucharist.

The words of the liturgy and of scripture in the liturgy tell this story for us too, both prosaically and poetically, through the readings, the chanting of the psalms and canticles of the Church; they give us a mystagogical catechesis (one that deepens our grasp of the mysteries) so that we are prepared for that supernatural transformation in Christ that is available to us through the reception of Christ’s Body and Blood. All of this is made easier for us to grasp of course, when the external forms of the liturgy - the way in which it is celebrated, the art, the music and the architecture for example - are in harmony with this end.

This approach to evangelization, engaging outside the church building with people who do not have Christ - the telling of the story which was used by the early Church - works because it appeals to something that is deep within us. Every one of us knows instinctively that this is what we are made for. The task for each of us is to reveal that grand story, so that the listener can place his own personal story into the drama that it describes. Quite how we do this in the many situations that we are likely to deal with in life is another matter, but each of us will be able to to do it, with God’s grace, to varying degrees according to our calling. But, here is the key thing, it seems to me: our actions and words must point to this story that is the preaching of “Christ crucified.” At the very least, having a clear idea of what it is we are going to say is the most important thing. Much has been written about this elsewhere in the context of, for example, the New Evangelization; Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI speaks on the subject here and here.

This principle also tells us the purpose of the study of the history and great works of the culture. Taking history as a subject first: all history, to be of any human value, must be a participation in salvation history, and so must be seen as an aspect of Christian history. Just as every person has a story, whether he has lived his life as a Christian up to a given point or not, one that has the potential for a happy ending through the Church; so also every natural association within society has a story that, in the context of a Christ-centered view of history, participates in salvation history. This is why we need stories that reinforce these natural associations in a way that appreciates the natural hierarchy of each, and places the Church as the highest in value. (I am not arguing here for political power for the Vatican by they way). Therefore, the study of history can be a history of all peoples and all times, but always seen in the light of this principle. It should focus especially on the history of the societies that the person being taught belongs to, his country, his local neighborhood and for us, Western culture as Christian culture.

Just as important as the teaching of the facts of this history, is the teaching of what history is, why it is being taught, so that the student always places what they are learning into this context. This gives us a sense of our place in the world and where we are going, and whether or not we are on the right path. It also stimulates our faculty for seeing things historically, so that when we are presented with the ultimate expression of our history - salvation history in the liturgy - we are able to respond more deeply for the glory of God.

Poetry and literature tell our story in another way, the story itself is the same. In a wonderful talk last year at the Center for Ethics and Culture at the University of Notre Dame, Alasdair MacIntyre spoke of the need for the reading of poetry, which preserves the collective memory of who we are. I was moved by what he said and agreed wholeheartedly, in principle. But I remember thinking at the time, this is fine for those who like poetry, but what about those like me who hate it. What was not said is that, like history, the teaching of poetry and the cultivation of an enjoyment of it ought to have an even higher end in mind. That end is the telling of my human story and the development of the faculty of responding poetically, so to speak, to the poetry in the liturgy and especially the psalms. What I now realize is that so much of the literature and poetry that I was taught years ago didn’t speak to me of my story, either because it wasn’t contained within it, or because I wasn’t taught how to see it. Whatever the reason, it was not pointing to the ultimate poetry that helps transform me and which, I now realize, I was longing for even before I found it in the liturgy of the Church prior to my conversion. Perhaps if it had been presented to me in this way, I might have responded differently.

I also think that I am not by inclination particularly literary or poetic (referring to written poetry) by nature. I respond much more to art and music. Therefore while I do now appreciate the value of introducing it to those who are naturally of a literary bent, we should not think only of the written or spoken word as ways of telling stories. In fact, the whole of the culture in some way ought to participate beautifully and gracefully in the telling of that story. Art and music can do this through their beauty, not simply through the telling of a narrative, but through the cosmic beauty of form that can communicate truths beyond words. They can stimulate that deeply embedded faculty in our hearts that is receptive to the Word, the single encapsulation of whole of the story. In the end, by whichever route we get there, the goal is to be as literary as we can be in regard to scripture and the words of the literature. I feel no sense of guilt or lack in that I now rarely read a novel or poetry outside that context. I do pray the psalms daily and love them.

The images of the church should be directed to this end, in harmony with the liturgy, of course. This should be especially so in baptistries, where Christian initiation begins, along with the other rites of initiation from which it should not be separated in our minds (Confirmation and first Communion.)

This is a point that should be appreciated in designing an educational curriculum, I think. While all should be introduced to a canon of literature and poetry for reasons outlined, we should accept that not all will respond to it the same way, and not all will wish to spend their lives enjoying poetry. Part of the goal of such an education is to find those aspects of the culture to which we respond most readily and creatively, and through that door, stimulate our ability to know connaturally so that we can participate in the liturgy actively.

Connatural knowledge is sometimes also called synthetic or poetic knowledge (rather confusingly, I think, given that it is not about the means of communication of truth but about the form of knowing. This is not restricted to poetry or any written communication of the truth in the sense that the word is generally used today). Connatural knowledge is that intuitive grasp on the whole by which, for example, we know and love a person on meeting them, as one hopes to do when encountering Our Lord in the Eucharist.

This explains why the evangelization of the culture is so important. When the very fabric of our culture from top to bottom reflects aspects of this story it will be beautiful. Another speaker at the same conference last year, Roger Scruton, (who spoke on this occasion on the joys of wine) summed up the need for beauty in the culture succinctly in his book How to Be A Conservative: the beauty of the culture, he wrote, tells us we are “at home in the world.”

Here is one little piece of anecdotal evidence for the truth of this, taken from my own experience, something has happened since I first heard this and thought about it: I don’t think I have ever mentioned baptism when talking about the Christian life to non-Christians. This is something that I should mention, just as Philip mentioned it to the Ethiopian in Acts, as it will resonate with them in some way, appealing to their natural instincts. This is a bit of a preachy leap, for me but I resolved to look for opportunities...

With my brother, I have started a group here in the Berkeley, California area that meets weekly at St Jerome Catholic Church, and offers discernment of personal vocation. (We call it “The Vision for You.”) We aim especially to connect with people who are delving into New-Age spirituality and who are looking for a purpose in life. We present it as a series of spiritual exercises in the 'Western mystical tradition'. While it is pretty obvious that what we do comes from Christianity, we do not demand the people become Christian in order to participate. Rather, using a sort of Pascal’s-wager approach, we suggest that if they are willing to try this, then they will feel the effects; this is precisely what was done to me nearly 30 years ago, and as a result I converted from atheism. The hope is that it will send people on that journey, just as it sent me; however, I tend to let people conclude for themselves what the source of the power that we have as a small group of people who are working their way through this.

At each workshop, those who have experience of the process share personal stories of working through it. I realize now that what we are doing is telling our stories and placing them in the context of our ultimate purpose as we see it. I do always mention that I became Catholic as a result. The last time I did so, I added something that I hadn’t before; I said that although I wasn’t Christian at all when I went through the discernment process, I am nevertheless very grateful to my parents for having had me baptized as an infant. I now believe, I said, that although I was unaware of why at the time, that this is what placed within me an additional facility for responding to God’s grace during the process, and this is why it was so life changing for me.

I could see some cringing a bit as I mentioned baptism and grace, but after the workshop was over someone approached me. He told me that he was ill with cancer and had never been baptized. He had assumed that it wasn’t worth it, but as a result of what I said, he was thinking that he might go through with it. I encouraged him to do so, of course.

This is just anecdotal and not definitive proof of anything, but it does help to convince me that this is something that I should try to include in any account of my story in future!

A Catholic Challenge to Modern Population Medicine

Moving Mountains - A Socratic Challenge to the Theory and Practice of Population Medicine, by Dr Michel Accad

(available from Amazon.com)

This small book is an accessible and readible account of the philosophical basis of public policy relating to medicine, which has dominated government health policy for the last 30 years at least. It arises from a branch of medicine called epidemiology, which studies the possible control of disease by statistical analysis of human behaviour and the frequency of the occurance of symptoms and disease in population groups and any population as a whole.

The writer, Dr Michel Accad is a medical doctor who regularly publishes peer-reviewed articles on the philosophical aspects of healthcare and medicine and a Catholic who is concerned especially about the de-personalization of healthcare in the US. In this book, by reference to real policies and their effects, and with analysis backed up by scientific research, he explains why, in his opinion, it has gone so wrong. He does so through the vehicle of a conversation in the style of a dialogue that one might read in Plato's works. It is an imagined conversation between the ancient Greek philosopher Socrates and Geoffrey Rose, an Englishman who died in 1993 and who was one of the intellectual founders of population health medicine.

I would urge all doctors and anyone involved in the formulation of public health policy to read this book and consider its implications.

The starting point for our consideration is the bell curve showing the links between particular behaviour and risk of a particular in the population. In the examples given, which one assumes are typical, they appear to indicate that a certain proportion of the population is always at risk. So far so good.

The public policy that is implemented as a result of this analysis is based on an assumption that if the overal pattern of the symptoms or behaviours  of risk in the population can be controlled so that a smaller proportion of the population appear to be at risk, the rate occurance of the disease of individuals will go down too and therefore, the general health of the population will go up. So for example, blood pressure can lead to heart disease so, the argument runs, if you reduce the average blood pressure of the whole population, you reduce the rate of heart disease in the population as a whole because fewer people are at risk.

By adopting this assumption, government directs public health policy therefore to controlling, not the desease, but the shape of the bell curve - and so the signs of risk to the disease or the behaviours that is felt lead to this disease. (Public policy cannot ever control disease directly because diseases, microbes are not subject to legal penalty or taxes only human beings are.)

At first sight this seems reasonable, but in fact there are a number of problems with this method and the assumptions behind it.

Most important first: however strong the argument in advance of implementing such policy, in practice there is little evidence that it actually works in helping people. Where there have been improvements in, for example, heart disease rates, it is as easy to demonstrate that these would have occured anyway due to improvements in other treatments or better advice delivered from the doctor, with people freely choosing to adopt them rather than being influenced by government actions directly - legal or financial regulation - to behave in the desired fashion.

Second, there seem to be a number of flawed assumptions that arise from bad philosophy - a wrong understanding of society, of man and even of the scope of natural science that lead to unanticipated detrimental effects as a result of implementing such policies.

Contrary to the assumption of those who create public policy, society is not an entity that can necessarily be controlled by the laws of cause and effect of classical physics in the way that a physical process can. Attempts to do so always involve centrally planned policies that attempt to direct behaviour either through incentives (usally tax) or legal penalties and thereby direct behaviour by restricting the freedom of all individuals for the sake, supposedly, of the few within the population who might have been at risk before and will not be now. We can't test this properly, because we never precisely who was at risk before and who will be saved by this policy because the figures that apply to the whole population are derived from statistical sampling of a small part of that population, not by looking at every person in the population.

We are not looking at Fred or Mary and saying previously you were at risk and now you are not because we can measure how your health has improved. We are looking at a small sample of the population and looking at the statistics of that sample perhaps a thousand people and then applying the numbers to the whole population. This makes it a hypothesis that is very difficult to test even if it works and produces the desired bell curve because at best we can suggest that as a result some unkown people are at less risk. The difficulty with this is that we cannot then check for unforeseen secondary effects in the particular people who are apparently saved that might be worse than if the policy had never been implemented. We will come back to this.

In practice, though, we don't always get the desired bell curve that public policy seeks to create. society as a whole rarely behaves as the policy intends. People cannot be controlled in this way because even if they stop doing one thing, it is almost impossible to predict what they will do instead.

Furthermore, risk of disease is rarely connected to one condition only and so the alternative behaviours that are induced by our policy might lead some people into greater risk of ill health, perhaps arising from some other unconnected disease. The mechanisms are always more complex than the picture used to describe them. This is the effect that free market economists know well - unintended consequences.

It gets worse. The recieved wisdom of what is good and bad for people changes over time and public policy, even if perfectly effective in controlling behavious, will always be behind the times as it is very slow to implement policy and change behaviour. Many will be aware that the behaviours percieved as good change as times goes on - eating butter used to be a good thing , then it was bad thing and now it is good again; saccharine was good and now is bad etc.

Nevertheless, one might argue, the science will very likely get better in time and at some point perhaps public policy could catch up and reflect it. But here's the point: even if we understood perfectly what patterns of behaviour were best, and even if we understood how to control the pattern of behaviour and the symptom levels in population as a whole, as indicated by statistical sampling, - in other words even if the problems so far mentioned did not exist - this approach would still not help us to promote health. This is because we do not know directly how the pattern in the society as a whole relates to the effects and behaviours of any given individual in that society. So, while we might show how a public policy might affect the public, we have very little idea how it affects each person within the public.

Accad points to this and explains how, in contrast, the promotion of personal free choice made in conjunction with advice from doctors that takes into account personal needs is still the only way we know of actually achieving greater health.

This approach to medicine doesn't just lead to policy that tries to control the behaviour of doctors and patients. It affects too the organisation and funding structure of healthcare systems directly and, Accad argues, detrimentally. A healthcare system geared towards this end of personal freedom and the common good, in the way that Catholic social teaching describes it, would look very different from any of the systems for providing health that have existed in the US and Europe over the last 50 years.

The health insurance model (including Obamacare) in the US and the single payer systems of European countries each have this philosophical flaw built into them to detriment of both patients and doctors. So the benefits that arise from these systems are there despite the systems, not because of them. And however, much those in Europe might argue that their system is better than the America (or vice versa) each is worse than what a system could be if Catholic social teaching based upon a right anthropology were taken into account. The drawback is that the person paying is not directly involved in the provision of care ie doctor or patient, but rather is an insurance company or government department. This means that they direct policy according to trends in overall expenditure without reference to individuals and so the same problems occur. All those aspects of healthcare to which a price can be attributed are governed by this bell curve mentality. As a result the provision of healthcare becomes bureaucratic and politicised, pressures are put on doctors to change ethical practices, and even leads to the redefinition of terms such as health and disease to validate government policy to the detriment of patient and doctor.

This is not to say that we should expect no limitation on funds, clearly monetary considerations must come into play or else insurance company, or state would go bankrupt. Rather, it says that we should look for the most efficient form of distribution of a scarce commodity with alternative uses to which a price can be attached. That is the free market. Where freedom is greatest prices are cheapest and availability is greatest. Furthermore, because this encourages free choices by the main protagonists - health care providers and patients - it allows also for the greatest flourishing of those aspects to which a price cannot be attributed, for example personal care and attention and a genuinely fruitful personal relationships between those involved.

I hope very much that doctors and those who influence health policy will read this book and think about how things could be improved. You can order it online from movingmountainsthebook.com

Dr Michel Accad is a medical doctor with a practice in San Francisco who regularly publishes peer-reviewed articles on the philosophical aspects of healthcare and medicine. He has also has a strong interest in the philosophy of nature and philosophical anthropology and has published in The Thomist. He gives lectures around the country on these topics and on medical ethics, medical science and healthcare economics. He is a committed Catholic and faculty member of Pontifex University, for whom he is currently creating a course on the Philosophy of Nature and Philosophical Anthropology as part of the Masters in Sacred Arts program. You can contact him directly through his blog AlertandOriented.com

New Weekly Men's Group, Vespers and Spiritual Exercises, SF East Bay, California

The Vision for You, a group devoted to discerning personal vocation through guided prayer and reflection meets weekly at St Jerome Catholic Church, El Cerrito, Califonia, every Wednesday 7.30pm starting Wednesday 18th January.  We offer a series of workshops that explain a program of prayer and spiritual exercises rooted in the Western mystical tradition. Each week we sing Vespers according the structure of Evening Prayer of the Anglican Ordinariate. As the patron of the church of our first group, we have chosen St Jerome as a patron. This painting by Caravaggio seems so appropriate to me. St Jerome is being inspired in his work of writing the Vulgate. I like the figure of St Jerome particularly because it shows me that a man who was by no means perfect, could contribute so greatly to the work of the Church because of his faith and desire to serve God.

While the Vision for You Group is rooted in Christian spirituality, you don't have to be Christian to benefit from this. I know this because I went through this process nearly 30 years ago when a man called David Birtwistle promised me I could have a life 'beyond my wildest dreams' and showed a program of prayer, meditation and contemplation that he promised would open up my life.

I was a frustrated wannabe artist who was so dispirited I hadn't even picked up a paint brush for several months. I was attracted by the possibility of getting some structure and direction in my aimless life and thought I'd give it a go. I was a bitter atheist at the time, but put aside my prejudice sufficiently to enable me to do what was suggested (even though I was highly sceptical). This began a spiritual journey which gave me just what David had promised, and led me to being recieved into the Catholic Church.

I am still on that spiritual journey today - this is what the Way of Beauty is - and a group of us who have been through this process offer this to any who wish to participate, free of charge. David died of a heart attach nearly 20 years ago now, but this method of discernment, inspired by Christian mysticism, is still working in the lives of many people. We are inspired also by Pope Benedict and his method of promoting supernatural transformation in Christ, as explained in his paper on the method of  the New Evangelization.

Please do come along if you are interested.

For those who are nervous about the singing, don't be. First of all, you don't have to stay for the Vespers if you really don't want to. But second, singing experience is not necessary and we will teach everyone, no matter how poorly you think you sing. Everyone can sing well enough to pray the psalms with us! As a taster here are recordings of two the works we sing. The St Michael Prayer and Paul Jernberg's Our Father and the Canticle of Mary. Believe me, you will be singing with us on week one! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oElTV1jogS8

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UC8kqYYbJEc

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fwIoAzbo9wA

Breaking Bad! Why Misalettes Push People Away from Church

Especially the young!

Why has church attendance dropped off so dramatically in the last 50 years? There are a whole range of reasons, I am sure, and nearly every article in this blog is addressing the issue in one form or another, but if you ask me one of the main contributory factors is the music that is generally heard at Mass. And the degree that the music is influential, I would say that the influence of the style of music that is epitomozed by that offered by the most common pew misalettes is contributing to that decline.

I am talking about a style of music that seems to have started to develop around the late 1960s and sounds to me like a sort of fusion of American folk, Disney and Rodgers and Hammerstein musical and a hint of Victorian hymnody. Whatever you call the genre, it is responsible, I suggest for many to flee the pews.

Before anyone writes to me to say how much they like the music they hear each Sunday, or tell me how high quality the painist or band that plays and how heartily those in the congregation that do attend join in, I want to say one thing. My argument, as you will see, is not based upon the assertion that it is bad music. I do have strong opinions on that, but my personal taste has no bearing on the conclusion that I draw. My argument is that the whole philosophy that has contributed to the composition of such music is fataly flawed.

Even if we assume that the music we hear in Mass is of the highest quality within its genre, it would still have the same effect, which is to tend to drive most people away from Mass. (This is despite the fact that its proponents usually claim that it does the opposite.) Furthermore, if the standard of the musicianship is of the highest order, and the choir consisting of the best trained professional singers  it would not chage my argument one iota.

The problem in my opinion lies in the whole ethos that underlies the creation of music for the missals. The goal, it seems is to connect with people by giving them music that derived from popular secular forms. The problem with this approach is that it can only connect to those people who actually listen to enjoy that style of music out of church. Today's westerm society is so fractured that tastes vary hugely and there is no style of secular music that has universal appeal. As a result, whichever style we choose, and however well it is done, it can only every hope to appeal to a small part of the population. The rest will be driven away. So if we create music that appeals to those who were young in the late 1960s it will be detested by those who were young in the 1970s (like me) and all people who are younger.

If we go for something that is actually cutting-edge today and takes its form from current youth culture, it will drive away all the older generations and even most youth, because youth culture is itself fractured and there is no single style that all seventeen year-olds listen to. I just think of what was going on when I was seventeen - the sixth form in Birkenhead School in the 1970s (for Americans the sixth form is the upper two years of high school) was divided between punks, heavy metal fans and progressive rock fans, with a few who liked disco, funk and soul. If you're interested I liked obscure progressive rock and jazz fusion, such as Return to Forever, Frank Zappa and Be Bop Deluxe. I used to like being seen with the LP covers tucked under my arm to show people I had highly developed music taste. There was a little crowd of Christians who were trying to be cool and had their own Christian rock music (After the Fire was the group they all liked). To me they seemed to be a sad bunch who obviously 'just didn't have clue' if they thought that stuff was any good. We all used to make fun of them. It wasn't until I was 26 and met a Christian who was just as disparaging about 'cool' Christianity (although less rude about them personally), and who didn't even care about trying to be cool, hip and trendy that I started to take Christianity seriously. (He was more temperate in his language in his descriptions that I was, I should point out.)

I would refer you to the Tradition is for the Young articles by Gregory DiPippo on this blog to back up my case. But before get too smug, traditionalists aren't exempt from this. Much 'traditional' church music has the same fault. Holy God We Praise They Name or Immaculate Mary is really just the On Eagles Wings from you great-grandmother's day. All of these hymns - even the vast majority of non-chant hymns in hymn books that are considered fairly traditional, such as the Adoremus hymnal or the St Michael hymnal, sound off-puttingly 'churchy' to most people outside church in the wrong sort of way and drive more people away from church than they attract. I have heard them used to top and tail a Latin Mass in the past. I for one can't bear any of these hymns - they sound just like what I grew up with going to Methodist church. I hated them when I was eight and I hate them now. It is one of the main reasons that I chose to escape from going to church when I was given the choice at 13 years old. But even if this weren't the case and I had grown to love traditional Methodist hymns and so now loved 19th century Catholic hymns it would be no argument for their inclusion in the liturgy. The vast majority of the rest of the population would not like them and they are not instrinsically liturgical.

I would use the same argument about music that is derived from 19th century operatic styles (so strongly criticized by Pius X) is just the same. We may feel that it is a higher form of music than that provided by Christian rock band liturgy, but it will still only appeal to very narrow group of people and will drive all others away even if was written for a Latin Mass.

If the argument about the music at Mass is raised, very often the counter argument is that we have to be 'pastoral'. It will be said that most of those attending church like the music they are getting. There would be a revolt if we changed what is so familiar to them, so the argument runs, and so we can't risk changing the music even if we wanted to. It is almost certainly likely to be true that the people attending like the music they are getting, Those who attend do so because they like, or at least can tolerate the music. Most of those who can't stand the music they hear at Mass just stay away. They find the experience so excruciatingly, embarrasingly banal, that they go jogging or decide to read the Sunday papers with a cup of coffee instead. This is why, I suggest, the majority of teenagers leave the moment their parents give them permission to make their own minds up. And, for the reasons already described, it will be true even if we try to find a form of music that teenagers love - because there is no form of music that most teenagers love. It doesn't exist.

We can go further than this and raise another argument as to why the approach of the common misalette music composers of aping popular forms will inevitable cause a decline in attendance at Mass. Suppose we did have a society in which wider culture was more homogeneous and tastes were more consistent across the generations, it would still be a flawed approach.

I understand that many African cultures, for example, are more homogeneous and less fractured than western culture. This being the case, even if the music of the Mass reproduced the popular African style perfectly it would not be the right approach. This is because, although it might well appeal to a wider proportion of the population and you might find higher attendance at Mass, it would not facilitate a deeper and active participation in the liturgy.

This is because the liturgy is the wellspring of its own culture and an authentic liturgical culture must be at the heart of any Catholic culture of faith. It is separate world that appeals to what is universally human in us and draws us to God in a way that is impossible for secular culture. The music that draws us to it and directs to the Eucharist most powerfully is that which is derived from a liturgical culture, which is exemplified, the Church tells us, most fully in the forms in existence today in gregorian chant.

Secular forms that draws us to itself but then they are so far removed from the forms of liturgical culture that even in the context of the liturgy, they are inclined to leads us back to the secular values, not on to the Eucharist. It is less likely to draw us into a genuinely deep and active participation in the worship of God. In the long term therefore any secular music, even if it draws people to Mass, will inevitably lead to more people leaving the Church than staying because the music is distracting them from what is at the heart of the Mass. As a result there is less of force that draws us into a supernatural transformation of Christ. There are fewer Christians therefore with the capacity for transmitting an authentic Christian joy to those with whom they interact in their daily lives outside the Mass and the liturgy. With this reduced power for evangelzation, we will lose our lifeblood.

This is why Cardinal Sarah said in his address at the Sacra Liturgia conference in London that even in Africa the liturgy is not the place to incorporate African culture. Rather, because the liturgy has its own culture, which is uniquely and universally Christain, it should seeps into the wider culture and transforms secular culture into something greater, that is in some way derived from and points to the liturgy while simultaneously being distinctly African.

The only hope we have for the Mass to be a true long term draw capable of touching the many who currently have no interest in attending, is to focus on making chant the dominant form. We must even be prepared to allow a few of those who are currently at Masses with misalette music and who are there for the wrong reasons to drift away or even be prepared to carry on in the face of strong complaints from these people if it is changed.

While having chant at all Masses would help, even then it is not going to be enough. We must the chant in way that is going to connect with the ordinary person and this probably means singing at a pitch that is natural for men to join in. I have been told, that men are less likely to join in if you have female cantors. This is not because of an inherent sexism, but because the female voice is a pure sound and men find it difficult to come in at a pitch an octave below what the cantor is singing because it is totally separate from what he is hearing. If there is a male cantor, the men can emulate what they hear and the women still find it relatively easy to join in because the male voice contains higher harmonics which allow for a connection with female voices. Even if men are chanting, there is a style of chant in which a thin, strained, high pitch voice is encouraged. This sounds effeminate to me and I suggest has the same problems for congregations - it is not only as difficult for most men to sing along to as a female voice, but it is also difficult also to listen to, as the hearer struggles to make a connection to a voice that cannot be emulated.

Were the approach to music correct and, dare one hope for more, our liturgies were celebrated in the way that the Church truly desires, would this then bring huge numbers back to churches? In the long run, I would say yes, but in the short run, almost certainly not. But it would bring to the church immediately those who are genuinely looking for what the chant directs their hearts to - God. In the long term this would have a knock-on effect. More people who attend Mass would be participating more deeply and become emissaries of the New Evangelization, shining with the light of Christ as they go about their daily business. This, in turn, would draw others to Christ. Because we have free will this is never going to be the whole population, but I do believe that it can be far more than we cuurently see in our churches today.

Has the throw-away misalette approach to church music had its day? Probably not yet, to judge from the support that so many bishops, priests and choir directors currently give to this style in cause of a faux pastoralism, that actually alienates most people. But because of this alienation, it does contain the seeds of its own distruction. Unless it is replaced by something else, under the influcence of brave pastors and choir directors who are prepared to take the truly pastoral approach and take into consideration the majority who aren't at church, then we are doomed to steadily declining congregations until the generation that currently listens to this style of music grows old and disappears. Faith tells us that the parasite will die before it has killed its host. The Church will remain; and so one has to conclude that at some point the music has to change before it brings the whole edifice collapses.

Please! A Simple Version of the Anglican Ordinariate Office for Lay People

Here is a both a request and proposal for the Anglican Ordinariate, if I may be so bold.

Can you produce a version that can be reduced to a short booklet that contains the psalter and the unchanging prayers? If in addition to that we can find a way for the changing parts to be supplied by smart phone then I think that you will have something that will really catch on. It will be simple to use and cheap.

If the Ordinariate would produce something like this, then I for one would use it and promote it tirelessly. I know of several others who would be just as enthusiastic to see such a thing. Furthermore, I am ready to create online courses at Pontifex University that teach the singing of the Office in the home, and this would be my prefered option to recommend to families and lay people.

The Customary of Our Lady of Walsingham is wonderful but complicated to use and I'm never quite sure if I am getting those parts proper to the day right - and I am reasonable adept at breviary navigation. I have spoken to a number of lay people who bought it and gave up. This would work well for religious and those especially devoted to the Office who are likely to take the time to work out what

I am a great fan of the Divine Office as given to us by the Ordinariate because I think that it creates the possibility of greater take up of the praying of the Office by lay people. It offers the chance of praying the full psalter (ie no missing cursing psalms) in English in a translation that is both poetic and accessible. I have written about this in previous articles, such as this one here: The Anglican Ordinariate Divine Office - A Wonderful Gift for Lay People and a Source of Hope for the Transformation of Western Culture. (And incidentally, if you think I was resorting to hyperbole in the title of that article, I wasn't. I really to do believe that it has this potential.)

Looking at the general guide for Morning and Evening Prayer for the Personal Ordinariates (which consitutes a recitation of the full Office), and drawing on its application in the Customary, I think that I can get the psalms for the day and all that is specified in the table below from the St Dunstans Psalter. I would prefer to be using something similar that came with an endorsement from the Ordinariate.

What is missing in the St Dunstan's Psalter are the readings and collect for the day. I can get most of this from Universalis.com via my smart phone. The morning readings are the same as those that are in the Office of Readings. What I don't have is a readily accessible source for the Old and New Testament Lesson for Evening Prayer which is according to an established lectionary - can anyone tell me a website or other source where I might get this easily?

Although the hymn is not mandatory, if I want to use a traditional Office hymn for the day I always go to the Illuminare Publications hymnal.

The other request relates to the way that the psalms are set out. My goal is to sing everything. So please point the psalms so that the natural emphasis of speech is pointed. Then people will compose psalm tones, ideally based upon the traditional gregorian tones, that will conform to this method. If this becomes standard, then there will be the following advantages:

Every psalm tone can be applied to any psalm. That means that for people who are just learning, all they need to know is one psalm tone and they can sing the whole psalter. If they gradually learn two, three or more psalm tones then they can use those too and quickly it become interesting enough for them to be likely to keep doing it. In this system, people can learn many tones and still use this psalter - ie it allows for those with the knowledge of just one tone or those who wish to use 120 tones to have the same psalter. Also, if this pointing method becomes standard, then many people will start to compose, and as new and better tones are developed, they can easily be adopted. This allows for the possibility of chant for the vernacular as a living tradition which steadily improves and develops and really starts to connect with people.

When I sing tones to the St Dunstan's Psalter, I ignore the pointing and the tones they give, and I have pointed the text myself according to this method and then I sing tones develop as above. This allows me to teach people to sing it very quickly and I have a regular mens group consisting mostly of people who have never sung the Office before, who are now enthusiastically singing it each Wednesday evening!

This would be in contrast to nearly every other psalter that I have seen in which even if there is some accomodation for singing, the psalm is pointed to fit a particular melody - such as the Mundelein Psalter. The disadvantage of this is that unless you know every tone already, or are musically literate enough to be able to sight read chant, you cannot sing the whole psalter. So beginners tend not to persevere. At the other end of the spectrum, those who are experienced with chant find it too dull. There are only eight or so tones, and this becomes boring very quickly. Furthermore, there is no scope for development of new tones that can be used with this psalter, as every psalm is pointed to fit a particular melody. The result is that you use their tones or nothing, and if you don't like them you're stuck with them.

fyi the first week of the Pontifex University free Advent meditation has a class on singing the Office complete with a description of how to point the psalms and apply our psalm tones.

Pontifex University Faculty to Lead Byzantine Liturgy on UC Berkeley Campus

Saturday, December 3rd, 5pm Pontifex faculty member,  Fr Sebastian Carnazzo, pastor of St Elias Melkite Catholic Church, Los Gatos, CA has instituted an 'Outreach Divine Liturgy on the campus of University of California, Berkeley. Celebrating with Fr Carnazzo will be Fr Christopher Hadley. It is taking place at the Gesu Chapel at the Jesuit School of Theology, 1735 Le roay Ave., Berkeley, CA 94709.

An Outreach Divine Liturgy is the first stage to the establishment of a weekly mission. Please pray for this endeavor and if you are able to, make plans to attend. Dinner will be provided afterwards.

I shall be attending myself, singing the drone (eison) for the liturgy. We would love to see you there, especially any UC Berkeley students and professors!

Aside from teaching theology for Pontifex University on the Masters of Sacred Arts program, Fr Carnazzo is offering our Advent and Christmas meditation, which is offered free. You can sign up anytime and join in what is a wonderful to deepen your participation in this great season in sacred time.

Advent and Christmas Meditation on Art and Scripture

Pontifex University is now offering a free short course, An Advent and Christmas Seasonal Meditation as a promotion for its new Masters in Sacred Arts. It is a meditation in art and scripture for these seasons through to Epiphany It is taught by Fr Sebastian Carnazzo and myself using a method that we have developed for the scripture classes in the MSA program. Each day, Fr Carnazzo, an experienced scripture scholar who, for example, spent several years teaching FSSP seminarians in their seminary in Nebraska, gives a short meditation on the gospel account of the nativity.

Fr Carnazzo, who is also pastor at the Melkite Church of St Elias, in Los Gatos, also has a deep knowledge of the icons of the Church. So he connects the scripture with the icons of the church. I offer additional 'artistic sidebars' on certain feast days during this season and on major feast days we discuss the art together. As a result, this is simultaneously a scripture class that uses beautiful art to communicate truths beyond words and so increase our grasp of the Word; and an art class that explains the scriptural roots of the icons of the Church.

Most importantly, we connect all of this to the worship of God in the sacred liturgy where, one hopes it will deepen our encounter with Him during this wonderful time in the Church year. It includes an encouragement to pray the Liturgy of the Hours in your domestic church and even offers suggestions on how families can sing the psalms as they do so.

Question: why would we be considering the Baptism of the Lord during this seasonal meditation? And who are these figures on fish in the Jordan? And the significance of the rock that Christ is standing on? Answers can be found for free...if you sign up for the course! To go to the MSA catalog page and sign up for the free course: An Advent and Christmas Seasonal Meditation

Gerrit van Honthorst, 17th century, Dutch. The Adoration of the Shepherds.

Way of Beauty now posting at Blog.Pontifex.University

I am taking a break from blogging regularly at the Way of Beauty for a while while I work out the future of the site. I will be posting regularly at the Pontifex.University blog - blog.pontifex.university. Hope to see you there!