Month: March 2024

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Book Recommendation: Pope Innocent III’s The Mysteries of the Mass and The Four Kinds of Marriage

Last spring on The Josias, I reviewed David Foley’s previous translation for Angelus Press, namely William of Tocco’s The Life of St. Thomas Aquinas. Foley made quick work of his follow-up, just published by the same: The Mysteries of the Mass by Pope Innocent III (†1216). Innocent is of course the great medieval pontiff who, inter alia, presided over the Fourth Lateran Council and approved the new mendicant religious orders. (On Pope Innocent’s integralism, see the Josias library.) This current text is Innocent III’s expositio Missae, his detailed theological commentary on the rites of the Mass from beginning to end. And the volume is exquisite.

Pope Innocent’s Mass commentary falls at one extreme of a certain interpretative spectrum for thirteenth-century theologians. My own doctoral studies are focused on St. Albert the Great, who is famously allergic to what he perceives as an excess of rememorative allegory—that is, equating different parts of the Mass with different moments in the life of Christ. Many scholars think that Pope Innocent is precisely the one Albert is reacting against, since Innocent seems never to have encountered an allegory he didn’t love. Readers of this new edition can determine for themselves whether Innocent is correct that the celebrant passes from the joys of the right side of the altar that represent the Lord’s Nativity, then to the sorrows of the left side of the altar for the gospel to represent the Lord’s Passion, then finally back to the right side after communion to represent the Lord’s Resurrection—or whether Albert is right that such eisegetical impositions make theology ridiculous. In either case, such comments certainly make Innocent’s treatise delightful to read. (St. Thomas Aquinas falls somewhere in between Innocent and Albert. See my recent book and the editor’s kind review of it.)

Unlike either Thomas or Albert, both of whom describe a fairly standard-issue solemn Mass, Pope Innocent comments on the highest of papal liturgies. Some details of this supreme pontifical rite will be unfamiliar to modern readers. For example, who knew that in quick succession during the entrance procession, the pope would go into the choir to light a bundle of flax on fire, then be kissed on the shoulder by the head cantor, then approach the altar and be kissed again by three priests on his face and on his breast (to represent the three Magi, of course, as well as the two natures of Christ: the human nature that is plain on his face and the divine nature that hides within his breast). Other elements of the liturgy will be more familiar, but Innocent’s explanation of them may not be. For example, he says that the reason the subdeacon reverences the celebrant after his reading, whereas the deacon is blessed by the celebrant before his own, is that the law finds its end in Christ, but the gospel takes its beginning from him. The text also reveals some shocking details about high medieval ars celebrandi: Innocent has to correct the clergy for the practice of confessing their personal sins out loud according to species during the Confiteor!

The Mysteries of the Mass is full of surprises. One of the loveliest comes in Book 2, Chapter 33 (a number that was almost certainly deliberate), where Innocent interrupts his explanation of the deacon’s signing himself before the gospel with a chapter-length aside on the mystery of the cross and its manifold effects. “How profound is the sacrament of the cross!” he exclaims, “O, how lofty is its mystery!” Then he waxes poetic over a series of Old Testament typologies for the sign of the cross: the bronze serpent, the (complicatedly cross-shaped) blessing of Jacob over Manasseh and Ephraim, Ezekiel’s vision of the man with the inkpot at his loins, the angel from Revelation and the forehead sign of the elect, the blood on the lintels in Egypt, Moses’s uplifted arms during the battle with Amalek, the tree he cast into the bitter waters, the tree of life in Eden, and more. (One is reminded of St. Thomas’s great digressive fervorino on Christ as the way in his commentary on John 14.)

Innocent III’s expositio begins with a long preparatory study on liturgical vestments, much of which has been omitted from this translation—which is fair enough, since it was also omitted from many medieval copies of the text. Also omitted are a handful of chapters from Book IV that pertain rather to dogmatic eucharistic theology than to liturgical commentary. While the medievalist in me would love to have a complete text, this decision seems justified given the intended audience of this edition, whose interests on the whole will be more mystagogical than scholastic.

One of the nicest features of Foley’s book is the diagrams, which are not his invention but rather the original schemata from a fifteenth-century illumination of this text. These circular diagrams are found throughout the book, but are especially concentrated in the glossy color insert in the middle. The beautiful cover image of Christ’s apparition during the elevation comes from this Biblia Pauperum manuscript as well.

In addition to The Mysteries of the Mass, this volume contains Foley’s translation of another of Pope Innocent’s works, The Four Kinds of Marriage. Maybe that title will help to market the book to an unsuspecting postmodern audience, but if so they will quickly discover that, for Innocent, the four kinds of marriage are not progressive alternatives to sacramental matrimony, but rather theological realities built upon the four senses of sacred scripture: the marriage of man and woman (literal), of Christ and the Church (allegorical), of God and the soul (tropological), and of the Word and human nature (anagogical). In his treatise, the pope comments on the last three of these, then glosses Psalm 44.

As with his Tocco translation, Foley’s rendering of Innocent III is readable and playful, done by someone who clearly loves English but nevertheless prefers Latin (and I mean that as a compliment). My only criticism of the book is for whoever composed the text for the back cover, which gives the following as a selling point: “In these works Pope Innocent provides an answer to modern society’s most pivotal questions: What is the symbolism of the Catholic Mass, and how does the sacrament of marriage mirror the life-giving love of Christ for the Church?” I’m not sure what modern society this editor is living in, but I would like to visit.

Urban Hannon is a seminarian of the Priestly Fraternity of St. Peter, and a tertiary of St. Michael’s Abbey. He is the author of Thomistic Mystagogy: St. Thomas Aquinas’s Commentaries on the Mass (Os Justi Press). He is also a former editor of The Josias.

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Some Answers from the Integralists

Matthew B. Crawford has posted some questions for integralists at his Substack Newsletter. His main question seems to be this: Are integralists content with the bureaucratic form of government that has developed in modern states? Or do they want to abolish the modern state? If the former, Crawford is worried that such a form of governance cannot actually help people to become virtuous:

Would this not reproduce the vacant pseudo-citizenship we are permitted under the nudgers’ system of social cybernetics, which treats the human being as inert material to be molded by a new class of Conditioners? However much it is to be guided by Christian ends, the worry is that under this kind of politics, our thumotic capacity for overcoming obstacles, working in concert with our erotic attraction to some ideal, is left moribund and atrophying, just as it is under technocratic progressivism.

It seems to me that Crawford is confusing two questions better kept distinct. The first question is what the relation of spiritual and temporal power ought to be, given the superiority of the former. This is what integralism is about. The second question is about the size and organization of modern political life, and whether that needs to be fundamentally changed to help people develop the virtues. This is a separate, though certainly very important, question.

I would like to elucidate the distinction between the two questions by a comparison of political society to domestic society (the family or household). A domestic society ought, if possible, to be a Catholic household. This means that it sees the duties of religion, the duties of honoring and thanking God, as binding not only its individual members as individuals, but also the whole family as a society. The family ought to give corporate thanks to God. It ought also to recognize and obey the Apostolic Authority of the Church. If, for example, the bishop orders his subjects to fast on a certain day, the family ought to recognize the command of a superior authority and obey it. Obviously, there can be adverse circumstances that render such a Catholic family life impossible. If one of the spouses apostatizes, then the other can worship God as an individual, but not as part of Catholic domestic society. The domestic society in that case is religiously pluralistic, not Catholic, which is an objectively undesirable state of affairs. Such a state of affairs is analogous to that which obtains in political societies which are majority non-Christian, and (since the Reformation) in many nominally Christian ones as well.

The basic truth taught by integralism is that it is better (if possible) for a political society to be a Catholic polity, just as it is better (if possible) for a domestic society to be a Catholic family. Being a Catholic society is what we ought to desire and strive for. Not being a Catholic society is regrettably unavoidable in some circumstances, but one ought to hope for this to be changed by everyone finding their way to the fullness of Catholic truth. Just as the Catholic wife of a non-Catholic husband hopes that her husband will become Catholic, so the Catholic members of a religiously disunified political society hope that their fellow subjects will become Catholics.

Now, obviously, a domestic society can order its common life in many secondary ways that are very important for how effectively it can live a Catholic life. There is, for example, the question of whether the household lives by subsistence farming, or by cash-crops, or by cottage industry, or by the parents working outside the home in the modern capitalist economy. Or the question of whether the children are homeschooled or sent to public or private school, etc. All of these questions are very important to the life of the family, and how they are decided will certainly affect the ability of the family to raise virtuous children. But these questions cannot be collapsed into the question of whether the domestic society is Catholic. The Catholic Church acknowledges that there can be many different ways of ordering a family’s life with respect to the production of goods, the education of the children, etc. Some of these ways might be so undesirable that they should be avoided whenever possible. But in many cases families will be constrained by circumstances. 

It is similar in a political society. There are many ways in which a political society can be organized—from an ancient city, to an ancient empire, to a medieval kingdom, to a medieval Italian city republic, to a modern nation-state, etc. All of these forms of organization have their advantages and disadvantages. How a political society organizes itself will certainly affect the extent to which it can foster virtue in its members. Such organization is a very important matter for the common good, and The Josias has long been interested in such questions. But those questions are not the same as the question of integralism. The Catholic Church recognizes that different forms of organization are possible, and can be legitimate, as long as they are ordered to the common good. We can certainly argue over which form of rule is best for human beings, and which forms are relatively undesirable, but we shouldn’t confuse that question with the question of whether it is desirable for political societies to be Catholic.

But perhaps Crawford would respond that the modern “state” is not a political society in the relevant sense at all. Some have argued (Alasdair MacIntyre springs to mind), that “political society” cannot be univocally said of premodern societies, devoted to the cultivation of virtue, and modern bureaucratic ones in which virtue has supposedly been replaced by social-scientific management. If such arguments are right, then it is an error to consider the modern state as a κοινωνία τέλειος or societas perfecta—a stable union of a plurality of persons in pursuit of the complete common good of human life, arising necessarily from the teleology of human nature. On their view, the modern state would not be like a modern family, founded on the natural union of the sexes, but rather it would be like a pseudo-family founded on homosexual perversion or some other vice contrary to nature. On their view, none of the properties of a true political society could be found in the modern state, any more than the properties of the family are found in an unnatural sexual union. On their view therefore, our aim should not be to improve the modern state, to make it more Catholic and more conducive to virtue, but rather to abolish it. Just as the proper approach to a homosexual relation is not to try to improve it, but rather to dissolve it.

While I acknowledge the strength of the objection just sketched, I think that the conclusion goes too far. It seems to me that it is truer to think of modern states as sick, disordered political communities, that nevertheless do arise from the teleology of man’s political nature, than as complete perversions of that teleology. I think, therefore, that our aim should indeed be to heal, correct, and transform modern states. There are two reasons that lead me to this conclusion. The first is from experience. Anyone who knows good public servants and good politicians knows that their political nature is deeply engaged in their activity, in which they try to serve the societies in which they live. I think, for example, of a young Ukrainian, the nephew of a friend of mine, who cheerfully lost his eyes in defending his country against foreign invasion. He was convinced that the state that he defended, for all its faults, was worth defending, a society that to some degree seeks the common good of its members. Or I think of an Austrian provincial judge of my acquaintance, a just and prudent man, who excels in trying to find just solutions to disputes within the legal framework of the Austrian state. Or I think of two pro-life MPs of my acquaintance, one a Slovak, one an Austrian, both of whom are deeply engaged in the patient labor of correcting unjust laws and better securing the protection of the vulnerable, within the possibilities that the circumstances of their societies allow. Their effectiveness is partly derived from the evident love that they both have for the states that they serve. If they dismissed those states a priori as illegitimate bands of robbers, they would not be able to work within them. This then is the first reason why I think it is truer to say that modern states are faulty political societies, than not political societies at all: the experience of those involved in serving those states in virtuous ways.

The second reason is from the teaching authority of the Church. Modern Catholic Social Teaching has never proceeded from the premise that modern states are simply anti-societies, to which none of the traditional teaching on political authority applies. Rather, those who hold the teaching office in the Church have consistently seen modern states as natural law institutions, flowing from man’s political nature, capable therefore of issuing binding laws and commands. The focus, therefore, has always been on correcting such states, not on destroying them. Pope Leo XIII, for example, in the encyclical Au milieu des sollicitudes, argues that civil power of various kinds derives its authority from God, and that acceptance of an actually-constituted civil authority—even that of the Third French Republic, so offensive to French Catholics devoted to the ancien régime—is obligatory for Catholics. The efforts of French Catholics should not be to abolish the established civil power, but rather to transform it from within, making its legislation more just and equitable, and bringing it into greater harmony with the authority of the Church.

And here integralism is indeed relevant to the question of the transformation of the modern state. For the most foundational disease afflicting modern states is their refusal to give God His due, by rendering Him corporate thanks, and recognizing the authority of His Church. In this they resemble the pagan empires, which, as St Augustine argues, were not true res publicae, the common goods of peoples joined together by a common sense for what is right (jus), since they did not render God His due (jus), but rather rendered the worship due to Him to false idols. While Augustine perhaps goes to far in claiming that the pagan empires were not res publicae at all, he is certainly right that they were deeply defective societies. And modern “secular” states are caught in a similar trap. Their supposed “neutrality” is really a refusal to give God His due, which inevitably results in false idols being given His place, such as the liberal idols of freedom and equality. Integralism would therefore heal the foundational disease of the sick political societies of our time. The healing ought not to end there, however. Everything else that is wrong with them, that impedes them from fostering true virtue, ought to be healed as well.

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Thomystagogy

Urban Hannon, Thomistic Mystagogy: St. Thomas Aquinas’s Commentaries on the Mass (Lincoln, Nebraska: Os Justi Press, 2024).

It was a commonplace among twentieth-century theologians of a certain stripe that Thomism was cold, rationalistic, and “dry as sawdust” as one put it. As if the Common Doctor and his students were cut off from the life-giving streams of Scripture and the Fathers of the Church. This was one of the ideas motivating the ressourcement movement of the last century. But if you read Saint Thomas for more than five minutes, and especially if you read his work, rather than reading him only through the lens of some of his successors, you see how absurd and unfounded an idea this is. 

The criticism we see in general we also see in particular, with certain theologians’ desire to get beyond the Thomistic theory of transubstantiation, as if a vague theology of hand-waving more effectively described the mystery than a theology using the infrastructure of Aristotelian philosophy. As if mystery meant our theology must be imprecise.

To read Saint Thomas is to see how scriptural and patristic his theology is, how deeply he has drunk from these sources. All those who reject scholasticism and especially Thomism in favor of a theology built on the writings of the Fathers would do well to recognize that this is exactly what the scholastics have given us. Peter Lombard’s organization of the patristic patrimony in his Sentences served not as the springboard, but as the very foundation for the truly systematic theology of Saint Thomas and the schoolmen. 

The Holy Spirit has revealed that Divine Wisdom “orders all things sweetly.” Thus, to those who are wise, to those who participate in that Wisdom, does it belong to order, as Saint Thomas teaches with the Stagirite. And who has given more order to the edifice of Catholic theology than Aquinas?

Saint Thomas’s theology of the Eucharist is a profound reflection upon this mystery which lies at the center of our Christian life. Who recognized better both the heights of what theology can achieve and its utter inability to comprehend completely the mystery of God than the one who wrote:

Tibi se cor meum totum subjicit,
Quia te contemplans totum deficit

better than the one who wrote:

O sacrum convivium!
in quo Christus sumitur:
recolitur memoria passionis eius:
mens impletur gratia:
et futurae gloriae nobis pignus datur.

better than the one who said, “I have seen such things in prayer that all I have written seems to be straw”? Not ‘sawdust,’ mind you, and not ‘straw’ as we might think of it either, dry and good for nothing but as kindling and fodder for beasts. In the famous quote, Saint Thomas was using a concept common in medieval thinking, that the literal sense of Sacred Scripture is merely the ‘husk,’ which must be broken open to access the corn, the truly nourishing kernel of the spiritual senses. Not that the ‘husk’ or ‘straw’ of the literal sense can ever be thrown away, but that it is merely the first step in coming to understand the truth. In this sense, his work certainly is ‘straw,’ not fodder for beasts, but fodder for contemplation.

Our former editor Urban Hannon has given us an important book as we contemplate the mystery of the Blessed Sacrament of the altar, which is at the center of our lives as Christians, and which therefore ought to be at the center of the life of a Christian people. It is an especially timely contribution, as we honor the 750th anniversary of the death of the Common Doctor this week. 

Fr. Hugh Barbour notes in his introduction that this book serves as the second panel of a diptych with the work of Dom Anscar Vonier. In his Key to the Doctrine of the Eucharist, the abbot of Buckfast detailed the sacramental representation which is at the heart of Saint Thomas’s theology of the Eucharist. Vonier gave us the Thomistic theory of how this sacrament signifies, Hannon collects for us Saint Thomas’s writings on that signification as we find it in the rites, words and gestures of Holy Mass. As Hannon indicates, Saint Thomas reads the liturgy like he reads the Scriptures. Beneath the ‘husk’ of the literal sense, Saint Thomas finds the deeper spiritual meaning, an often-allegorical reading of the kind which has been so disdained in modern liturgical scholarship, but which is so fruitful for our Christian life.   

Though unlike many of his contemporaries, Saint Thomas did not compose a standalone commentary on the Mass, he did comment upon it in two of his works, in his Scriptum on Peter Lombard’s Sentences and in the Summa Theologiae. Mr. Hannon assembles these texts for us into a running commentary. Helpful appendices provide the Latin texts themselves, with Hannon’s own accurate and eminently readable translation, plus several useful diagrams. 

Hannon analyses Saint Thomas’s commentary on the Mass according to the four causes, spending most of his time on the material cause, what is said and done in the Mass. The other three causes correspond to Saint Thomas’s various divisions of the Mass. He divides it according to its form, for instance in his Sentences commentary, seeing in the structure of the Mass a pattern of exitus-reditus. He also makes a division according to who is speaking—a kind of instrumental efficient cause, since God Himself is the primary agent in the liturgy—either the priest alone, the ministers, the choir, which enable “the whole hierarchy of the mystical body to be represented” (15). As a final cause in the Mass, there is a division according to signification: “For St. Thomas, the words and actions of the Mass come together for the sake of signifying three things: the representation of Christ’s Passion, the disposition of the Church, and the devotion and reverence due to this sacrament” (21).

Saint Thomas’s commentary reminds our age of widespread liturgical minimalism that what is important in the Mass is not merely the essential, what is necessary for the validity of the sacrament of the Eucharist. Nothing is superfluous, the whole of the rite is important, including “the things said around the sacrament,” which are not for the sacrament’s validity, for its being, but “are for the sacrament’s well-being” (ST III, Q. 66, a. 10 ad 4). 

If this book has a shortcoming it is its brevity; it is little more than an essay. It leaves you wanting more. Perhaps there is sense in this, as a meta-level comment on our theology of the Eucharist itself. But at times one feels that more could have been said. A clarifying comment here and there would have been helpful. But this is to a certain extent mere hair-splitting. It is a short book, but one which offers much food for thought, one to which we can return again and again as we contemplate the mysteries we celebrate.