Liturgical Music and the Restoration of the Sacred II

Rev. Robert A. Skeris

During the week preceding the feast of Saints Peter and Paul, 
Christendom College, in collaboration with the Church Music 
Association of America, sponsors annually a Liturgical Music 
Colloquium which brings together conductors, composers, pastors 
and organists from all over the country.  This piece was the 
keynote address of last year's Colloquium, as delivered on 25 June 
1992.

I

There are men and there are things; there are persons and there 
are objects.  There are also principalities and powers, there are 
thrones and dominations.  Theologians and moralists are familiar 
with virtues and vices; philosophers know qualities and modes of 
being.  But what is <musica sacra?>  What does "sacred" mean?

A recent response claims that "liturgical theology" knows 
liturgical art to be "appropriate only to the degree that it 
functions in support of sacred liturgical signs" (meaning, in the 
case of liturgical music, the "communitarian sign" of the liturgy, 
i.e. "our oneness in the Lord").  A practical conclusion is drawn 
from this postulate:  "Sacred music should only sustain the 
continuity of the voices during worship."  If it does not do so, 
it is "inappropriate to the liturgy and is then not sacred."  In a 
manner which evokes faded memories of the old Society of St. 
Gregory and its "lists" white and black, proponents of this view 
pinpoint a lack of analysis as the reason why the standards for 
judging music to be sacred "are only restrictive," and hence not 
useful as guides:  "they help you selectively eliminate songs but 
do not show which to include."1

It is always helpful to begin formulating a reply on the basis of 
concrete facts, of phaenomena, of what presents itself to our 
senses.  Let us therefore try to "approach the things themselves" 
as they are given, and examine the way they constitute themselves 
in the consciousness and intentions of the perceiver.

_ Rome, Piazza della Rotonda, 1973.  The church of Sta. Maria 
Rotonda, popularly known as the Pantheon.  Seeking temporary 
respite from the glare of the midday sun, people wander in and 
out, deep in conversation but filled with curiosity.  Not a few 
continue to smoke their cigarettes to the end, or to light up a 
new one.  And when one of them is told:  Please, no smoking here.  
We are in a church!  He replies in amazement, Why is this a 
church?  (The architectural form alone is, of course, not enough 
to answer the question convincingly.)  And then, after a moment's 
pause, the final question:  Even if it were a real church _ why 
not smoke?

_ Treptow, a suburb of East Berlin, 1981.  We are all admonished 
to extinguish our smoking materials at the entrance to the huge 
memorial park dedicated to the fallen soldiers of the Red Army.

_ Israel, very recently, and very discreetly but quite firmly:  
the same thing happens again.  In the hotel restaurant, as 
American tourists at the next table take out their after-dinner 
cigarettes:  No smoking, please!  But why not?  Here and now, of 
course, not for the sake of the <place> but because of the <time>:  
it is Friday evening, the Sabbath has begun. . . .

In none of these cases does purposefulness or prevention play a 
part, as it would in a college lecture room or a hospital 
operating theatre.  The danger of fire is not a factor in these 
examples, as it is during an airliner landing or take-off.  These 
instances, finally, do not contain a general rejection of smoking, 
as though it were something to be forbidden in principle.

But in Rome, in Berlin and in Tel Aviv there <was> a common 
factor, namely the circumstance that in each case a limit or 
frontier was to be made evident and recalled to mind _ a boundary 
line which distinguishes and separates a special place and a non-
ordinary period of time from the arbitrary, run-of-the-mill 
"Somewhere" or "Anytime."

From everyone who crosses the threshold into this "other" area 
there is expected a type of behaviour which differs from his 
otherwise normal conduct.2  Whoever enters a mosque or the walled 
enclosure of an Indian temple, must remove his shoes.  And in the 
case of the Indian temple the limitations can be so strict that 
the non-Hindu will be forbidden to enter the innermost sanctuary.  
In Christian churches, gentlemen remove their hats, as they do 
before an open grave, or when the national anthem is sung.  By 
contrast, the believing Jew <covers> his head, not only in the 
synagogue but wherever he prays.  (If you go to visit the grave of 
Moses Maimonides at Tiberias and do not wear a cap or a hat, the 
custodian will deny you entrance.)

In cultic areas, in spaces reserved for worship, it is above all 
silence which prevails; loud calls and laughter at any rate are 
considered reprehensible.  Tourists are denied entrance to the 
great basilicas of Rome if they are clothed in an all too 
unconcerned fashion.  And at such temples one is accustomed to 
regard with mistrust the instruments of public curiosity:  
photography is forbidden, at least during divine services in many 
Christian churches.  And the same is true in the temples of 
orthodox Hinduism.  The Pueblo Indians of New Mexico are offended 
when camera-carrying tourists even approach the entrance to their 
underground cultic chambers.

Now, if a stranger, an outsider, a non-initiate were to ask what 
all these curious and often difficult rules of conduct were 
supposed to mean, he would probably hear, in spite of all the 
concrete differences in detail, the same basic answer in each 
case:  the meaning of all this is simply to attest and express 
reverence and respect.  Reverence for what?  For something _ in 
any event _ which demands and deserves respect and veneration.  
And when we try to specify more precisely the exact nature of that 
which is worthy of veneration, then we encounter the difficulty of 
reducing the various replies to a common denominator.  But the 
answers would nonetheless converge on a common indication of 
something which is (or should be) in some sense "sacred" to men, 
whether that be the "grim majesty of death," or the dignity of the 
fatherland, or the honour of fallen war heroes _ or indeed the 
especially concentrated presence of the Divine _ in fact of God 
Himself.

The conviction common to all of these replies is the existence, 
within the world as man experiences it within the boundaries of 
time and space, of certain pre-eminent places and periods of time 
which plainly stand forth above and beyond the level of everyday 
normality because they are of a special and exceptional dignity.

The selective de-limitatio of something exceptionally worthy of 
veneration is the clear and original meaning of the apposite 
vocabulary still in use today.  <Hagios>, for instance, the Greek 
word for "sacred," implies opposition to <koinós> (the "average," 
common, usual).  And the piece of ground belonging to the gods, 
upon which the altar or the temple is built, is termed <to 
temenos>, that which has been cut off or "carved out" of the total 
property which otherwise belongs to the community.  In Latin the 
verb <sancire> (the root of "sanctus" = sacred, holy) means to 
limit, circumscribe, draw a boundary around:  for the ancient 
Romans, the term <sanctio>/sanction originally denoted the de-
limitation of sacred places and their protection against 
transgression and profane contact.

Contemporary vernacular usage is of a piece with the classical 
roots.  Sacre is that which belongs to an <ordre des choses 
separes>; the OED says that one of the meanings of "sacred" is _ 
"set apart."  The term "sacred," then, refers to a special 
<dignity> or <pre-eminence> which rises above the continuum of 
everyday normality, which is precisely "ab-normal" and clearly 
marked off as distinct from the usual, the customary, the normal.  
And such dignity quite rightly demands from men special forms of 
respect . . . simply because certain empirically ascertainable 
objects, spaces, times and actions possess the special 
characteristic of being ordered to the divine level or sphere in a 
manner which exceeds the normal and the average.  And it is on the 
basis of this exceptional ordination to the supra-human level, of 
this precisely uncommon and exceptional "fulness" or concentration 
of the divine Presence that we can comprehend the boundary or 
limit which divides and separates that which is "sacred" in this 
sense, from the "pro-fane."  "Profane" simply means that which is 
precisely "un-exceptional," which belongs to the realm of the 
normal, the average, the everyday; "profane" does not necessarily 
mean "unholy" (even though the specifically "Un-Holy" does in fact 
exist, representing the acme of "profanity").  Thus we can say 
with a certain justification that <all> bread is "holy" (because 
created by God, nourishment of human life) or that <every> piece 
of earth is "consecrated ground," and so forth.  Expressions such 
as these do not call into question the existence of a completely 
unique kind of "holy bread" or of "consecrated ground" in a 
literally incomparable sense of that word.  And so we can agree 
with the sentence of Aquinas, confirmed by ethnology and the 
philosophy of religion as well as the theological interpretation 
of testaments Old and New: something is sacred (<sacrum>) on the 
strength of its ordination toward cultic worship, <ad cultum 
divinum.>3

The available evidence, when analysed, allows us to conclude that 
if a special presence of the Divine is to be found anywhere in 
man's historical world, it is to be found in its most concentrated 
form in a sacred ritual <action>, and because of their 
relationship to this sacred <action>, persons, places, times and 
objects are also called "sacred."4

But what is an <actio praecellenter sacra?>  It is simply the 
accomplishment of an action, a rite, performed by a community in a 
non-ordinary way.5  Let us be very precise:  we are speaking here 
of the celebration of the Eucharistic mysteries during which there 
occurs the Exceptional <par excellence>, the uncommon and 
extraordinary in the absolute sense of those words _ God's 
physical presence among men under the forms of bread and wine.  
The meaning of this divine Presence for man is precisely <rapi> _ 
to be enraptured, carried up and away beyond the Here and Now.6  
And nothing could be more obvious to a man of faith than to act 
"differently" within such a circumscribed context, "differently" 
than he acts otherwise, on the tennis courts, for instance, or at 
the supermarket.  One speaks a language which is obviously human 
but yet "different;" "special," somehow, in delivery, in style, in 
diction and grammar, in vocabulary.

II

What then of the <musica sacra> which forms an integral part of 
this <actio praecellenter sacra>?  What must its distinctive 
characteristics be?  Will it sound, for example, like ordinary, 
everyday pop music to which more or less "pious" texts have been 
joined?  Will it sound like common, everyday entertainment music? 
like a more or less inconspicuous background accompaniment for 
toothpaste commercials?  Romano Guardini has reminded us that the 
foundation of any liturgical formation or education is the ancient 
truth that the soul in-forms the body:  <anima forma corporis.>7  
Comprehension of this truth is the key which unlocks the world of 
the Sacred, for it enables us to grasp what is meant by a symbol.  
It is not necessary to be a Christian in order to understand what 
is meant by a "sign"; but he who does not know what a "sign" is, 
cannot comprehend a sacrament.

Is it rash to ask whether one of the reasons for the decline of 
the Sacred is the fact that the Christian "sacred myth" (i.e. the 
Gospels) is being weakened, doubted and attacked?  For a long 
time, we have been told that the evidence of the New Testament 
must be reconsidered in light of the new "historical sense."  
Indeed, the evidential value of the Bible as a whole is to be 
examined anew, it is claimed, "in light of that analytical 
criticism which has no parallel for acuteness of investigation, 
carefulness of method, and completeness of apparatus, since the 
days of our blessed Lord's life on earth" (Ch. Gore).  Now, if 
this fresh study results in disbelief in the "sacred tale," it 
follows that the Christian "sacred object" will no longer seem so, 
and that the God-Man Jesus Christ is neither mediator nor object 
of the <sacrum>.  And when the believer is no longer conscious of 
a connexion between the human world and a higher realm, where 
everything refers to everything else and many levels are 
interrelated in a meaningful way which links man's microcosm to 
the macrocosm of the Transcendent, then it should come as no 
surprise if in a desacralised world, the abandoned altars 
eventually become the dwelling of demons (E. Jünger).

The analysis can be taken a step further.  When the divinity of 
Jesus Christ was denied by rationalist critics, it did not take 
long for the Eucharist to come under fire.  In 1891 Ad. Harnack 
announced that at the Last Supper the Saviour was primarily 
interested in the meal itself:  it was the meal that Jesus 
blessed, and in so doing He taught His followers to sanctify the 
most important act of physical life.  He also promised to be with 
them in future, at every meal which they would henceforth share in 
remembrance of Him.8  Thus Harnack a century ago.

And so it seems like old whine in New Age wine skins when tired 
voices, re-echoing the past, continue to entice the unsuspecting 
down the same sorry path which leads from the main line to the old 
line to the sideline.  Thus the authors of a recent and widely 
hailed catechism explicitly call upon the Church to abandon the 
term "sacrifice" as a specification of the content of the 
Eucharistic celebration.  In its place, the aspect of "meal" or 
"banquet" is to be emphasised.  "The determining structure is that 
of the meal."  The Eucharistic Sacrifice is thus to be understood 
as a meal:  "In the Eucharist the memory of Christ's suffering is 
celebrated in the form of a meal. . . .  It is the basic form of 
the Eucharistic sacrifice" (Schmaus).

Divergence of views regarding the relation between the dogmatic 
and liturgical levels of the question has quite rightly been 
called the "central problem" of the <accomodata renovatio in 
liturgicis> (J. Ratzinger).  Why has Christian art always pictured 
the Last Supper as a tragic event and not a joyous repast?  Is it 
not true that "sacrifice" and "meal" are two concepts which cannot 
be equated with each other?  Are they not in fact essentially (and 
not just externally) contrary human psychological processes?

The essence of a <sacrifice> is the freedom of total giving made 
possible through self-denial:  <oblatus est quia ipse voluit> (Is 
53:7).  Every sacrifice, including Holy Mass insofar as it is 
identical with the sacrifice of Calvary, necessarily implies 
<merit> and consequently <moral freedom> as a necessary pre-
condition of any merit, hence also logically presupposing 
<suffering> or self-denial as the necessary condition of freedom.  
In other words, meritoriousness is the necessary consequence, 
freedom an essential element, and suffering or self-denial the 
necessary pre-supposition of sacrifice.  No sacrifice is possible 
without suffering or self-denial, hence no Sacrifice of the Mass 
without the sacramental re-presentation of suffering.  And 
precisely here lies the fundamental contradiction between 
sacrifice and meal:  in the participants, they imply _ nay, 
require! _ psychological states of mind which are mutually 
exclusive.

It would mean delivering dogs to Bautzen if one were to attempt to 
explain the role of a meal as source of joy in Holy Writ.  Suffice 
it to recall the fact that in the preaching of Jesus, the banquet 
or meal is a preferred symbol for the joys and glories of Heaven.  
There is in fact an inseparable link between meal and joy, between 
eating and enjoyment, between <usus cibi et potus> and 
<delectatio.>9  There is no meal or banquet without enjoyment, 
without a <delectatio> of the senses.

Some therefore claim that since the Eucharist is a memorial not 
only of the Saviour's death but also of His Resurrection, it makes 
us share in the triumphant life of the Risen Lord and hence 
implies an atmosphere of joy.  But it is quite clear that the 
"memorial" concentrates primarily and directly on the Last Supper 
and on the Passion, of which the Eucharist is one moment.10

The Sacrament of the Eucharist is received and eaten because food 
and drink better symbolise the specific effects of the grace of 
this Sacrament.  The Eucharist is both sacrifice (insofar as it is 
offered) and sacrament (insofar as it is received).11  The Church 
offers up the Mass, for it is a sacrifice; but Holy Communion is a 
food, a gift, a privilege, something not offered but enjoyed.  The 
real distinction between Sacrifice and Sacrament is to be sought 
in the contrary aspects of suffering and joy, though in a 
sacrifice, suffering plays a different role than does joy in the 
case of a meal.  Suffering is a necessary <pre-condition> of the 
sacrifice, whereas joy is a necessary <consequence> of a meal.  To 
summarise:  a meal <as meal> cannot be a sacrifice, and a 
sacrifice <as sacrifice> cannot be a meal.  To represent one "in 
the form of" the other is to present a tragedy "in the form of" a 
comedy, or to depict a circle "in the form of" a square.  In 
liturgico-musical terms:  if Holy Mass is indeed a sacrifice, an 
<actio praecellenter sacra,> then one of its integral and 
necessary parts will be a music which is also sacra.  But if a 
fraternal meal is actually being celebrated, then very different 
music will be appropriate . . . a "polka Mass," for instance.

During the <ad limina> visit of the Brazilian bishops of Pastoral 
region Sul-I, on 20 March 1990, Pope John Paul II made these 
significant remarks:

Legitimate and necessary concern for current realities in the 
concrete lives of people cannot make us forget <the true nature of 
the liturgical actions.>  It is clear that the Mass is not the 
time to "celebrate" human dignity or purely terrestrial claims or 
hopes.  It is rather the <sacrifice> which renders Christ really 
present in the <sacrament.>

This concise statement of Catholic belief really requires no 
further comment.  The competent Kapellmeister, who in recent 
decades has often enough felt the lashes of Rehoboam, need only 
draw the logical conclusions in his daily liturgico-musical 
practise. . . .

III

But this, you say, is one step removed from reality.  If that be 
so in truth, then it may be that all of us must steel ourselves to 
persevere among the "sole retrievers of an ancient prudence."  
Those whose names are writ large, in golden letters, in the 
Calendar of Saints of the new age, in fact resemble nothing more 
closely than the tired knight who sees a recognition of his steed 
and a guarantee of his own knightly existence in the fact that 
modern technologies of energy are still often measured in . . . 
horse-power.

It is understandable that today, both the competent Kapellmeister 
and the legitimate liturgist often feel like Benito Cereno, like 
one who finds himself, according to Herman Melville's late 
novella, in the situation of that unlucky captain whom the 
guileless and the good-natured assume to be the master of a pirate 
vessel.  In reality, however, Benito Cereno was a hostage in 
danger of death; his veiled hints and discreet indications were 
not understood by his well-meaning visitor, who was instead 
strengthened in his mistrust.  Has Benito Cereno perhaps become in 
fact a symbol for the situation of many a man in the midst of an 
<ecclesia in mundo hujus temporis> ruled by increasingly neoteric 
tendencies and antilatreutic orientations?  <Nostra res agitur! > 
It behooves us to work while the light lasts, so that the 
<Ecclesia orans> will not have to cross the threshold of the Third 
Millennium with empty hands and ears ringing to the faint echoes 
of the ancient laughter of Gelimer, King of the Vandals.  Let us 
therefore continue to do the best things in the worst times, and 
to hope them in the most calamitous.  <In mundo pressuram 
habebitis, sed confidite, ego vici mundum.>  In the world ye shall 
have tribulation, but be of good cheer:  I have overcome the world 
(Joh 16:33).

ENDNOTES

1 R. Dobbs, letter to the Editor of Homiletic & Pastoral Review 
92/9 (June 1992) 3.

2 J. Pieper, "Entsakralisierung?" (Zürich 1970) 7/32.  The 
succeeding paragraphs are indebted to Pieper's analysis.

3 Sum. Theol. II-IIae q. 99 a. 1.

4 Ordo Missae, editio typica:  Institutio Generalis Missalis 
Romani (Cittá del Vaticano 1969) 60, #256 = sacras aedes; 62 #260 
= locum sacrum; 65 #280 = sacras actiones; 67 #289 = vasa sacra; 
68 #297 = cultu sacro, sacrae vestes, etc.  See also Sacrosanctum 
Concilium art. 7 (actio praecellenter sacra).

5 See B. Droste, "Celebrare" in the Language of the Roman Liturgy 
(München 1963) 196.

6 See e.g. the Christmas Preface ("in invisibilium amorem 
rapiamur") which anciently served as the Preface <par excellence> 
of the Blessed Sacrament.

7 See R. Guardini, Der Kultakt und die gegenwartige Aufgabe der 
Liturgie:  Liturgie und liturgische Bildung (Würzburg 1966) 38 f.

8 A. Harnack, Brod und Wasser:  die eucharistische Elemente bei 
Justin (Leipzig 1891).  See the discussion of this and other 
theories by A. Piolanti (tr. L. Penzo), The Holy Eucharist (New 
York 1961) 17/22, 97/8 on the erroneous view that sacrifice is 
only a meal taken in common by a group of men for the purpose of 
strengthening their social and religious bonds.  In fact, "the 
Eucharistic table sunders man from sin and draws him close to God 
by sanctifying _ which is to say by <sacrificing> _ him."

9 Sum. Theol. II-IIae q. 141 a. 5.

10 Thus R. Amerio, Iota unum. Studio delle variazioni della Chiesa 
cattolica nel secolo XX (Milano 1986) 502 and note 11.

11 Sum. Theol. III q. 79 a. 5.

Rev. Robert A. Skeris is a priest of the Archdiocese of Milwaukee 
who took his Dr.theol. degree from the University of Bonn, 
Germany.  Author of three books on the theology of worship and of 
its music, he presently serves as Chairman of the Theology 
Department at Christendom College.

This article was taken from the Fall 1992 issue of "Faith & 
Reason". Subscriptions available from Christendom Press, 2101 
Shenandoah Shores Road, Ft. Royal, VA 22630, 703-636-2900, Fax 
703-636-1655. Published quarterly at $20.00 per year.

Copyright (c) 1996 EWTN

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