Liturgical reform and the custodians of tradition
Pope Francis has declared that the liturgical books promulgated by Paul VI and John Paul II are the unique expression of the ‘lex orandi’ of the Roman Rite. The application of this principle is entrusted in every diocese to the local bishop, who will, at the same time, provide for the good of those who are rooted in the previous form of celebration. The role of the bishop is to be ‘traditionis custos’, ‘a custodian of tradition’. But what is ‘tradition’ and what does it mean to exercise ‘custodianship’? A recently ordained bishop suggests we see the Pope’s ‘motu proprio’ as an invitation to reflect on what it means to live, as Catholics, with tension
Lumen Gentium, the Second Vatican Council’s Constitution on the
Church, describes the office of a bishop by means of several beautiful
titles. If you happen to be a bishop, they are also pretty intimidating.
You are, you are told, a “shepherd of the Church” (n. 18), a “successor
of the Apostles” (n. 18), “the visible principle and foundation of
unity” in your diocese (n. 23), “the steward of the grace of the supreme
priesthood” (n. 26) and much else besides. In Traditionis Custodes, his
motu proprio on the use of the Roman Liturgy prior to the reform of
1970, the Holy Father stressed a further epithet. He reminded us that a
bishop is also traditionis custos, “a custodian of tradition”.
For
that definition, I, a novice bishop, am grateful. It is tempting, when
ordained as a bishop, to think that much depends on you. Pope Francis
reminds us that this is not the case. A bishop is but a link in a long,
long chain which goes by the name of “tradition”. This word is a noun of
agency. In Latin, traditio indicates the act of passing something on. A
bishop charged with custodianship of tradition must ensure that
transmission continues. He looks back with attention, gratitude and
grace to receive what is handed on to him; he looks forward expectantly,
wishing to convey, undiminished, the treasure with which he has been
momentarily entrusted.
“Undiminished” is not a synonym for “unchanged”; still, caution is
called for. I must not reduce universal patrimony to a product merely of
my preference. When Vatican II urged us, with what I’d presume to call
Cistercian emphasis, to return to the sources, it was with a view to
restoring fullness where particular choices had issued in constraint and
made broad places narrow. To live, work, and pray as the Council taught
is to be like Isaac, that mysterious patriarch. He left few words for
the record, worked few monumental acts. Still, his example is notable.
Unconcerned to leave a mark of his own, “Isaac dug again the wells of
water which had been dug in the days of Abraham his father; for the
Philistines had stopped them after the death of Abraham; and he gave
them the names which his father had given them” (Genesis 26:18).
Restoring access to paternal wells, he made sure his children could
drink.
I think often of an incident in the life of Giovanni
Battista Montini, later Pope, now Saint, Paul VI. Having been appointed
to the see of Milan, Montini had an audience with Pius XII. As the two
men took leave, the ageing, ailing pope gave the new archbishop this
counsel: “Depositum custodi”. It is a phrase of substance. The notion of
the depositum fidei is ancient. It refers to the fullness of faith
contained in both Scripture and Tradition; it stands for that without
which Christianity would not be itself. It is not a static notion. The
deposit will find ever new ways of expressing itself. It speaks many
languages. It is able to assume different cultural forms. To find its
most authentically christophorous articulation here and now is a
challenge for each generation of believers. What matters is this: not to
reduce it to less than itself.
Montini succeeded Cardinal
Schuster to the see of Milan in 1954. It was a time of turmoil and
uncertainty. Of this, Pius XII was more aware than most. He did not tell
Montini to be a broken record – to keep mouthing old truths in old
ways. He knew that searching intellect, that sensitive priest, too well.
What he told him was: go and pastor your variegated, scattered flock;
find words and gestures they are apt to understand, but do not
compromise; have confidence that the deposit entrusted to you from of
old will contain the germ of the answers you need to address the
questions of today; live out of that deposit, dig into it, and deeply.
This was how Montini explained the Pope’s words in his inaugural
address, which pointed to the millennial tradition of the Church as a
source of ever new relevance and originality.
These days there is a tendency abroad that seeks to reduce
“tradition” to a term of partisanship, something one can be either for
or against. It makes no sense. The moment I look upon “tradition” as an
object, a possession within my grasp (whether to reject or jealously to
preserve it), I reduce a living process to a thing. I assign myself the
task of an antiquarian charged with granting or rejecting preservation
orders. That is quite different from being a custodian. There is a
beautiful line in the Church’s compline hymn. It asks the Maker of all
things, ut solita clementia sis præsul ad custodiam. Custody is a
function of constancy in clemency. To exercise it is not to lag behind
but to go ahead. The word “praesul”, often rendered “protector”,
literally means “someone who leaps or dances in front”, like David
before the Ark (2 Samuel 6:14ff.). There must be humble energy in
custodianship, and grateful joy. Careful of what lies behind, it makes
us fit to move forward.
It goes without saying that all will not
always agree on how to negotiate tradition. There is room for
respectful, constructive dispute. There always has been. Part of what
makes the Church catholic is its capacity to sustain tension, to wait
for apparent antitheses to be resolved – by grace, in charity, not by
compromise – in synthesis. We struggle with this aspect of Catholicism
today. Why? Partly because the pace of life has made us too impatient to
give any process at all the time it needs to work. Partly because we
fall prey to the peculiarly twenty-first-century, self-aggrandising
delusion, which assumes that our times are categorically different from
all other times and so ever call for categorically new measures. We
could do with re-reading Ecclesiastes. And with remembering a lesson or
two from Church history. One such was offered us recently by the
liturgical calendar.
On 13 August we had the option of keeping
the memoria of Sts Pontian and Hippolytus. Not all Catholics will have a
spontaneous devotion to these two. It is a pity. They have a great deal
to teach us. Pontian was bishop of Rome 230-35. The Church’s outward
position then was fragile, imperial tolerance intermittent. Within, it
was riven by disagreements to do with Origen. That incomparable
theologian had been condemned by two Alexandrian councils whose edicts
Pontian approved. There was strife, too, about forgiveness of sin. Are
there people irreparably beyond the pale on account of acts they have
committed, whether of moral failing or connected with apostasy? The
popes increasingly envisaged reconciliation to communion through
penitence. This policy sparked strong responses.
Chief among the critics was the priest Hippolytus. Philippe
Levillain’s distinguished dictionary of papal history refers to him as a
“traditionalist”. Hippolytus was soaked in Greek thought. Origen, who
heard him preach, admired him. Hippolytus deplored what he saw as lax,
thoughtless attitudes on the part of the hierarchical Church. Gradually
he mobilised an alternative communion. Whether he was in fact, as is
sometimes claimed, an “anti-pope” remains a moot point; but he was
certainly a thorn in the side of Rome’s legitimate bishop.
When,
in March 235, Maximinus the Thracian acceded to the imperial throne, he
wished to undermine the Christian presence in Rome. A convenient way to
do so, he thought, would be to deprive the Church of its heads. He
recognised two: Pontian and Hippolytus. So he had them both arrested and
packed off to hard labour in the Sardinian mines. There, the two old
opponents were reconciled. Both recognised the other’s Christian
sincerity notwithstanding differing opinions on particular matters.
Pontian, sensing he would not live long on account of the treatment
meted out to him, abdicated his office, the first pope to do so. He died
in October 235. Hippolytus died not long after. Within a year or two
Pope Fabian had their bodies brought back to Rome. The Church honours
both men as martyrs: we celebrate them with red vestments, within a
single feast, as if the testimony of one would be incomplete without the
other. The collect for the Feast of Sts Pontian and Hippolytus offers
wholesome food for meditation, perhaps also for self-examination:
“Patientia pretiosa iustorum tuæ nobis, Domine, quæsumus, affectum
dilectionis accumulet, et in cordibus nostris sacræ fidei semper
exerceat firmitatem.”
“May the precious patience [a word within
which the Latin root ‘passio’ is embedded] of the righteous, Lord,
increase in us a heartfelt attachment to your love; and may it at all
times exercise our hearts to firmness in holy faith.”
Erik Varden, the former Abbot of Mt St Bernard Abbey in Leicestershire, was ordained as Bishop-Prelate of the Catholic Territorial Prelature of Trondheim in Norway on 3 October 2020. He is the author of The Shattering of Loneliness (Bloomsbury, £12.99; Tablet price, £11.69) and blogs at www.coramfratribus.com.
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