Garrigou-Lagrange on the Three Stages of Maturity in a Theologian's Career

Garrigou-Lagrange on the Three Stages of Maturity in a Theologian's Career

From Garrigou-Lagrange, The Mother of the Saviour and Our Interior Life, preface:

This book is intended to be an exposition of the principal theses of Mariology in their bearing on our interior life. While writing it I have noticed more than once how often it has happened that a theologian admitted some prerogative of Our Lady in his earlier years under the influence of piety and admiration of her dignity. A second period then followed when the doctrinal difficulties came home to him more forcefully, and he was much more reserved in his judgement. Finally there was the third period, when, having had time to study the question in its positive and speculative aspects, he returned to his first position, not now because of his sentiment of piety and admiration, but because his more profound understanding of Tradition and theology revealed to him that the measure of the things of God—and in a special way those things of God which affect Mary—is more overflowing than is commonly understood. If the masterpieces of human art contain unsuspected treasures, the same must be said, with even more reason, of God’s masterpieces in the orders of nature and grace, especially when they bear an immediate relation to the Hypostatic Order, which is constituted by the mystery of the Incarnation of the Word. I have endeavoured to show how these three periods may be found exemplified in the process of St Thomas’ teaching on the Immaculate Conception. 

These periods bear a striking analogy to three others in the affective order. It has often been noticed that a soul’s first affective stage may be one of sense-perceptible devotion, for example to the Sacred Heart or the Blessed Virgin. This is followed by a stage of aridity. Then comes the final stage of perfect spiritual devotion, overflowing on the sensibility. May the Good God help the readers of this book who wish to learn of the greatness of the Mother of God and men to understand in what this spiritual progress consists.

Cf. Did Aquinas Deny the Immaculate Conception?  Garrigou-Lagrange on the three periods in the life of St. Thomas as to his teaching on this subject.

St. Thomas: We Catholics Do Adore Images

St. Thomas: We Catholics Do Adore Images

Adapted from Francisco J. Romero Carrasquillo, "Aquinas’ Reception of John of Damascus’ Philosophy of Religious Worship," (forthcoming).  

You can download the original paper (draft) from my Academia.edu page.

Protestants have always accused Catholics of "worshipping images."  The standard response of Catholic apologists is simply to deny the charge, and instead respond that we really just 'venerate' the images.  This type of response is not only grossly insufficient, but actually runs afoul of the language of our tradition, as expressed in the writings of the saints.  For example, a Protestant can easily search through St. Thomas and find him saying that we do adore images.  When a Protestant brings this up to an untrained Catholic apologist, the apologist usually has nothing intelligent to say in reply.

In order to solve this puzzle, let's do what we do best: "Go to Thomas" (Ite ad Thomam).

According to St. Thomas, the first and most important of the exterior acts of religion (religio), i.e., of the virtue of worship (ST IIa-IIae, q. 81-100) is that of ‘adoration’ (adoratio).  The terminology here can be misleading.  We might be inclined to think of 'adoration' as simply being synonymous with ‘worship’, the kind of reverence that is reserved to God alone.  But Aquinas, who in this regard simply follows the received tradition, together with its complex and sophisticated theological language, already has a particular Latin term for divine worship, namely, látria (from the Greek, λατρεία, latréia).  Adoratio for Aquinas means concretely any kind of a physical humbling of the body, such as genuflections, prostrations, bowing down, etc., before something sacred or something that is worthy of respect or veneration.  As such, adoratio signifies primarily a physical act comprising a set of bodily postures.  Within the context of divine worship, these acts of adoratio are of course done as signs of an interior attitude of latria, but in themselves they are physical acts.  This is how it can be explained why we find St. Thomas saying that Catholics can and should 'adore' images.  

But the problem is deeper than that.  We actually find him saying that we should offer latria to images.  Yes, the worship due to God alone, should be given to images.  Why?

One of the most important practical points that St. Thomas makes in Christology is that Christ’s humanity, though in itself created, is deserving of the ‘adoration of latria’ in virtue of its Hypostatic or Personal Union with the Second Person of the Trinity: “the adoration of latria is not given to Christ’s humanity by reason of itself, but by reason of divinity to which it is united.”[i]  This is in contrast to the ‘adoration of dulia’, which is the kind of veneration given to the Saints and their relics, and that of hyperdulia, which is given to the Mother of God.

Yet, perhaps surprisingly, the humanity of Christ is not the only creature which is in some way deserving of latria.  There are other created things that are formally associated with Christ's humanity and thus are themselves deserving of latria (without this entailing the sin of idolatry): these are the true Cross of Christ—the actual historical instrument of Christ’s passion—as well as any image or icon of Christ.  By ‘icons’ or images we mean any pictorial representation of Christ, or of the Cross of Christ, whether in fresco form, or mosaics, “made of colors, pebbles, any other material that is fit, set in the holy churches of God, on holy utensils and vestments, on walls and boards, in houses and in streets,” in the words of the Second Council of Nicaea (AD 787), which addressed the issue of Iconoclasm, the anti-icon heresy that crept into the Church due to nascent Islam's hatred of religious imagery.[iv]

And interestingly, in another text, Aquinas relies again on St. John Damascene for a quote by St. Basil on this point. “Damascene quotes Basil as saying: ‘The honor given to an image reaches to the prototype,’ that is, the exemplar. But the exemplar itself, namely, Christ, is to be adored with the adoration of latria; therefore also His image.”[v]  What follows this quote is a remarkable text, where Aquinas uses Aristotelian semiotics as a basic premise to address to the issue on his own terms:

As the Philosopher says in the book De Memoria et Reminiscentia, there is a twofold movement of the mind towards an image: one indeed towards the image itself as a certain thing; another, towards the image insofar as it is the image of something else. And between these movements there is this difference; that the former, by which one is moved towards an image as a certain thing, is different from the movement towards the thing: whereas the latter movement, which is towards the image as an image, is one and the same as that which is towards the thing. Thus therefore we must say that no reverence is shown to Christ’s image, as a thing, for instance, carved or painted wood: because reverence is not due save to a rational creature. It follows therefore that reverence should be shown to it only insofar as it is an image. Consequently the same reverence should be shown to Christ’s image as to Christ Himself. Since, therefore, Christ is adored with the adoration of latria, it follows that His image should be adored with the adoration of latria.[vi]

In other words, we can think of an image in two ways: as a thing in itself, or as a sign.  When we think of it as a thing in itself, we do not necessarily treat it as we treat the object of which it is a sign, but when we do think of it as a sign, we treat it in the same way as we treat the object of which it is a sign.  For example, if I look at a picture of my wife, it is entirely reasonable for me to point to the picture and say “I love her.”  No one would think that what I mean is that I love the picture itself, qua inanimate object.  All of my affection in this case is directed at the person of my wife, almost as though the picture were not involved.  I do not give the picture itself a different kind of love from the love I give my wife.  To paraphrase Basil and Damascene, my attitude towards the image is directed at the exemplar.  Hence, it matters not whether I point to the picture and say “I love her” or actually point to my wife and say “I love her”: it is the same love that is expressed in both cases.  Aquinas is saying that similarly, in the case of religious worship, it matters not whether the latria given to Christ is given to Him directly or by means of an image or icon: it is latria all the same.  The worship given is not directed at the image in itself as a thing, but to Christ through the image, the latter being only a sign that leads the mind to Christ. 

Given this doctrine on the adoration of images, Aquinas has now the trouble of explaining why, even though in the Hebrew Scriptures the use of images was forbidden in worship, the prohibition nonetheless no longer applies since the coming of Christ.  He cannot simply claim that the prohibition is only of adoring images, and that Christians only venerate them, as many contemporary Christians would argue.  Rather, he is committed to the doctrine that images of Christ are deserving of latria.  His response focuses instead on the doctrine of the twofold movement of the mind towards an image, affirming that whereas in the case of Old Testament idolatry, the adoration of images was adoration of the gods of the gentiles, where since the coming of Christ the adoration of images is of God Himself made man.

[B]ecause, as was said above, the movement towards the image is the same as the movement towards the thing, adoration of images is forbidden in the same way as adoration of the thing whose image it is.  Therefore here we are to understand the prohibition to adore those images which the Gentiles made for the purpose of venerating their own gods.... But no corporeal image could be made of the true God Himself, since He is incorporeal; because, as Damascene says, “It is the highest absurdity and impiety to make a figure of what is Divine.” But because in the New Testament, God was made man, He can be adored in His corporeal image.[vii]

In other words, according to Aquinas, the great difference between the Judaism and Christianity in regards to the adoration of images is that in Judaism, God cannot be represented in imagery because God is strictly incorporeal, but in Christianity God is believed to have taken human flesh and it is therefore possible not only to represent Him, but also to worship him, through imagery.

A few points on the reception of this doctrine in later Catholic theology are in order here.  This analysis of the use of images in worship, which Aquinas shares not only with Damascene, but also with other prominent 13^th Century sources such as Albert, Bonaventure, and the Summa Fratris Alexandri, is not standard within modern Catholic theology.  Later Catholic theologians such as Bellarmine, Bossuet, and Petavius taught that the proper attitude due to religious images is not that of latria, but a veneration along the lines of dulia.[viii]  And this latter opinion has become a commonplace in contemporary Catholic theology, catechesis, and especially apologetics.  And yet, rather inconsistently, John Damascene and Aquinas are still frequently used as reference points on the issue.  For example, the Catechism of the Catholic Church (AD 1992) teaches that “[t]he honor paid to sacred images is a ‘respectful veneration’ (reverens veneratio), not the adoration (adoratio) due to God alone.”[ix] Rather astonishingly, right after making this statement, the Catechism immediately quotes Aquinas' words for support:

The cultus of religio is not rendered to images as considered in themselves, as things, but insofar as they are images leading to God incarnate. Now the movement directed to an image insofar as it is an image does not stop at the image itself, but tends towards that of which it is an image.[x]

Although the quote in the Catechism ends here, the text of St. Thomas continues: “Hence neither latria nor the virtue of religion is differentiated by the fact that religious worship is paid to the images of Christ.”[xi]  Clearly, this text points to an account of the use of images in worship that is at odds with what the Catechism teaches in the preceding line, since the basic idea in this text of Aquinas is that the same latria is given to the image of Christ as to Christ Himself.

Some Thomists and commentators have used the language of ‘relative latria’, to describe the worship due to an image of Christ.  This terminology should not lead us to think that the latria offered to the image is of a different sort from the latria given to Christ.  The image is indeed being given latria in relation to Christ, Who is the terminus of the one movement of latria; but as Aquinas says, it is one movement of the mind that tends to both the image of Christ and to Christ Himself, one and the same latria being offered to both.

The take-home message is that we do adore images (i.e., we bow down to them, kneel before them, etc.).  But 'adoring' in this sense refers to just an exterior religious act.  The inner religious act that is expressed outwardly in adoration depends on what the image is of.  If the image is of Christ, then, yes, we give latria to the image; or more precisely, to Christ in the image.  We do not give latria to the image simply because it is an image, but because it is an image of Christ, the God-man.  And if the image is of a saint, then we give dulia to the image, or rather to the saint in the image.  And in the case of images of Our Lady, it is hyperdulia.  There is nothing wrong with doing this: it is the same movement of the mind that is directed to the image and to the person in the image.  Christ is thus deserving of the same latria, or worship, whether in person or in an image. To do otherwise would amount to a misuse of images.

So let us be traditional Catholics.  Let us not feel pressured by un-Catholic (ultimately Protestant) cultural sensibilities to miss the importance and value of Catholic iconography, religious sculpture, and sacred art in general.  Let us confidently adore Christ in our icons and statues.  And venerate our Saints in our images.  That is why these sacramentals fill our churches (or should fill them).   They are there as a powerful religious resource, and not as a 'mere symbol' or decoration.  The Church has so much confidence in them as powerful sacramentals, as "windows to heaven," that she dedicated a whole Ecumenical Council to defending them. 

The Eastern Churches have the beautiful tradition of celebrating this council, "The Triumph of Orthodoxy" as they call it, in their liturgies every year on the first Sunday of Great Lent by processing around their churches holding icons up high. It is quite a spectacle to behold.  Let us imitate them in defending the faith through these wonderful trophies of the Incarnation.

---

Notes:

[i] ST III.25.2 ad 1: “Adoratio latriae non exhibetur humanitati Christi ratione sui ipsius, sed ratione divinitatis cui unitur.”

[ii] Ibid. s.c.: “Adoratio latriae non exhibetur humanitati Christi ratione sui ipsius, sed ratione divinitatis cui unitur.”

[iii] Ibid., c.: “Sed quia, ut dicit Damascenus, si dividas subtilibus intelligentiis quod videtur ab eo quod intelligitur, inadorabilis est ut creatura, scilicet adoratione latriae. Et tunc sic intellectae ut separatae a Dei verbo, debetur sibi adoratio duliae, non cuiuscumque, puta quae communiter exhibetur aliis creaturis; sed quadam excellentiori, quam hyperduliam vocant.” 

[iv] Second Council of Nicaea (Denzinger 302 [600]; Mansi 12, 377D): “tam quae de coloribus et tessellis, quam quae ex alia materia congruenter in sanctis Dei ecclesiis, et sacris vasis et vestibus, et in parietibus ac tabulis, domibus et viis....”

[v] ST III.25.3 s.c.: “Damascenus inducit Basilium dicentem, imaginis honor ad prototypum pervenit, idest exemplar. Sed ipsum exemplar, scilicet Christus, est adorandus adoratione latriae. Ergo et eius imago.” 

[vi] ST III.25.3c: “Respondeo dicendum quod, sicut philosophus dicit, in libro de Mem. et Remin., duplex est motus animae in imaginem, unus quidem in imaginem ipsam secundum quod est res quaedam; alio modo, in imaginem inquantum est imago alterius. Et inter hos motus est haec differentia, quia primus motus, quo quis movetur in imaginem prout est res quaedam, est alius a motu qui est in rem, secundus autem motus, qui est in imaginem inquantum est imago, est unus et idem cum illo qui est in rem. Sic igitur dicendum est quod imagini Christi inquantum est res quaedam, puta lignum sculptum vel pictum, nulla reverentia exhibetur, quia reverentia debetur non nisi rationali naturae. Relinquitur ergo quod exhibeatur ei reverentia solum inquantum est imago. Et sic sequitur quod eadem reverentia exhibeatur imagini Christi et ipsi Christo. Cum igitur Christus adoretur adoratione latriae, consequens est quod eius imago sit adoratione latriae adoranda.” 

[vii] ST III.25.3 ad 1: “Et quia, sicut dictum est, idem est motus in imaginem et in rem, eo modo prohibetur adoratio quo prohibetur adoratio rei cuius est imago. Unde ibi intelligitur prohiberi adoratio imaginum quas gentiles faciebant in venerationem deorum suorum.... Ipsi autem Deo vero, cum sit incorporeus, nulla imago corporalis poterat poni, quia, ut Damascenus dicit, insipientiae summae est et impietatis figurare quod est divinum. Sed quia in novo testamento Deus factus est homo, potest in sua imagine corporali adorari.”

[viii] Cf. F. Cabrol, “The True Cross,” in The Catholic Encyclopedia, New York: Robert Appleton Company, 1908.    

[ix] Catechism of the Catholic Church, no. 2132: “Honor sanctis imaginibus tributus est reverens veneratio, non adoratio quae soli Deo convenit.”

[x] ST II-II.81.3 ad 3: “Imaginibus non exhibetur religionis cultus secundum quod in seipsis considerantur, quasi res quaedam: sed secundum quod sunt imagines ducentes in Deum incarnatum. Motus autem qui est in imaginem prout est imago, non sistit in ipsa, sed tendit in id cuius est imago.”

[xi] Ibid.: “Et ideo ex hoc quod imaginibus Christi exhibetur religionis cultus, non diversificatur ratio latriae, nec virtus religionis.”

Our Lady's Breasts, Pope Francis' Comment, and the Iceberg of Catholic Culture

Our Lady's Breasts, Pope Francis' Comment, and the Iceberg of Catholic Culture

First of all, I'd like to apologize for this post, which is really just a rant.  It's not on a speculative theological matter, so I cannot just rely on the scholastic method to deduce a solution to the problem.  It's a faith-based reflection on a real life problem that I have encountered in my journey as a traditional Catholic.  Most of my conversations with traditional Catholics, or with people who are just beginning their love affair with the traditional Mass, naturally tend to focus on doctrinal and liturgical matters.  Sadly, many 'trads' understand the concept of being a traditional Catholic in doctrinal and liturgical terms, and never see that, in the end, becoming a traditional Catholic is so much more than that, and has to do with culture.  As a philosopher, theologian, and scholar, I am used to deductive, demonstrative reasoning and I therefore often struggle to communicate this non-scholarly, existential idea in a convincing way to people.  

But a recent papal comment and the ensuing discussion in social media became an occasion for me to address this problem among traditional Catholics.  I must say that from time to time Pope Francis says or 'tweets' something that does resonate with me.  If this ever happens, it is usually on some very practical matter, not a doctrinal issue.  One example is his recent remark during a baptism on breastfeeding in church: "[S]ince the ceremony is a bit long, [and] someone cries because they are hungry... if so, you moms go ahead and breast-feed them without fear and as usual, just like Our Lady breast-fed Jesus."  

Granted, this is not a serious moral issue, like that having to do with the reception of Holy Communion by those in adulterous unions.  But to me, it is symptomatic of a much deeper problem.

Moreover, I must also admit that it is a prudential and culturally-contingent issue, so it is not easily settled through the science of ethics or moral theology. Although I stand firmly as a defender of traditional morality, the natural law, and moral objectivity---both in my teaching and in everyday conversation---I do think, with Aristotle and Aquinas, that not all concrete moral situations are settled by the first principles of practical reasoning.  There are some cultural and prudential matters that can only be decided on by letting the various circumstances, even cultural circumstances, seriously inform your choice.

So, this issue will inevitably be seen differently by people in different countries, and in different circles within the same country.  And because in practial matters there may be many correct ways of acting, even opposing views on the issue may be found to be reasonable.  

In this case, in Latin America for example there is a very strong sense among the general Catholic population---even many traditional Catholics---that breastfeeding is completely out of place in Church, that it is disrespectful, even indecent; whereas for example among traditional Catholics in the US, especially large families attending a TLM, no one would bat an eye over a mom nursing her baby, especially if done with a nursing cover.  Non-traditional Catholics in the US and Europe tend to lie somewhere in the middle.

Social media is abuzz over this issue, with lots of people, notably from Latin America, disapproving the practice as well as the Pope's remark.  Why would some Catholics, especially in some cultures, be so strongly opposed to this statement of the Pope, and generally opposed to the practice of nursing a baby in church? I think ultimately it is because they have let an anti-Catholic culture dominate their minds, perhaps without realizing it.  Culturally they have become unaccustomed to life, to the natural family, to the growing family.  

We often do that: we allow a new way of thinking creep into our minds, and unconsciously let it dictate how we think; not necessarily at the level of dogma, or at the level of first moral principles, but we let it influence our unexamined attitudes and sensibilities.  I have noticed this happen in other areas of life.  For example, in the last twenty years it is easily noticeable there has been a profound shift in the way people think about homosexuality.  I'm not talking about people who now are pro-homosexual marriage.  I'm talking about faithful Catholics who are against it, but who have nonetheless allowed the surrounding culture (or lack thereof) transform their attitude towards homosexuals.  They reject homosexual marriage, but their attitude towards homosexuals is now entirely different from the way it was twenty years ago: before, they thought of homosexuals as mentally-ill, perverted, and even dangerous people---nearly everybody did.  But now that homosexuals have fully revealed their social revolutionary agenda, and the media has campaigned in their favor, these people now have passively agreed to think of homosexuals in entirely different, primarily positive terms.  They drank the Kool Aid without realizing it.  

Yet homosexuality is just another issue among many that are symptomatic of a crisis in the Western view of marriage and the family.  It is an important issue, a grave problem to be sure, but it is by no means the only one.

The deeper crisis is that the culture (or lack thereof) that we have been imbibing in the West since at least the mid-20th century is against every natural aspect of the family as God intended it to be, especially as it concerns the nature of womanhood. Feminism has pressured the West to think that women flourish only by emancipating themselves from the chains of motherhood and engaging in professional work.  Feminism has forced us to believe that women are to have at most two children, and thus having a child is an exceptional event in an adult woman's life.  Feminism has made us think that once a woman has given birth, it is her duty to detach her baby from herself as soon as possible, so that she may return to 'normal' life, i.e., professional work.  This often means either weaning the baby as soon as possible or not breastfeeding at all; it means switching to formula and bottle-feeding so that others can care for the baby and she can leave to work.  

And this brings with it other problems.  Because fertility returns soon after the baby is weaned, this creates a false urgency for contraception.  Recall that nursing on demand usually is a natural way of spacing births.  Not all women are like this, but it does work in most cases. It is the way God intended for mothers to be able to focus on their babies and bond with them without having to deal with the discomfort of another pregnancy while their baby is still very young.  In the case of many women, they become infertile for a year or two while the baby is exclusively fed mother's milk, directly from the breast, and strictly on demand.  But this natural order is disturbed when the baby is not nursed on demand, but nursed on a schedule, or bottle-fed, or given formula, etc.  So weaning, formula and bottle-feeding, women in the workplace, contraception: it all goes hand-in-hand. 

Because this way of seeing things is so ingrained in the minds of some Catholics, especially in some cultures like Europe and Latin America, a child being nursed has become a rare event.  In Europe especially, even just seeing children is rare; let alone a child being nursed in public.  Most children are fed formula from a very young age, so people in general have grown completely unaccustomed to seeing children being nursed in public.  Not just in church, but anywhere.  

Because they don't use them, these people have strangely forgotten what breasts are for. And as a result they have by default attached an exclusively sexual meaning to them. Hence the perceived indecency of nursing in public.

If, on the other hand, a woman decides to be so counter-cultural that she chooses to rear her child in a thoroughly natural way, the way God designed things, she has no option but to do things that people around her will consider odd.  She cannot choose when the child will want to eat.  The baby cries and whines when he wants milk, and it is at that moment that she must feed him---both for the baby's sake and her own, and those who are around her.  It is greatly inconvenient for her to leave the church to do this, especially if there is no cry-room (a very American phenomenon, by the way, which is relatively rare in other countries).  In some cases, not being able to nurse at church means she cannot attend Mass.

This sort of cultural clash can be violent.  It is not at the level of dogma, so there is no clear-cut way for the traditionally-minded woman to be vindicated by Church teaching.  And even though the issue touches on Catholic morality, the immediate issue of where a woman may nurse her baby is a prudential matter that is not dictated by Catholic moral principles.  Despite feminist pressures she is heroically embracing her femininity and following her maternal instinct in feeding her baby when he needs it, even if this means subjecting herself to the criticism of others.  It is sad to see these valiant mothers have to suffer through this.

These painful experiences are a sign that a good number of Catholics drank the cultural Kool Aid of the West and see the human body, especially the female body, in a hyper-sexualized way, so that they think of women exclusively as sexual symbols and can no longer admire and respect the beauty of motherhood.  Breasts inevitably mean sex.  They are not for children, because children drink formula.  They are just sexual play things.  As a result, we have lost sight of the beauty of a nursing mother, and have no other way of looking at nursing but as something indecent, disrespectful, or demeaning, which is definitely not a Catholic attitude.

In order to illustrate this last statement in a powerful way, I have included in this post several pictures of the Blessed Mother nursing the divine Child.  If any of the images I have shared here disturb you, then very likely you have been the victim of non-Catholic (or anti-Catholic) cultural sensibilities creeping into the way you see reality.  You may be thinking that because it is the Blessed Mother, it is very different from the case of an ordinary mother nursing her child in church.  But I think that if Our Lady can be so portrayed without damaging her purity, then a fortiori an ordinary mother nursing her child should not shock us.  They did not portray her nursing the Child because of some supernatural privilege that she had over all other women to show her breasts.  On the contrary, she is the supreme model of feminine modesty and purity.  That is, if the Blessed Virgin Mary, whose purity sacred art has taken such great pains to defend, is portrayed in this way, it is only because traditionally Catholic artists in past ages have seen nursing as just a natural, motherly act, and the Blessed Mother doing it will not be seen as anything immodest, indecent, or demeaning.

In fact, not only are Catholic artists traditionally comfortable with pictorially portraying the Blessed Virgin's breasts. Catholics throughout the ages have constantly celebrated the "blessed... paps that gave Thee suck" (Luke 11:27) in liturgical texts and song.  

For example, in the pre-1960 Roman Divine Office, every day, every priest and cleric had to praise the breasts of the Blessed Virgin Mary at the end of every one of the liturgical hours:

V. Beata viscera Mariae Virginis, quae portaverunt aeterni Patris Filium. 

R. Et beata ubera, quæ lactaverunt Christum Dominum. 

Translation: 

V. Blessed is the womb of the Virgin Mary, that bore the son of the everlasting Father.

R. And blessed are the breasts which gave suck to Christ the Lord.

This text and its variants have become part of the corpus of our sacred music. 

You may be wondering by now where I am going with all this.  The moral of the story is this: Being a traditional Catholic is not just about the Latin Mass, or just about upholding traditional dogma.  It is about Catholic culture as well.  It's about not drinking the cultural Kool Aid, and instead finding a way of immersing oneself as much as possible in the Catholic culture that we did not naturally receive through our upbringing.  It is not enough to know the old Mass by heart, to be able to quote Denzinger from memory, and to recite the fifteen mysteries of the Rosary faithfully throughout the week.  Being a traditional Catholic means letting Catholic culture thoroughly influence us.

And culture influences us deeply indeed. It permeates every aspect of our minds, from our religious beliefs, to the way we talk, dress, and interact with others, including our assessment of aesthetic values and our affective responses to the world.  It especially has a way of affecting our unexamined beliefs, attitudes, and sensibilities.  That is to say, our beliefs as Catholics are not just in the Trinity and the Incarnation.  Or in pastoral practices concerning the relationship between marriage and the reception of Holy Communion.  All of that is just the tip of the iceberg.  Our Catholic culture permeates our psyches somewhat like this: 

Our Catholic formation goes much deeper than doctrine and morals, and reaches down to our human formation, to our unquestioned, unexamined attitudes, sensibilities, dispositions, behaviors.  

If you are deeply immersed in a non-Catholic (or anti-Catholic) culture, chances are that even if you persevere and keep the faith, some of your unexamined sensibilities will suffer alterations in ways that run afoul of Catholic tradition.  You may make it to heaven, and you may even become a great saint, but you will not be able to understand or appreciate other, often more Catholic perspectives on certain things.  Even if you have a superior theological, moral, and liturgical formation, you will perhaps not be as Catholic (or Catholic-minded) as people in other traditionally Catholic countries or in other more thoroughly Catholic ages when the social Kingship of Christ was in place.  Concretely, if you live in one of many English-speaking countries, which are historically or demographically Protestant, such as the United States, England, Australia, etc., this will inevitably happen, even if you are unaware of it.  You become aware of it only when you suddenly encounter a Catholic practice, custom, or perspective which---though hallowed by time and by the endorsement of centuries of Catholics, of saints, and popes---is deeply contrary to your unexamined sensibilities. 

You are a traditional Catholic to the extent that you strive to immerse yourself in traditional Catholic culture in all its aspects.

The Feast of the Immaculate Conception and Byzantine Theology

The Feast of the Immaculate Conception and Byzantine Theology

In my own devotional life and study, I follow both the traditional Roman liturgical calendar and the Byzantine calendar, specifically that published by the US Melkites, whom I regard as the 'other' traditional Catholics (more on that later).  It is a huge learning experience for me to compare the two calendars, as the arrangement of feasts reflects theological similarities and differences between East and West, illustrating the complexities of the faith and the richness of Catholicism.

Case in point: today, December 8th, we joyfully celebrate the Feast of the Immaculate Conception.  My Byzantine Melkite calendar, however, does not have the feast.  What it does have is the "Feast of the Conception of the Theotokos" or the "Feast of the Maternity of St. Anne", tomorrow, December 9th.  Moreover, the feast of the Conception of the Theotokos does not celebrate her holiness or her immaculate nature, but simply that, her Conception.  (The Byzantine feast that truly zeros in on her holiness is the Feast of the Entrance of the Theotokos into the Temple when she was a child, which is celebrated on November 21.)

I did some research and apparently the East had this feast first. It seems to have originated in Palestine in the 5th Century, and started making its way into the West in the 8th Century, first in the liturgical traditions in northern Europe (Sarum, Gallican, etc.) and gradually adopted down south by the Roman liturgy.  At some point it was moved back one day to December 8th in the West.  Originally the Western feast was called the "Feast of the Conception of the Blessed Virgin Mary," and much later the name was modified to the "Feast of the Immaculate Conception."  The feast on our calendar, on December 8th, is exactly 9 months before the Feast of the Nativity of the BVM, which falls on September 8th.  This is quite fitting, and actually mirrors the same reality in the case of the Conception of Our Lord and His Nativity, which are 9 months apart, on March 25 and December 25, respectively.

But the East does it slightly differently.  Whereas we celebrate two conceptions, Our Lord's and Our Lady's, they celebrate three, adding that of St. John the Baptist to the mix.  Moreover, the Conception of the Theotokos in the Byzantine calendar is on December 9th, so that it is not quite exactly 9 months prior to the feast of the Nativity of the Theotokos on September 8th, signifying by that fact that her conception, though a wondrous event in the history of salvation, was not perfect, not virginal.  Many of the icons that commemorate the event represent this fact by showing Sts. Joachim and Ann embracing with a bed in the background (see the icon above).  The same is true of the Byzantine feast of the Conception of the Forerunner, St. John the Baptist on September 23, which is 9 months minus one day before June 24 (the Nativity of St. John), and which is also represented in iconography by showing Sts. Elizabeth and Zacharias embracing.  

Now, whereas the Conception of the Theotokos and the Conception of St. John the Baptist are both 9 months minus a day away from the corresponding nativities, in the Byzantine calendar the Conception of Our Lord, celebrated on March 25, is exactly 9 months before the Feast of His Nativity, December 25.  This is to symbolize the perfect, divine, and virginal nature of His Conception, given that He was born not of the will of the flesh, nor of the will of man, but of God.

Now, all Easterners, Catholic and Orthodox alike, firmly believe, profess, and celebrate the fullness of grace of the Theotokos, whom they exuberantly call in the litanies of their Divine Liturgy "our all-holy, immaculate, most blessed and glorified Lady, the Theotokos and Ever-Virgin Mary": Τῆς Παναγίας, ἀχράντου, ὑπερευλογημένης, ἐνδόξου, δεσποίνης ἡμῶν Θεοτόκου καὶ ἀειπαρθένου Μαρίας (I've memorized this Greek prayer as an ejaculatory prayer, as I just love how the words roll off the tongue...).  Also, in every Divine Liturgy they sing the wonderful hymn Άξιον Εστίν, which praises the Mother of God beyond all creatures for her excelling holiness:

It is truly meet to bless you, O Theotokos, who are ever blessed and all blameless, and the Mother of our God. More honorable than the Cherubim, and more glorious beyond compare than the Seraphim, you who without stain didst bear God the Word, you are truly Theotokos!  We magnify you! 

In other words, there is no doubt in the Eastern mind that the Theotokos was always completely free from sin and absolutely full of grace from the moment of her conception. This is Sacred Tradition and every corner of the universal Church is aware of that.  Even Muslims have this as part of their tradition!  But what Eastern Christians struggle with is the very idea of original sin, which although we believe it has been divinely revealed (Ecce enim in iniquitatibus conceptus sum: et in peccatis concepit me mater mea, Ps. 5o:7), the development of this dogma occured in the West without the participation of the East, and its subtleties have simply escaped them.  

As far as I can understand, the tendency among Orthodox theologians is to think that what is inherited from Adam and Eve are the effects of original sin: we inherit from Adam our concupiscence, our passibility, our mortality.  But it would be absurd, they think, to claim that the sin itself is inherited without personal consent.  In other words, they don't conceive of any other sin than actual sin, and they can't conceive of a 'stain' of sin that is inherited without personal consent.  Our nature is definitely fractured thanks to Adam's personal sin, but in their mind Adam's guilt is not our guilt.  As a consequence, most Orthodox theologians flat out reject the dogma of the Immaculate Conception.  That's one way in which some Orthodox undersand the matter.  But others reject the dogma for other reasons, many of which are not always coherent, nor do they even seem to have a sufficiently adequate grasp of the dogma that they criticize.  And above all they resent the West and its imperialist understanding of the papacy, so many will reject a priori any dogmas issued since the Great Schism, even if they have some equivalent doctrine within their tradition.

Byzantine Catholics, however, do not reject the dogma.  Ultimately they accept it (otherwise they wouldn't be Catholic), but they assess this extraordinary act of Pope Pius IX's magisterium in different ways.  Slavic Byzantines seem to have little problem with it, and some even celebrate the feast on December 8.  But the Greeks/Melkites, who are arguably the more staunchly Byzantine of the bunch, the 'purists' as it were, seem to have some reservations regarding the dogma's implications regarding original sin, as they are strongly attached to their Eastern way of thinking.  Not that they flat out deny the dogma: they are a lot more careful than that.  They admit the truth of the dogma in its own terms, but prefer their own tradition and theological language, and many further think that it was unnecessary, imprudent, or inconsiderate for Pius IX to define the dogma in the way he did, lacking sensitivity to Eastern ways of speaking and thinking.  Ultimately, as in other issues, they are walking a thin line between being fully faithful to their own tradition (which I as a traditional Catholic can certainly appreciate!) and being faithful to the pope, whom they profess to have primacy over the universal Church, despite the fact that he has often made decisions that have been detrimental to authentic Eastern modes of thinking.  This thin line that they are walking is remarkably similar to the line that many traditional Roman Catholics are walking between being faithful to tradition and being faithful to the pope, the only difference being that the Melkites have been walking it for much longer than we have, since the popes whom they profess fidelity to have been undermining their Eastern tradition for much longer.

Melkites have the courage to continue preserving their own tradition.  They will teach, profess, and celebrate Our Lady's perfection in grace, the "all-holy, immaculate, most blessed and glorified Lady, the Theotokos and Ever-Virgin Mary," in their own language and according to their tradition on November 21; and they will commemorate her conception on December 9, without reference to the Western understanding of original sin.  It's the only way they can be traditional Catholics.