"Smoke of Satan" and Liturgical Abuse

Catholic World News is carrying a story on Pope Paul VI's statement on the "Smoke of Satan" and its true meaning. You can read the article here.

What I find most interesting is the Cardinal's point about creativity and the limelight. Those who know me realize that I am fond of traditional liturgy and traditional architecture. On a side note, ecclesial architecture is a hobby of mine. The following is an image from a church (please feel free to tell me what you think) I am currently working on using Google's Sketchup Program:



I have often commented that the ecclesial architecture of the mid-20th century was lacking because there was a movement in art (and architecture) at the time that said true art was an expression of the soul. Now, there is some truth to that, and I'm not against it, but clearly ecclesial art should be an expression of God's "soul," of that reality that lies in the depths of the divine life. The Eastern Catholic Rites, which I admire, though I admit I do not fully understand them, have long guard the importance of sacred architecture, identifying the sanctuary as a heavenly place that should not be taken lightly, and should, to some extend, be separated from the nave of the Church (which is why I favor altar rails). In the South, there is such a loss of understanding of Church architecture that many Catholics here call the whole Church the sanctuary (a definition borrowed from our proximate Baptist and Methodist neighbors). This, however, is not the Catholic definition of a sanctuary. The assembly, the congregation, is seated in the "nave" (from the Latin for "ship"), while the priest leads the liturgy in the sanctuary, which is demonstrative, iconographic even, of heaven. The modern lapse in artistic standards, whereby beauty came to be a matter of self-expression rather than expression of that which is truly beautiful, has caused many poorly designed churches, including the chapel at my own alma mater, Franciscan University of Steubenville (which looks like, depending on with whom you speak, a spaceship, a half-open can of tuna, or, in the words of my ecclesiology professor Fr. Giles Dimock, "a bunker").

Let me be clear: Vatican II was a good and much needed council, and its teachings and declarations were right-on. There are many good things to the liturgy, and even to modern church architecture, but it is nowhere near where it should be.

So what is the point, Micah? Are you just rambling again about some matter of personal preference? No, my point is simply that I believe the Cardinal is correct; creativity and limelight have maligned the liturgy as it is practiced in the Latin Rite, just as they have maligned sacred architecture. A church should be an icon of heaven, a place in which truth and beauty stand immortal, ineffable, and utterly immutable, and the liturgy should be a sacrament of the life of heaven, where we can come into contact with Jesus Christ, the living icon of the unseen God, and be entirely transformed from glory into glory.

As the good Cardinal points out, we have wrecked the ship of the Church on the shelf of our pride, hidden far beneath the murky depths of Satan's smoke. Let us pry it from what would be its watery grave, and launch it out to sea once more. Let us cast into the deep!

His Servant and Yours,

Micah Murphy