The revised liturgy: medieval words, modern sexism

The bishops have spoken, or at least succumbed. This weekend American Catholics began saying new words at mass. Well, perhaps new is incorrect - the aim of the revised liturgy is to bring back older words that are closer to medieval Latin. In a time when the Catholic church has been rocked by scandals of almost Renaissance proportions, this move is supposed to make American parishioners feel more holy. It is also supposed to bring us in line with European-language liturgies, whose translations are closer to the medieval text.

Yesterday I went to the 10:30 mass at St. Michael's Catholic Community. The Bishop of Joliet, resplendent in purple robes and gold miter, processed medievally down the center aisle behind an honor guard of Knights of Columbus wearing feathery hats. When he greeted us with the customary "The Lord be with you," half of us responded "And also with you" while the other half said, medievally, "And with your spirit." By the end of mass, we had all caught on and were saying the revised words. I didn't feel especially holier. I did, however, feel greater kinship with European Catholics, who rarely attend mass.

Catholics sometimes reproach Protestants for acting as if the Holy Spirit stopped working with the church in the first century, after the New Testament books were written. Tradition, Catholics maintain, is the Spirit's continuing work in the church. Even the Spirit, however, has a bad century now and then, or at least a bad continent. Apparently the words he inspired the Western European church to use in the 11th century were superior to those he inspired the American church to use in the 20th century. So now instead of simple words like one in being and born, we're back to medieval words like consubstantial and incarnate; and instead of affirming our faith as part of the believing community ("We believe in one God ..."), we're back to medieval individualism ("I believe in one God"); and along with with our guilt-ridden medieval ancestors we can strike our breasts and confess that we have sinned "through my fault, through my fault, through my most grievous fault."

And of course we are just as sexist as ever. More so, in fact. A medieval priest did indeed say "Pray, brothers" (oráte fratres), but not at every mass. More likely those words were spoken to brother priests at  concelebrated masses, not to male and female parishioners at typical parish masses. And the medieval creed did indeed affirm that Christ came down from heaven "for us men" (propter nos homines). Never mind that any 21st-century English-speaker hears that as "for us males," whereas the Latin means "for us humans." Why change good sexist texts that are already close to the Latin words, even if the meanings have completely changed?

Alas, as Fr. Nonomen lamented in Commonweal magazine, "the majority [of parishioners] won’t care. They will dutifully learn all the new responses and musical settings and generally remain unaware of the powerful changes this liturgical language is likely to work on the church their grandchildren will inherit." Or will not inherit, as more and more of us get tired of medievally resplendent bishops making excuses for bad decisions by incompetent men in high places, and quietly drift away.

WINTER HEART by Margaret Frazer

I love Dame Frevisse, the 15th-century sleuthing nun, and I'm getting antsy. It's been two years since publication of The Apostate's Tale, and I'm not sure how much longer I can go on without a visit to St. Frideswide's Priory.

So I was thrilled several weeks ago when Gail Frazer, author or coauthor of the Dame Frevisse mysteries under the name Margaret Frazer, emailed to ask if I'd like to participate in a blog tour for her most recent novella, Winter Heart - an e-book that begins, irony of ironies, with Domina Frevisse seated at her writing desk, studying a parchment roll.

Alas, several electronic mishaps caused me to miss the blog tour. Nothing, however, would cause me to miss a new book in this series, even if it's available only electronically, and even if it's not a novel but a long short story.

Frevisse is now prioress of St. Frideswide's. She now moves serenely about her duties, though her sharp, questioning mind is always active. Perhaps this is why Tom Kelmstowe asks her to plead his case - he knows she will see what others have missed. Tom, accused of rape, left the village precipitously, and his property was given to another. But now Tom has returned, and soon a man who may have wronged him is murdered. Tom is the obvious suspect, but Tom says all the stories about him are wrong.

Frazer's novels are often long on history, short on mystery. This novella, by contrast, is a classic whodunit, though medieval monastery and village life are present as a backdrop. As in several of her other books, Frazer's love of Benedictine solitude and liturgy is evident. The Divine Office, or fixed-hour prayer, provides the framework for all of Frevisse's days:

The Offices, with their garland of prayers and psalms woven out of the worship of generations past and meant to weave forward through generations to come, were the reason for the nunnery’s existence. They were also Frevisse’s great joy more days than not, giving her a time to leave aside her duties and lose herself in the prayers reaching toward Heaven.

But Frevisse's assignment - finding a murderer - is practical, not mystical, and she handles it with skills honed by years of detection in what must have been an unusually murder-prone village.

Having read all 17 Dame Frevisse novels, I can't say how this story would appeal to someone who's new to the series. No prior knowledge of St. Frideswide's is required or assumed, but I suspect that part of my enjoyment was increased by long-term involvement with Frevisse, Master Naylor the steward, Dame Claire, and other characters. Still, at $2.99 Winter Heart is a steal, and it will take you only a pleasant evening or two to get acquainted with the indomitable domina.

And diehard Margaret Frazer fans should note that 11 of her short stories (click here and scroll down) are now available through Amazon for $2.99 or less, as long as you're willing to trade in your parchment for Kindle editions.
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If you have yet to meet Dame Frevisse, you can take a quick look at my blogpost introduction to her here (or, if you're a subscriber, my Books and Culture review here). Better yet, run to your library or bookstore and begin with the first of the 17 books (so far) in the series, The Novice's Tale.

Doggerel for Maundy Thursday

Are you old enough to remember Arch Books, paperback Bible stories in doggerel illustrated with cartoons? I wrote three of of them back in the 70s. Concordia published the first two, but the third was too much for them. It was always my favorite, so I offer it here, somewhat updated, for Maundy Thursday.


Thirteen men around a table, something obviously wrong.
Though their heads are wrapped in halos, twelve men wear their faces long.
James is signaling to Simon; Philip looks the other way;
Thomas shakes his fist at Matthew; John has not a word to say.
Big Bartholomew, exhausted, yawns and pushes back his chair;
James the Lesser, scowling broadly, with his finger carves the air.
Judas grimaces profoundly; Andrews scratches for a flea;
Thaddeus bumps into Peter--oh, what can the matter be?

Soon the Lord will claim his kingdom. Rome approaches zero hour.
In his new administration, who will wield the greatest power?
Peter, chief of staff, barks orders; Judas, hedge-fund king, dissents;
Thomas hopes to be Chief Justice; James and John opt for Defense.
Intrigues stir Simon the Zealot (why, is anybody's guess);
He will head the Secret Service; Matthew wants the IRS.
Heads of this and that department keep the ship of state on course.
Who will be the most important when God's kingdom comes in force?
Twelve men ready to be leaders, generals, great men of might,
Department heads and cabinet members: twelve men itching for a fight.

Thirteen men around a table, thirteen men about to eat.
There's the basin, where's the servant? Thirteen men have dirty feet.
Andrew, closest to the basin, quickly chooses not to budge:
Next year's military hero can't be this year's common drudge.
Cleaning dirt from people's toenails nauseates Bartholomew.
He nods at John, then at the basin; John misapprehends his cue.
Simon, cloak-and-dagger honcho, rises, drops back in his seat:
What a blot upon his record: "This man's good at washing feet."
James the Lesser squirms and reddens; Judas stares beyond the doors.
Talented administrators should not stoop to lowly chores.
Peter talks, though no one listens; Philip's overcome with heat;
Twelve men yawn and scratch and wonder, who is going to wash our feet?

Twelve men eager to do battle, all impatient for the coup--
But Jesus looks a bit disgruntled. What is Jesus going to do?

Jesus Christ, their Lord and teacher, famous healer, son of man,
Son of God, God's own Messiah, is picking up the water pan.
With one hand he takes a towel, tucks it in his belt, and then
Rolls his sleeves above his elbows, walks by twelve astonished men,
Pours some water in the basin, puts the basin on the tile
Next to open-mouthed Thaddaeus, takes his sandal with a smile,
Dips his feet into the water, washes well between his toes,
Pats them dry, refills the basin, tucks the towel back in, and goes
To Andrew, Thomas, John, and Philip, Simon and Bartholomew,
James the Greater, James the Lesser, Levi Matthew, and Judas too.

All the feet are washed but Peter's. Jesus takes the basin now,
Moves toward Peter, kneels beside him. Peter jumps. "I can't allow
You to do the servant's labor! You are not the slave of me.
You're my rabbi, friend, and master! Go away and let me be.
Dirty feet I've seen quite often. Dirty feet I've washed before.
If you'll let me have that basin, I can wash my feet once more."
Peter grabs, but Jesus dodges. "Peter, listen for my sake.
Here's a lesson you must study: when to give and when to take.
Give your all, but not for glory. Give as long as there is need.
As a servant in my kingdom, you can plant the gospel seed.
Take from me the right to enter heaven's kingdom come to earth.
Wash your soul in heaven's fountain: take from me the second birth."

Jesus sets aside the basin. Peter clutches him in dread.
"Master, stay and wash me fully! Wash my feet, my hands, my head!"
Kneeling, Jesus washes Peter's feet, and then says to his friend,
"One who's bathed is clean all over, when just his feet are washed again.
I, your master, played the servant. Each of you should do the same.
Servants all, serve one another when you gather in my name."

Thirteen men around a table, one alone is devil-led.
Twelve men, clean in soul and body, ready now for wine and bread.

CODA
Matthew doesn't ask the question; Luke is silent, as is Mark;
Likewise, John forgets to mention (scholars thus are in the dark):
Who washed Jesus' feet?

Copyright 1978 and 2009 by LaVonne Neff; all rights reserved

Someone you should know: Dame Frevisse

Margaret Frazer, The Apostate's Tale (New York: Berkley Prime Crime, 2007)

By the time I was reading book 3 in the now 17-book Dame Frevisse Medieval Mystery series, I was hooked. Mr Neff quickly followed suit, and you can be sure that when Mr Neff and I both like a book, it’s really good.

The books

Frevisse is a 15th-century nun at St. Frideswide’s priory in Oxfordshire, England. As the niece-by-marriage of Geoffrey Chaucer’s son Thomas and cousin to his daughter Alice, Countess of Suffolk—actual historical characters, by the way—Dame Frevisse rides out of the nunnery surprisingly often, inadvertently getting involved in affairs of state, church politics, and even smuggling. Some of the best tales, though, take place at the priory itself. Practicing hospitality as enjoined by the Benedictine rule, the nuns open their gates to all comers, providing them with food and a place to stay. In turn, the guests offer gifts, adventure, and sometimes mayhem.

In 1431, when the series begins (The Novice's Tale), Frevisse is a thirtyish no-nonsense good-hearted woman who loves tradition and tends to get involved in other people’s problems—a lot like our other favorite heroine, Precious Ramotswe of The No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency. Both series stretch the definition of mystery: the crime rarely happens in the early chapters, and in some books nobody gets killed at all. Both are full of local color. And though both protagonists are intensely practical, both also think a lot about moral and ethical questions. In The Apostate's Tale, Dame Frevisse butts heads with a shameless narcissist.

The story begins during Holy Week 1452. Cecely, a runaway nun, has returned to St. Frideswide’s with her young bastard son in tow. At the same time, the ailing mother of one of the sisters arrives. In quick succession follow a businessman and two servants, several members of Cecely’s late paramour’s family, a mother and daughter who differ as to the value of the monastic life, and eventually the Abbot and his retinue. With few winter food stores remaining and not many provisions available in the nearby village, the nine resident nuns wonder how they will manage to accommodate so many guests. And then a would-be murderer strikes—and strikes again. No wonder the prioress has a nervous breakdown.

The authors

Margaret Frazer is the pen name of two women who began the series, mystery writer Mary Monica Pulver and amateur archeologist/historian Gail Frazer. They met at the Society for Creative Anachronism, became friends, and wrote the first six Dame Frevisse novels together. Then Pulver went on to other pursuits and Frazer continued the series on her own—while repeatedly battling cancer.

With Frazer as the sole author, the books have moved closer to the thin line separating period mysteries from historical fiction. Frazer loves research. One of her pet peeves, she said in an interview, is writers who rely on clichés about life in the middle ages (“streets deep in filth,” constant “lawless violence”), “who play fast and loose with facts to make their story-telling easier.” Frazer takes pains to make the Priory of St. Frideswide historically accurate, and Frevisse’s participation in the Benedictine life of prayer rings true.

Soul and body

More than any of the previous books in the series, Apostate slips into Dame Frevisse’s soul as she prays, sings the daily office, and goes about her work. Book 10, The Squire's Tale, foreshadowed this book's spiritual sensitivity with this lovely paragraph about the liturgical hours:

Frevisse ... sank into her own familiar place, made sure of her breviary and Psalter in front of her, then slid forward to kneel in prayer until everyone was in place and the Office began, continuing the unending weave of prayers and psalms begun years into centuries ago and never ceasing, prayed and sung by so many women and men in so many places, their lives given to the prayers and petitions and their lives lost to all memory but God's, that sometimes it seemed to Frevisse that here and now this hands-count of nuns no more made the prayers than someone made a river: they simply stepped into the endless flow, to be carried by it the way a river carried whatever came into its way. (41)

In Apostate, Frevisse’s theological and mystic musings take center stage as she enters the church and joins in the prayer of the church:

Here was the reason for all else. All the duties and rules and limits of her life were for this—these times of prayer when she could reach beyond life’s limits toward God and joy and the soul’s freedom. (35)

Despite her mysticism, Frevisse is realistic and unsentimental about the religious life. She explains to another sister that she hasn’t been given the gift of holiness, and that she doesn’t expect to achieve it in this life:

My hope isn’t for holiness, only that I grow enough—can set my roots of faith and belief and love deep enough—that like a deep-rooted plant growing taller than a shallow-rooted one, I finally come as near to God in my mind and soul and heart as I can, no matter how much in the world my body has to be. (125)

Not that she discounts the importance of her earthbound body. In typical medieval fashion, she values asceticism rather more than we do today, but she also accepts her body’s needs. Up for prayer in the middle of a cold night,

shivering as she went, she thought wryly of how strongly the body fought to prevail over the mind’s soul-longing. Whatever her mind’s intent, her body did not want the cold church and more prayer; it wanted the warm kitchen and more sleep, wanted them very badly. . . . Only for a saint, she supposed, would the desire for God be so great they could not only forgo but even forget the body’s desires. She also thought, equally wryly, that if that were the way of it, she was assuredly very far from sainthood. (54–55)

Such practical realism is typical of most of the sisters at St. Frideswide’s, with the exception of the maddeningly ethereal Dame Thomasine. Eventually even she admits to fatigue. “You haven’t been kind to your body, you know,” the ever-direct Dame Frevisse tells her.

And yet our bodies are God’s gift to us. Shouldn’t we treat them with at least a little pity, with a little kindness, in what little time they have to be alive? . . . Our flesh is the vessel that carries the fire of God’s love. You have no right to break your body, either on purpose or through plain carelessness. (233–34)

Still, these are not books of theology. The characters are well developed, and the stories are entertaining even after a hard day’s work. At first I thought Dame Frevisse would be a pale imitation of the hearty Brother Cadfael, a 12th-century Benedictine monastic who similarly pursues murderers and hangs out with a herbalist. The more I read, the more I preferred Dame Frevisse. Simultaneously flawed and virtuous, she’s believably wise and delightfully opinionated, and she deserves her own TV series. Thanks to the Britain’s ITV, Derek Jacobi is Brother Cadfael. I’ve always thought Queen Latifah would make a fine Mma Ramotswe. But who should be cast as the forthright Dame Frevisse--it's a mystery. Nominations?

Learn more

News article about Gail Frazer: http://erstarnews.com/content/view/2618/141/f

Interview with Frazer: http://jeriwesterson.typepad.com/my_weblog/2006/08/interview_with_.html

Frazer's own website: http://www.margaretfrazer.com/index.html

Plot summaries with spoilers: http://homepage.ntlworld.com/philipg/detectives/frevisse.html

Book descriptions:

http://www.margaretfrazer.com/books/frevisse.html

Beyond Smells and Bells

My sainted father--and I call him that without a trace of irony--once told me that there were two kinds of worship he simply couldn't identify with: charismatic and liturgical. This from a man who studied history and theology, taught worship in a seminary, and wrote a book called And Worship Him. Dad's favorite definition of worship was from Ilion T. Jones: "what a thinking man does as he approaches another thinking being called God."

"We must not seek a brand of worship that is purely aesthetic," my father wrote in 1967. "Worship must be orderly and beautiful, but . . . it should have the functional beauty of a jet airplane rather than the embellishment of a nineteenth-century railway coach." My father liked old-school Protestant services with stately hymns, long sermons, and immobile congregations.

I do not.

My frequent attempts to change my father's views were unsuccessful, however. I should never have taken him to St. Barnabas Episcopal Church; its jet-airplane decor did not sufficiently atone for its Anglo-Catholic liturgy. And if Dad were still living, I probably shouldn't give him Mark Galli's new book either--though I'm quite sure I would anyway. Hope springs eternal.

Beyond Smells and Bells: The Wonder and Power of Christian Liturgy (Paraclete, 2008) is a short, easy-to-read introduction that explains and defends liturgical worship "for those who find themselves attracted to liturgy but don't quite know why." Galli, an Anglican, draws mostly from the Episcopal Book of Common Prayer (with occasional quotations from Methodist, Lutheran, or Catholic liturgies) as he sings the praises of liturgy: how it can draw us closer to God and to one another; how it can affect our sense of time and place; how it can transform our faith, our imagination, our entire being.

"In a culture that assumes that truth is a product of the mind, the liturgy helps us experience truth in both mind and body."

--Mark Galli, Beyond Smells and Bells, 11

Galli belongs to a church teeming with Wheaton College students, many with little previous experience of ancient liturgies. His book is tailor-made for them. It is also ideal for their often baffled parents.

Mark is clearly in love with liturgy, but he is not triumphalist about it: he recognizes that liturgy is no guarantee of spiritual life, and he does not denigrate other forms of Christian worship. Readers from non-liturgical traditions may be challenged by his assertions, but they will not feel threatened.

I wish I could test the book on my father. Clearly not attracted to liturgy, he would not be part of the readership Galli had in mind. Nevertheless, I like to think Dad--and others like him--would find Galli's apologia illuminating.