From a reader:
The Living Tradition: The Dominican Rite in the Twenty-First Century
Dates:
August 5-9, 2009
Place:
St. Albert the Great Priory
House of Studies of the Western Dominican Province 5890 Birch Court Oakland CA 94618As a response to the spirit of Summorum Pontificum, a number of priests experienced in the use of the Rite have volunteered to assist other Dominicans who would like to learn to celebrate the traditional Dominican Mass. The conference will include workshops, not only for the ordained ministers and celebrants of Mass, but also for training for servers and other ministers, including musicians. As many people besides Dominican priests might spiritually benefit from this program, the conference is open to all interested: non-Dominican priests, nuns and sisters, or lay people who would like to attend.
Plenary Lecturers:
Fr. Aidan Nichols, O.P., of the English Province, the well-known author of books on spirituality, theology, and culture
Prof. William Mahrt of Stanford University, President of the Church Music Association of American and editor of Sacred Music, whose own experience of medieval chant began with the Dominican liturgy at the University of Washington.
Fr. Giles Dimock, O.P., of the Eastern Province, former professor of liturgy at the Franciscan University of Steubenville, and prior of Immaculate Conception Priory in Washington D.C.
Fr. Augustine Thompson, O.P., of the Western Province, professor at the University of Virginia, and author of books and articles on medieval religion, theology, and liturgy.
Conference Liturgies:
Daily Dominican Rite Low Mass
Dominican Rite Solemn Mass of St. Dominic and a Solemn Requiem
Dominican Rite Missa Cantata
Compline in the Dominican Rite will be sung each evening
There will be time off on Saturday to visit the Bay Area. For more see the program.Registration forms, the program and a poster may be down-loaded for printing at The Living Tradition. Registration forms and fees should be sent to: The Living Tradition, Holy Rosary Church, 375 N.E. Clackamas Street, Portland, OR 97232. You may also request a copy of the registration forms by writing to the same address. Fee options and room and board reservations for St. Albert the Great Priory, Oakland CA, are explained on the forms.
Dominican friars may begin registering immediately. Dominican nuns, sisters, laity, and non-Dominicans may begin registering on April 1, 2009. Friars who wait till after that date to register will not get priority.
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“the spirit of Summorum Pontificum” – splendid
why can’t this be happening in the Eastern province????
Cordelia,
They have no tradition of granting permission for celebration of the old liturgy. But notice where the speakers come from. Perhaps that will change.
i have great hope for the future of the eastern provice Dominicans…the novices appear to be “young fogeys” (not that there is anything wrong with the middle-aged OP’s, they just don’t seem too interested in liturgy and chant)
As we keep reminding the Eastern boys: all trends begin in California, even the good ones! ;) Anyway, St. Albert the Great Priory is our motherhouse, and is a beautiful niche (5 acres, I think) in the heart of the East Bay.
I think Father Berg the FSSP Superior has sent men to the Dominican Province in Washington D. C. to learn Thomism.
In the context of the Virgin Mary’s priesthood which someone tried to discuss earlier on this board, it is interesting Father Z that your post includes reference to St. Albert the Great Priory.
St. Albert the Great — among many other eminent saints, theologians, priests and popes — is one of the teachers who taught us about Mary as priest. Why even Pope Pius X attached indulgence to the invocation to Mary Virgin Priest!
But more about Albert…
St. Albert the Great, a Doctor of the Church, considered Mary a priest. As you know, Albert the Great was one of the early scholastics who helped build up the systematic approach to theology that would revolutionise theology in the Middle Ages. St. Thomas Aquinas was one of his disciples!
Although the Virgin Mary did not receive the sacrament of ordination (she didn’t need to. She was ordained by God.) in his writings Albert the Great highlights the fact that although Mary did not receive the sacrament of Holy Orders, she possessed the dignity and power contained in Holy Orders equivalently and to an eminent degree.
St. Albert explains his reasons at length and states emphatically that there was no grace, power or dignity possessed by any ecclesiastical minister, including the Pope, that Mary did not possess to the highest degree.
He taught that Mary can rightly be called an Apostle, Prophetess, Evangelist and Pastor and furthermore points out how Mary acted as a sacrificial priest!
From Mariale Super Missus Est (written at ca. 1245 AD), published in B. Alberti Magni, Ratisbonensis Episcopi, Ordinis Praedicatorum, Opera Omnia, ed. Augustus and Aemilius Borgnet, Paris 1890-1899, vol. 37, pp. 62 – 246. Here Question 41, pp. 79 – 80; Solution pp. 84 – 87 we read St. Albert’s words:
” After this there is the question about the sacrament of Orders whether the perfection of the most Blessed Virgin comprises also that grace which is conferred by the Sacrament of Orders.
And it is seen that it is so:
l. For Orders are for the spiritual multiplication of the faithful, but spiritual multiplication pertains to the spiritual mother: now the blessed Virgin is the spiritual mother of all the faithful; therefore she herself had to possess the Sacrament of Orders.
2. Likewise among Orders various degrees of dignity are distinguished in the Church, as is seen in the Pope, Archbishops, etc. But the most blessed Virgin possesses the highest dignity; therefore she also possessed the highest Order.
3. Likewise the hierarchy of the Church has been formed on the model of the celestial hierarchy; but in the celestial hierarchy, as Dionysius says, all the superiors possess the characteristics of their inferiors, and more excellently; therefore in the ecclesiastical hierarchy it will be thus; but the blessed Virgin was the supreme and most worthy person in the ecclesiastical hierarchy. Therefore she will possess the dignities and proprieties of her inferiors, and she will possess all Orders.”
And further…
“Question 119
Whether it is fitting that the Blessed Virgin should be an Apostle?
Next there is a question about those graces which are found in the letter to the Ephesians IV,11: And he made certain people Apostles.
It seems at first that it would not be fitting for the most blessed Virgin to be an Apostle:
1. For this work is ministerial, as it is added in the same place, v.12: for the work of ministry; but ministry does not fall in the operations of all people; therefore neither the apostolate.
2. Also, regarding a passage of Dionysius: “Hierarchy is divine order, knowledge, and action [S.dionysius, Lib. de Caelesti hierarchia, cap.3]”, the commentator says, that having an office without its operation is negligence; but the most blessed Virgin did not practice the action of preaching; therefore she ought not to have had the office.
3. Also, Luc. VI, 13: He chose twelve from those, that is, his disciples, whom he called Apostles : therefore the gift of the apostolate is not appropriate for the most blessed Virgin.
On the contrary, this is what I say:
1. John [the Baptist] said about himself, John I, 23: I am the voice of one crying, etc. As if he should say: I preach not so much with the voice of my mouth, but my whole self is my voice; thus all of me—my life, my food, my clothing, my place—preaches penitence. But just as everything John was preached penitence, so did everything the blessed virgin Mary was preach innocence. If therefore John has grace and the gift of preaching, who is the voice of one crying out in the desert, therefore more emphatically by far does the blessed Virgin have the gift of the apostolate; therefore she is the voice of one crying out in the heaven.
2. Also, the special property of the Apostles is that they are the light of the world; but the most blessed Virgin illuminated the world the most; therefore she practiced the office of preaching the most.
3. Also, the duty of Apostles or preachers is to reconcile sinners; but this is fitting for the blessed Virgin to the extreme; therefore she possessed the apostolic office to the extreme.
4. Also, the Lord says, Joan. VI,16: My teaching is not mine, attributing it to the one [=God] from whom he had his being. But just as he had divine nature from the Father, so did he have a human nature from his mother. Therefore just as his teaching inasmuch as he was God was from the Father, so was his teaching inasmuch as he was human, from the mother. Therefore the mother preached to us everything that the Son taught.
5. Also, the Lord says about the Holy Spirit, Joan. xvi, 13: For he will not speak from himself ; therefore just as the Spirit speaks from the one from whom he comes, so the Son will speak from the mother insofar as he is human. Other things as above in the section on preachers. [For the solution to objections, see below after Quest. CXXII.]
Question 120
Whether it is proper for her that she should be a Prophetess?
It follows: Others he made prophets [Ad Ephes. IV, 11]. Gloss: “Explicators of Scripture”; but note:
1 Mary herself is the explicator of the whole Old Testament; therefore she is the prophet or prophetess to the highest degree.
2. Also, John [the Baptist] is called a prophet, and more than a prophet [Matth.,XI, 9 and Luc., VII, 26], because he pointed to God with his finger; but she herself bore him and thus pointed out with her body that she was his Mother and the Virgin; and thus she pointed him out as the Son of the Virgin promised in the prophets and scriptures by her body and work, and thus she was the greatest prophetess.
3. Also, it is clear that sex is non obstacle here, because there were prophetesses in the Old and New Testaments. Whence, Luc. II, 36 mentions the prophetess Anna. The Acts of the Apostles, XXI, 9, mentions Philip who had daughters who were prophesying. Other things as above on prophecy.
Question 121
Whether it is proper for her that she is an Evangelist?
It follows: Others he made Evangelists [Ephes. IV, 11].
Luke, II, 51 says: And his mother, that is Mary, preserved, etc. So that when the time came for preaching or for describing the incarnation, she was able to explain all events just as they had occurred.
Other things as above in the passage on preaching.
Question 122
Whether she had the gift of being a Pastor?
It follows: But others he made pastors [Ephes. IV, 11]
In what way the most blessed Virgin had this gift, seek in the treatise on the Sacrament of Orders, and in what way she fills us with wonder, in the treatise on the Beatitudes regarding the degrees of poverty.
Thus, then, the most blessed Virgin also had this quaternary of graces [=of being an Apostle, Prophet, Evangelist and Pastor].
Overall Response to questions about gratuitous graces and freely given graces.
From these it is clear that the most blessed Mistress had the universality of gratuitous and given graces; we believe this to be true in every way.”
Of course, St. Albert, for all his learning, does not singularly comprise the Magisterium…
St. Albert’s text is very beautiful, but there’s a wonderful word for all this: analogous. We moderns have lost a sense of this wonderful little word.
How this combox went down this rat hole, I don’t know.
But St. Albert the Great did NOT write the “Mariale Super Missus Est.” It is very late medieval or early modern. And the devotion has twice been condemned by Rome, in 1913 and 1923, because it is easily misunderstood: Our Lady had the general priesthood of all believers in abundance, but in no way the sacrament of Orders.
The use of “suitability” as an argument in it links this text to Franciscan speculation, although no particular author has yet been identified, as far as I know. Anyone who knows the authentic works of Albert or Thomas will recognize it as spurious.
I studied under the great Firar Preachers from St Albert the Great Priory. And I’m glad to know that the venerable Dominican Rite will again be known.
Te Deum laudamus!