Phil summons all patristibloggers to a Patristics Carnival. Don’t be a Jonah. It only leads to trouble.

Al Ahram reports on four ancient Nubian cathedrals discovered in the 1960s, with 120 wall paintings in good condition. The excavation was part of an archeological campaign that found several other, smaller churches as well, built in the sixth through ninth centuries. The story is in two parts, here and here.

N.S. Gill has posted a very helpful guide to reading Latin inscriptions. This will be especially useful for those of you who are planning to join Scott Hahn and me in Rome for our May 2007 pilgrimage. In some Roman neighborhoods, it’s hard to turn your head without knocking it against another ancient inscription. Sign up today.

(Thanks to those of you who pointed out the botched URL. It’s fixed now.)

Phil chimes in on R.R. Reno’s essay “The Return of the Fathers.” As Phil kindly points out, you heard it here first.

Don’t forget to put Reno’s Sanctified Vision: An Introduction to Early Christian Interpretation of the Bible on your Christmas wish list.

The life of Dionysius Exiguus (Dennis the Little) stretched across the fifth and sixth centuries. He was a monk in a land that is today part of Romania. Dionysius was renowned for his humility, which is where the “Little” moniker comes from, and which is why you probably don’t know his name. But I’ll bet you’ve used his technology, and unless you’re a scholar working in a multi-religious environment you’re probably using it still. (Pluralists favor “C.E.” for “Common Era.”)

Dionysius liked to calculate calendars. He was the go-to guy for figuring out the date of Easter. But he’s best known for inventing the term “Anno Domini” (A.D.) — “The Year of the Lord” — to differentiate the years after the Incarnation from the years before. So you might say he had a big impact on history, for such a little guy.

Roger Pearse points us to the first English translation of Dionysius’ most important work. It’s only partial, but it’s free and posted on a Russian site. Roger’s thinking about finishing the job in his spare time.

A patristic-era monastery is caught up in a border dispute between Azerbaijan and Georgia. Via Archaeologica.

The world now has its first blog devoted entirely to New Testament apocrypha. You’ll love this title: Apocryphicity. It’s run by Canadian scholar Tony Chartrand-Burke. Give him a warm patristic welcome.

Thanks for the tip, as often, go to PaleoJudaica.

About.com’s N.S. Gill points us to some remarkable sites related to Constantine’s Battle of the Milvian Bridge. When in Rome for our May 2007 pilgrimage, we’ll be staying quite near the Bridge. Please consider joining us!

• Maria Lectrix, the ubersource for audio of the works of the Fathers, has just posted the first installment of Tertullian’s On Patience. For Tertullian to write on patience is kind of like Jerome writing on meekness. Don’t miss it. And raise an Ave for Maureen, the blog’s hostess and narratrix-in-chief. She’s down sick this week.

• While you’re listening to Maureen’s best imitation of Tertullian, you can check her website for progress on her gradual transcription of Thomas Livius’s great work The Blessed Virgin in the Fathers of the First Six Centuries. She’s not only typing it up; she’s also annotating it with a useful glossary. Once you’ve been suitably impressed, then raise another Ave for Maureen’s return to health.

• Adrian Murdoch at Bread and Circuses got me thinking about inscriptions — and surfing around. Here and here are a couple of interesting sites on inscriptions from Christian antiquity.

• And, for those of you who want to learn Coptic, there are these recent sightings: a book, So, You Want to Learn Coptic?, and software, The Sahidic Coptic Collection.

Today is the Feast of All Souls, when Christians traditionally pray for the dead, that they may have eternal rest.

The early Church testifies to belief in purgatory, in both its literary and archeological remains. Many Christians commissioned gravestones with epitaphs begging prayers for their souls. The apocrypha sketch out the doctrine, and the Fathers expound it. The existence of purgatory is implicit in both the Old Testament and the New (including the Gospels). The early Church kept many graveside traditions that, in effect, made a habit of prayer for the dead. It was customary to mark the anniversary of a dead person’s passing (three days, one week, one year) with the celebration of the Mass. In the fourth century, St. Monica urged her priest-son Augustine to remember her soul in prayer when he said Mass. And, like a good boy, he did. “If we had no care for the dead,” Augustine said, “we would not be in the habit of praying for them.” Augustine held that there are “temporary punishments after death.” There is remedial pain as the soul undergoes its purification and preparation for heaven. St. Gregory the Great emphasized that this doctrine was not optional.

The earliest records in the paper trail are not to be missed, for they’re the most poetic. And you’ll find a sampling online here.

The best book on the subject is, without a doubt, Purgatory, by Michael Taylor, S.J. It presents the scriptural, patristic, and theological evidence in an accessible readable form. It’s a friendly treatment, good for handing to a skeptical friend.

“He also took up a collection, man by man, to the amount of two thousand drachmas of silver, and sent it to Jerusalem to provide for a sin offering. In doing this he acted very well and honorably, taking account of the resurrection. For if he were not expecting that those who had fallen would rise again, it would have been superfluous and foolish to pray for the dead. But if he was looking to the splendid reward that is laid up for those who fall asleep in godliness, it was a holy and pious thought. Therefore he made atonement for the dead, that they might be delivered from their sin” (2 Maccabees 12:43-45). “It is a holy and wholesome thought to pray for the dead that they may be loosed from their sins” (2 Maccabees 12:46, Vulgate).

A few weeks back I groused that David Bercot’s Dictionary of Early Christian Beliefs was deficient in its treatment of the cult of the saints in Christian antiquity. In fact, the only entries under “Should Christians pray to the dead?” are condemnations of necromancy by Tertullian and Lactantius! In an otherwise fine volume, this section grossly misrepresents the literary and archeological record of the early Church. For the early Christians practiced a lively and deep devotion to the saints.

Not to worry, though, because other books make up for the bit that is lacking in Bercot, and there’s always more room on the bookshelf. St. Vladimir’s Seminary Press offers a nice anthology in its popular patristics series: The Cult of the Saints includes St. John Chrysostom’s homilies and letters related to the great men whom St. Paul refers to as the “saints in light” (Col 1:12). When you have Fathers praising Fathers — in this case, Chrysostom praising Ignatius (and many others) — you’ve got to listen up.

In his standard work on Early Christian Doctrines, J.N.D. Kelly notes how the earliest Christians reverently preserved the relics of the martyrs and every year celebrated their “birthdays” (into heaven, that is). Origen and Cyprian attest to the custom of seeking the intercession of the saints. And their literary remains find echo in graffiti throughout the ancient world. The ancient liturgies invoke the saints of both the Old and New Testaments, as well as the martyrs. St. Cyril of Jerusalem, st. Ambrose, St. Epiphanius, St. John Chrysostom and St. Gregory Nazianzen exhort their flocks to seek the help of the saints. And it’s a multimedia testimony. We can still look upon those early images of saints, painted on the walls of the catacombs, engraved on tombstones, and etched into the sides of pilgrim flasks and oil lamps. Everywhere the Gospel reached, the strain re-echoed: “Pray for us!”

There’s more evidence in Peter Brown’s The Cult of the Saints: Its Rise and Function in Latin Christianity (The Haskell Lectures on History of Religions). Though Brown does not write from a perspective of faith — perhaps because he doesn’t — he is a reliable witness. He has no dog in the Protestant-Catholic fight over the intercession of the saints. But Catholics will recognize a familiar devotion in some of their ancient forebears, as they appear in Brown’s book. (I like his description of the Mediterranean region after the rise of Christianity: “while it may not have become markedly more ‘otherworldly,’ it was most emphatically ‘upperworldly.'”)

Orthodox and Catholic Christianity still is. We profess belief in “life everlasting. We believe also that we live amid a “great cloud of witnesses” (Heb 12:1). We believe that Christians must “bear one another’s burdens” (Gal 6:2). We believe that the dead cry out before the altar in heaven, pleading with God to right the wrongs upon earth (Rev 6:9-10).

In short, we believe in the faith of our Fathers. There’s good patristic material in the online Catholic Encyclopedia and at Catholic Answers. So celebrate the day with gusto. Celebrate with all the saints in heaven and on earth!

“Thus, in 1 Peter 3:19, Jesus is actually declaring victory over the demonic realm; he is not preaching to the righteous dead. The second passage, 1 Peter 4:6, on the other hand, does say that the gospel was preached to the dead.” Thus say Heidi J. Hornik and Mikeal C. Parsons, in a study titled The Harrowing of Hell, which appeared in Bible Review in June 2003. The authors cite St. Ignatius of Antioch, St. Melito of Sardis, the Odes of Solomon, the apocryphal Gospel of Nicodemus, and many other sources — establishing that the credal statement “He descended into hell” has a remarkable patristic pedigree. They won’t say, in the end, whether they consider it the Fathers’ “misreading” of the Scriptures. For some of us, the councils have settled that question by affirming the creeds. In any event, Jesus is indeed victorious over the demons, and He has indeed preached to the righteous dead. So happy Halloween, everyone!

The Weekly Roman Observer just posted another podcast interview with Yours Truly on Apple’s iTunes service. I’m on the latest number, and the audio is absolutely free. (You’ll have to subscribe to Familyland’s cable network if you want to track the ties that I wear.)

Phil continues his patristic reflections On St. John Chrysostom’s sermons On Marriage and Family Life.

At least a couple of your patristiblogging friends are quoted in an article on the return of the Tridentine Mass in the Allentown Morning Call.

Faithful have been flocking to traditional rite of Catholic Church.

By Daniel Patrick Sheehan Of The Morning Call

Four decades of change in the Roman Catholic Church have made the Latin Mass, the beloved rite of centuries, a stranger in its own house. So when an under-50 Catholic beholds the venerable ceremony for the first time, it’s with the surprised and wondering eyes of a tourist.

”Introibo ad altare Dei,” says the priest, his back facing the congregation, uttering Latin more familiar nowadays from fiction — the opening of James Joyce’s ”Ulysses,” where Buck Mulligan flippantly uses the phrase on his way to shave — than from exposure on Sunday. It means ”I will go in unto the altar of God,” and it opens an hour of reverent, murmured worship defined as much by its silences as its words.

The Mass, formally called the Tridentine Mass because it was codified under Pope Pius V at the 16th century Council of Trent, was supplanted by the Mass of Pope Paul VI — the largely vernacular Novus Ordo, or new order — in the 1970s.

That was a decade of jarringly rapid change in the church as the reforms of the Second Vatican Council — which called for the church to open itself to the modern world — were implemented. The loss of the Tridentine rite, which could only be celebrated afterward by special permission, devastated many Catholics, some of whom departed for the unchanged liturgies of Orthodox churches or retreated into resistance or outright schism as they strove to sustain the old ways of worship.

But in these early years of the church’s third millennium, the Latin Mass isn’t dead. It is making a bona fide comeback, with attendance at diocese-approved celebrations growing — in part because of interest among young people — and Pope Benedict XVI reportedly preparing to further loosen strictures on the rite so that priests can offer it without having to seek permission from the local bishop. The Coalition for Ecclesia Dei, a Tridentine Mass advocacy group, estimates the number of Masses offered weekly across the country has grown from fewer than 40 in 1988 to nearly 240 today.

”There’s a catholicity to it that was somewhat submarined after Vatican II,” says the Rev. William Seifert, who has begun offering the old rite at St. Stephen of Hungary in Allentown — the sole forum in the Catholic Diocese of Allentown — and welcomed more than 100 worshippers to the first Mass three weeks ago.

Most were carry-over worshippers from St. Roch’s in West Bangor, where Monsignor Charles Moss offered the Mass until his death earlier this year. They came from as far as Jim Thorpe, many clutching leatherbound copies of the pre-Vatican II 1962 Missal to guide them through the liturgy.

The women and girls wore lace chapel veils. The men and boys wore suits. They arrived early and lingered late. That alone made the gathering distinct from some new Masses, where families dressed for the day’s soccer game race for the exits at the first opportunity.

Many of the bowed heads were gray, but other worshippers were of generations born since Vatican II, who have little or no memory of the days when the old rite was the only rite. For them, sentiment plays no role in how they worship. They simply find a fuller, more satisfying expression of faith in the old ways.

That appears to be the case wherever Tridentine celebrations are offered. Dozens of stories in secular and Catholic media in recent years have noted the large numbers of younger people attached to the rite.

”I guess I’m drawn to the quiet, the reverence, the fullness of the prayers,” says Susie Lloyd of Whitehall, 40, a flesh-and-blood portrait of old-line Catholicism as she knelt with her husband and six daughters — a seventh child is on the way — in a pew at St. Stephen’s. ”There’s a sense of stability, an emphasis on God and the sacrifice.”

Matt Cavoto of Bethlehem, a 25-year-old Moravian College graduate who attends with his wife and infant son, says he was first drawn to the Tridentine rite when he lived in Norristown. Cavoto, a musician and composer who is forming a small choir for the St. Stephen’s Mass, was enraptured by the haunting medieval chant of the liturgy.

”I wouldn’t call my interest in the old Mass a preference, per se,” he says. ”You have different rites in the church and each emphasizes different aspects of spirituality. It’s the same faith either way. When someone becomes attached to a particular rite, it’s not a matter of preference, it’s simply the manner in which one lives one’s faith.”

Old versus new

The debate over new Mass versus old — raging hot as ever these days in theological journals and on countless Web logs — extends far beyond language and atmosphere into the very nature of Catholicism. Is worship primarily an individual meeting between God and believer, or more of a communal gathering? Are the Eucharistic bread and wine — which Catholics believe to be the body and blood of Christ — to be received on the knees, with a sense of awe and trembling, or shared like the elements of a meal?

These aren’t either-or propositions, Lloyd says. The Mass is a sacrifice and a meal, a private rendezvous and a public gathering.

But the new and old rites emphasize different elements, and the distinctions are evident even to a casual observer. At a Tridentine service, the priest faces the altar, not the people, and seems to be engaged in private discourse much of the time. His orientation and gestures make the sacrificial aspect of the liturgy far more explicit than in the Novus Ordo, which emphasizes the social elements of worship by using lay people for Scripture readings and including more responsorial prayers.

The Rev. John T. Zuhlsdorf, a priest and author who lives in Rome and maintains a Catholic apologetics Web site, says the old rite constitutes ”vertical” worship, raising the congregation’s attention to God on high, whereas the new Mass is ”horizontal,” emphasizing God’s presence in the community of believers.

While most of the old rite is in Latin, calling it the Latin Mass is misleading, because the new Mass is sometimes said in that language. It is also misleading to call the Tridentine the ”Mass of all time,” as some traditionalists do, because other liturgical forms flourished before its development.

Indeed, the Mass of Paul VI was ostensibly an attempt to reclaim elements of the earliest Christian liturgies — the sign of peace, for example, a handshake or other greeting among congregants which was a prominent part of early worship. It is used in the elaborate Tridentine High Mass, but not in the simpler Low Mass.

Communion in the hand, another recent change that traditionalists view as innovation, was also part of early worship.

”There is no doubt in my mind that the people who carried out the liturgical reforms in the 1950s, ’60s and ’70s, continuing through today, have seen their work as an act of retrieval from those [early] centuries,” says Mike Aquilina, a Catholic author whose work has focused on the teachings and practices of the church fathers. ”Whether they’ve succeeded in an actual retrieval is an open question.”

That’s because the record of early worship is spotty, at best. In those years, Christians were fiercely persecuted, so gatherings were held in secret. And witnessing the heart of the Mass, the transformation of the bread and wine into the body and blood of Christ, was a privilege reserved for the faithful. Catechumens — those receiving instruction in the faith — were dismissed before the Eucharistic prayers began.

What hasn’t changed about the Mass is its core purpose. ”The essentials remain the same,” says Aquilina, vice president of the St. Paul Center for Biblical Theology in Steubenville, Ohio. ”That is, the offering of the elements, the bread and the wine and the belief about what happens there. But the ceremonials have changed from time to time.”

Returning to tradition

Lloyd, an author and columnist for Catholic periodicals, argues that Catholics risk losing the true sense of what happens at Mass, with belief in the Real Presence — the literal transformation of bread and wine into Christ’s body and blood — already in sharp decline.

In short, Catholics have been pushed toward a Protestant view of the Eucharist as a mere symbolic re-creation of the Last Supper, even though Catholic teaching on the essence of the Mass has not changed.

”This is the unbloody sacrifice of Calvary,” Lloyd says. ”We kneel down and the priest feeds us the Eucharist. … All of this imagery is lost [in the way new Masses are offered] and the result is that people don’t believe.”

According to media reports in Italy and America, Benedict is preparing a document that would ease the strictures on celebrating the Tridentine Mass by allowing any priest to offer it without first seeking permission.

That would be a step further than Benedict’s predecessor. Recognizing widespread longing for the old ways, John Paul II urged bishops to be more generous in allowing old rite celebrations — not just the Mass, but all the sacraments — in 1988.

”Respect must everywhere by shown for the feelings of all those who are attached to the Latin liturgical tradition by a wide and generous application,” John Paul wrote. The directive, called an indult, was widely ignored, leading John Paul to reiterate his wishes in 1998.

If Benedict plans to grant even greater leeway, he may be hoping to mend the schism with traditionalist groups — especially the Society of St. Pius X, whose founder, Archbishop Marcel LeFebvre, was excommunicated before his death for ordaining bishops against the Vatican’s wishes.

Zuhlsdorf says the pontiff’s primary aim would be to allow the new rites and old to exist side by side and influence each other to the benefit of both. To a degree, that is already happening, he says. Younger priests who celebrate the old rite are more conscious of the congregation’s desire to participate, thanks to the influence of the Novus Ordo. Likewise, the old rite serves as an example of the sense of reverence and awe that should pervade any liturgy.

Through this liturgical cross-pollination, ”the pope hopes to reaffirm the newer form of Mass,” Zuhlsdorf says. ”It’s not a criticism of the newer form. It may be a criticism and correction of the way it’s being celebrated, but not of the form itself.”