In the moral life there is a relationship between ethical norms and a life of authentic freedom and creativity. Does such a relationship also exist in the context of liturgical rubrics?
To understand this question, we must first recover a Christian concepts of freedom and creativity. From the likes of Plato and Aristotle up through Thomas Aquinas, freedom has always been seen as the ability to choose the good. Dominican theologian Servais Pinckaers defines this as freedom for excellence. Beginning with William of Ockham and the nominalists of the 14th century a degradation of the concept of freedom takes place. The nominalists reduce the concept of freedom to the ability to choose between contraries. Pinckaers refer to this as freedom of indifference. It is clear that this later concept of freedom is what governs modern thinking.* The classical idea of freedom is a much fuller description. To see why a freedom for excellence is a higher ideal than freedom of indifference, we need only consider the souls in heaven. It is understood in Catholic theology that the souls in heaven are (1) perfectly content and fulfilled by the beatific vision so that leaving this state is impossible, and (2) perfectly human in every way, including their freedom. To hold these two concepts simultaneously, it must be that freedom is about more than choice. Freedom is the ability to choose the good, and thus a perfected freedom is one in which the soul is no longer chooses anything apart from the good. While authentic freedom might begin with choice, it most assuredly does not end there. Luigi Giussani, found of the Communion and Liberation movement, noted that while choice is present freedom has yet to be perfected.
Authentic freedom is built of the truth of being. Pinckaers offers the analogy of two piano players. Consider on one hand the toddler who sits down at a piano for the first time. He is certainly capable of pressing every ivory on the keyboard. He is utterly unaware of the “rules” that govern the musical scales and the time-tested technique of playing the instrument. We might say that he is completely unaware of the truth of the instrument. Nonetheless, according to a freedom of indifference, the toddler is perfectly free to play the piano; he has the ability to choose between pressing a key and not pressing a key. On the other hand we have the accomplished concept pianist who has spent tireless hours mastering both music in general and the instrument itself. Adhering to the truth of the piano and the structure of music, the concert pianist is able to freely play a wide spectrum of beautiful compositions. According to the Christian concept of freedom for excellence, it is this accomplished pianist that enjoys a freedom far more perfect that the ability to choose randomly between keys.
Authentic freedom grounded in the truth of being leads to genuine creativity. Extending the piano player analogy, the toddler who merely bangs on the keys haphazardly might be able to make noise, but he is not at all capable of true creativity. In contrast, the trained concert pianist is not only capable of offering exquisite renditions of classical pieces, but he is also able to create music on his own, not through the random production of notes and rhythms, but rather by understanding and being faithful to the truth of both the piano and music in general. This creativity is evidence of his near-perfected freedom. While the “truth of being” is always greater than a set of “governing norms”, there is a certain sense in which “rules” lead to greater freedom.
This is the case in the moral life as well. The nominalist rendering of moral freedom is as a choice between contraries. Pushing this philosophy to its natural limit, we would then have to admit that any sort of moral norm, which by its nature governs behavior, is a hindrance to freedom. The classical rendition, however, is to posit freedom as a freedom for excellence. A person is said to be free insofar as she is capable of choosing the good. Any moral norms that bind the person do so because of the very nature of the person qua person. In doing so, this “binding” is really a “loosing”. Learning to “play by the rules” enable a person to not only master the moral life, but sets her free to truly create appropriate moral responses to novel situations. In an ironic flip of the coin, ignoring of the ethical norms, often at the quest for “freedom”, actually causes a loss of moral freedom; Scripture refers to this as the slavery of sin. When we sin, when we choose to ignore the “moral rubrics” of life, we make it more difficult to choose the good in the next ethical situation. No better example of this exists than that of various addictions.
In the final analysis, the human person is a creature of habit, and in a certain sense it is the habitus that binds our disposition. If we act with virtue, we will develop virtuous habits and begin to find it easier to act virtuously. Contrarily, if we act with vice, we will develop vicious behavior and begin to find it easier to act viciously. It is not the habit itself that stands in front of our freedom. Instead, it is the nature of the specific habits we retain that determines whether we are free or enslaved. In the case of the habit of virtue, we find authentic freedom; in the habit of vice, we find an enslaved soul. The nominalist search for a neutral “choice between contraries” is an illusion. There is always either virtue or vice governing our actions, and it is on the side of virtue that we find authentic freedom.
In the liturgy, the Church gives us a set of liturgical norms to which we are to adhere. There are some who would relax this adherence at the service of creativity. However, much like the norms that govern ethical behavior lead to a perfected freedom, which in turns opens a space for authentic creativity, so to do the rubrics of the Mass open up a space for authentic freedom. Philosophically speaking, this should be obvious. In the case of the moral life, norms are not arbitrary but are merely the logical reflections of the truth of the human person. Likewise, the rubrics governing the Mass are not arbitrary but merely necessities that follow from the truth of Liturgy.
The priest who has internalized the rubrics and language of the Mass and has developed the habitus of praying Mass according to these rubrics (which themselves are reflective of the nature of the Liturgy), is able to authentically create liturgical moments. Of course, this authentic creativity is nothing more than a presentation of God’s creativity.
Another word for creativity is fruitfulness. In other words, an authentic act of creativity always bears fruit. The fruit of the moral life is charity. The fruit of the Liturgy is holiness. The act of ignoring the nature of being, whether we are speaking of the nature of the human person or the nature of the Liturgy, is essentially anti-creative, in other words contraceptive.
There are two related posts worth mentioning here. The first is on the “contraceptive liturgy”, in which I discuss the relationship between a legalistic/minimalistic reading of the Church’s teaching on artificial birth control and how a similar thinking leads people into a misreading of the Church’s teaching on the Liturgy. The second is about linguistics, ethics, and freedom, and it discusses similar themes albeit without a liturgical focus.
* In an ironic twist, the “governing” referred to here is indeed just that, and in being governed by the deficient description of human freedom, modern thought is held captive: it is not at all free.
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