Save Formality, Save the Liturgy

A well known proverb of one Fr. Zuhlsdorf is, “Save the Liturgy, save the world.”  On one level, this is (or should be) obvious.  After all, the liturgy is the telos of the world and of man, for as the Church teaches, it is the “source and summit” of the Christian life.  The liturgy is the place where heaven meets earth and all reality finds its fulfillment.  I found myself thinking about why it seems so difficult in these tumultuous times to bring about a certain liturgical conscience among the faithful.  It seems that the vast majority of people are apathetic about the whole thing.  Why?

The answers to this are as varied as the authors who have tried to address it.  For my own part, I am not hoping to present a comprehensive answer, perhaps not even a sufficient one.  I only intend to offer an observation, one that may be either a cause or an effect of liturgical apathy, but in reality is probably both.  Nevertheless, it just may provide a cultural starting point for reviving the sacred rites of our faith.

To the casual observer, it must be obvious that people have lost a sense of formality.  This is not to say that formal attire has completely disappeared, but merely that it isn’t what it once was.  There was a time when a man or woman would put on their “Sunday best” to ride on an airplane.  Now most people don’t even put on their Sunday best for Sunday.  The gradual casualization of our dress is no surprise and has no need of an extended explanation.  What concerns me here is a casualization in our actions, though these are intimately connected with our dress.

Frank Sinatra

Let’s take as a first example the loss of the hat for men.  Owning a hat used to be a standard part of a man’s wardrobe.  Of course I don’t mean here a baseball cap, but a formal dress hat: a fedora, a bowler, or even a homburg.  In fact, the “flat cap,” which probably most resembles modern caps, was considered a casual hat, sort of a “working class” hat.  While we can debate the merits of hat styles, what concerns me most is the ritual that accompanied the use of them.  There is a code of sorts that governs when a hat should be worn and when it should be removed.  Hat etiquette dictates that it is promptly removed upon entering an elevator, restaurant, or home.  It is never to be worn during a meal.  When greeting a friend in public, one would touch the brim of the hat.  If meeting a female, a man should raise the hat by grabbing the crown and lifting it off his head a bit.  If more than a momentary greeting, it is customary for the man to remove his hat in the presence of a lady.  Removing the hat is also appropriate during the national anthem, in which case it is placed over the heart.

I saw a Fred Astaire movie no too long ago - I think it was Swing Time, though I may be mistaken - in which the women in the scene promptly reminded Astaire, “Are you not going to remove your hat when you are in the presence of a woman?”  It is worth noting that Astaire’s character was a bit uncouth (though by today’s standards he would seem like royalty), so the forgetfulness of hat etiquette was quite intentional in the script, intended to demonstrate his lack of manners.

Indeed, those who dare to wear the hat implicitly have a sense of the ritual that surrounds the whole thing.  Upon entering a building, there is an almost unconscious movement to remove it, and the manner in which it is tipped to greet someone seems natural.  They do not see these as arbitrary “rules,” but rather part of the art of hat wearing, objective actions that are part of the nature of the hat itself.  On the other hand, when hat wearing tips towards obscurity, so too does hat tipping.  In other words, out with formality, out with ritual.

Another example is how a man wears a formal jacket.  It is customary to have the buttons fastened (except the bottom button) when standing, but unfastened when sitting.  When a man adheres to this convention, the act of unbuttoning and buttoning the jacket becomes ritual.  When a guest, particularly a female, arrives or leaves a dinner table, the man promptly stands and buttons his jacket.  When she has either left or taken her seat, he sits back down and unbuttons the jacket.  The unbuttoning and buttoning become so automatic that the action itself becomes part of the culture of wearing a jacket.

It is not too hard to see the connection with the Sacred Liturgy.  At the heart of liturgy is the concept of ritual.  Instead of fitting the Liturgy into our lives, it is in the liturgy that we are taken up into something much bigger, the cosmic worship of God.  The liturgy is a great drama that is being played out on a cosmic scale, and simply by being there, we are taken up into this drama.  This is exactly why having specific rituals in the liturgy is so important.  When there are “lines” that need recited, “actions” or “stage directions” that need followed, the structure of the liturgy itself teaches that the liturgy is bigger than us; we are taught that it is not something that we can create, but something that must be received.  This is all a very complicated way of saying that the liturgy is an objective reality.

In contrast, when the liturgy becomes the result of the creative efforts of a “liturgy committee,” the congregation is given the impression that the main focus of the action is not on God but on the people, that we are the creators, not God.  How the liturgy is presented and the way in which it includes us affects how we come to think of the essence of the liturgy and of ourselves as human agents.  This is the basic principle of sacramentality in its most general form.  The principle states that “we are how we act.”  In other words, the way in which we act forms the views we hold and even the type of person we become.  If the Mass is presented as a ritual, people are given the correct impression that it is something bigger than themselves, a sacred action into which they are taken up.  They then come to realize that they are not the center of reality.  If it is presented as self-created, then people come to see themselves as self-creators.

Without a concept of ritual, the faithful are not equipped to enter into the liturgy.  But the concept of ritual is intimately related to the question of formality.  Without entering into the age-old chicken-egg question, we can at least agree that the lack of formality in our culture exists both inside and outside the liturgy, and it is hard to see that one of the arenas can be rescued without the other.  It is up to the bishops and those clergy in their care to guide and guard the sacred liturgy, but it is up to all the faithful to guide and guard culture.  For that very reason, we need to bring back formal dress and the rituals that accompany it.  For men, this means ties, jackets, and indeed hats, and not just for “special events” but as a regular part of our lives.

You have heard it said, “Save the Liturgy, save the world,” but I say to you, “Save formality, save the liturgy.”