Guéranger’s Révolution: Fire to a Movement through Fidelity to Tradition

Abstract

Guéranger’s RévolutionFire to a Movement through Fidelity to Tradition Ryan T. Ruiz (bio) Keywords Catholic liturgy, Catholic liturgical movement, Dom Prosper Guéranger, Solesmes, Benedictine revival, Gregorian chant, nineteenth-century French Catholicism Introduction: The Revolutionary Nature of Tradition On the centenary of the death of Dom Prosper Guéranger (1805– 1875)—the restorer of the Benedictine Order in France following the tumultuous events of the late eighteenth-century French Revolution—Pope St. Paul VI (1963–1978) reflected on the legacy of the abbot of Solesmes and his contribution to the life of the Church. Identifying Guéranger’s status as the grandfather of the Liturgical Movement, a movement that came to its zenith in the early twentieth century and inspired the liturgical reforms of the Second Vatican Council, St. Paul VI stated that “there is every reason . . . to call Dom Guéranger the author of that movement of spirituality which, issuing from his writings and the monasteries associated with him, has had as its result that the intense participation of the Christian people in the liturgy is to be considered as ‘the first and indispensable source from which the faithful are to derive the true Christian spirit.’”1 At a time of great upheaval to the fabric of European society and the Church, in which even two successive popes—Pius VI and Pius VII—found themselves imprisoned by the excesses of a fervent revolutionary spirit, this diocesan priest turned Benedictine monk and abbot’s primary aim in life [End Page 55] was to reinstill in the lives of his contemporaries the “true Christian spirit,” a spirit that was rooted in sacred tradition manifested by the unifying beauty of the Church’s liturgical patrimony. For Guéranger, a man shaped by the age of near constant révolution in which he lived, tradition was everything. Ironically, though, this stance made him quite revolutionary. Even today, at least in Western society, the term “traditionalist” has morphed into a quasi-pejorative, indicating, to some, a radical lack of willingness to think openly and creatively about new possibilities. Such an interpretation, however, completely misreads the proper definition of the term, at least from the standpoint of the genius of Catholicism. What is “tradition” from the perspective of this universal Faith? Using the thought of the twentieth-century Catholic philosopher Josef Pieper, one can find a baseline definition. Delivering a speech in 1959 entitled “What Is, in Truth, Worth Preserving,” a speech that commemorated the rebuilding of a school in Münster, Germany, Pieper noted something about tradition that can be said to reflect the Catholic sensibilities of Prosper Guéranger and his desire to restore the Roman liturgy to her unique place in the life of the Church. In his speech at the Münster school, Pieper stated that tradition and the fostering of tradition are not things worth celebrating merely because what has “from time immemorial” been thought, said, and done simply continues to be thought, said, and done over the course of a hundred or a thousand years and even down to our own day. Rather: the glory of tradition—the content and the process of tradition—can only be seen as meaningful if, throughout the generations, what is truly worth preserving is preserved and continues to be preserved!2 As he continued his speech, Pieper clarified that “there is . . . ultimately only one single traditional inheritance that it is absolutely necessary to preserve: the gift that is received and handed on in sacred tradition, received again, and handed on.”3 [End Page 56] This definition of tradition aligns well with that of Guéranger, who held that “one of the fundamental aspects of the Church in her celebration of the Liturgy is that of confession,” which in this context meant “the act by which ‘the Church renders homage to the truth that she has received.’”4 Subsequently, tradition, and the liturgy that embodies tradition, is not something maintained merely for the sake of nostalgia; rather, tradition is maintained because it is something “truly worth preserving.” And while this sentiment is not necessarily revolutionary, we can appreciate how—alongside everything else in the Gospel—it can be a wonderfully...