Iconoclasm and Liturgy

Martin Mosebach

At first glance, the case is banal. The church concerned does not rank among the flashpoints of Germany’s
ecclesiastical history, nor does it stem from one of the great architectural epochs; the architects and artists
who worked jointly on its completion are for the most part unknown. What happened in this Church of
Saint Raphael in the Heidelberg suburb of Neuenheim is, however, exemplary for thousands of churches
the world over, for masterpieces and anonymous creations, for cathedrals and chapels. Hardly a church
remained unscathed in the aftermath of the Second Vatican Council, and even if one chances upon an
intact ensemble, then not because reverence or taste spread their guardian wings over it. It would be due to
the merciful lack of money, a lamentably rare phenomenon in the land of Church Tax. No German bishop
can deny that there was widespread occurrence of something similar to St. Raphael’s in his diocese. Such
are the clerical and liturgical fruits of the post-Conciliar development. Those wishing to view the full
horror subsisting in the ambiguous concept ‘aggiornamento’ should consider the brief, straightforward
history of St. Raphael’s.
I called the Neuenheim church banal. Are there banal churches? Perhaps from an artificially secular,
strictly scientific viewpoint which prohibits any correlation to the function of its object. The actual master-
builder of each church was the liturgy, creating an often splendid, meaningfully adorned setting in which
to unfold itself. A church in which the consecrated Host, the Sacrament of the Altar, is reposited is no
banal location. But there are, of course, churches which outwardly reveal what takes place inside, and
churches which reveal this only vaguely or not at all. And where liturgy is principally independent of the
spatial circumstances in which it is conducted it is perhaps forgivable if those viewing a church draw
conclusions from its appearance as to the liturgy celebrated within and, presented with a space which no
longer conveys a sense of sacred and liturgical functions, ask whether the liturgy should actually still take
place there at all.
As the cornerstone of the Church of St. Raphael was laid in the year 1903 it was clear to priest and
parishioners alike that a church ought to be built which everyone would instantly recognise as such. At
this time, churches were actually no longer built in the neo-Romanesque style, the design by the diocesan
architect Ludwig Maier being thus somewhat old-fashioned. Maier was a seasoned professional. His
structure is well-proportioned and slim. It is noticeable that the facade of Pisa Cathedral had left an
impression on him, but the pale brickwork also recalls Maier’s present, the industrial architecture typified
by factory estates - long since listed for preservation, and rightly so. In common with many historical
pieces of architecture, St. Raphael’s has a certain coldness. This is an apparently essential characteristic of
the industrial age and even finds praise as a hallmark of workmanship in Bauhaus architecture. In its petite
compactness St. Raphael’s resembles a church-shaped reliquary, a model church. Maier richly adorned the
interior. He did not concern himself with purity of style, but with a new style which drew on the wealth of
the Christian past and sought to manifest the path of the Church over time. Early-Christian mosaics from
the Roman basilicas, the Byzantine art of Ravenna, the Italian Renaissance, the Baroque of the Counter-
Reformation, the Heart of Jesus spirituality and the Saints made up a truly astonishing compendium of the
Catholic religion. Anyone explaining the stained-glass windows, frescos and altars in St. Raphael’s to a
child could, in so doing, convey to him a sense of the beliefs and history of the Church.
How the church looked in its colourful splendour, what quality the painting may have possessed, can only
be guessed at today, for the few surviving photographs give no indication of either the colour scheme or
the despatch. But we know from contemporary sources just how well the artistic works complemented
each other. The Great Prayers, the Way of the Cross and Litany of Loreto adorned walls and coffered
ceiling as if the hallowed space were to be composed of prayers.

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This all came about in precisely those years in which Kandinsky painted his first abstract watercolour. The
great civil war in the realm of art broke out and persists until today. This is not the place to go into the
development of art in the 20th century. Suffice it to say: There is also great realistic art in the 20th century,
but it is scarcely visible. Everything which was of significance since the dawn of art, the study and the
artistic recreation of the world, was now frowned upon. Until this revolution it was precisely in its greatest
works that art had also performed a function: it had adorned a room or kept a person in memory. Artists
painted the Biblia pauperum on walls, and they created votive pictures which gave prayer a reassuring
direction.
The victorious art of Modernity now declared its “non serviam”. It no longer served. It demanded for itself
the reverence which had previously been accorded to its subject. The Church ought to have realised long
beforehand that the art which she had nurtured in her bosom would seek to break loose from its mother.
Revolutions do not come overnight, they require preparation. The Church had ceased to be the principal
commissioner of art - and art goes where the money is - for quite some time; she had for too long found
herself in a defensive, often timorous, posture in an attempt to further attract free spirits. What had already
happened in philosophy and society now had to be taken cognizance of in art: The Church had lost her
dominion and influence.
The damage from the war was of help in this predicament and facilitated a determined course of action.
An aerial bomb had blasted away some of St. Raphael’s stained-glass windows; as the scaffolding was in
place the opportunity was seized and, in the year 1954, the entire church was painted white. The snowy
mantle of abstraction descended on the rich figural tapestry of the communio sanctorum.
The most precious adornments of the church, the high altar and the side altars, were still intact. These
altars by the wood sculptor Alfons Marmon of Sigmaringen were significant works of art, testifying to the
independence and theological boldness peculiar to great works of church art - an investigation into the part
played by painters and sculptors in the development of Church teachings would lead to some surprises.
Although Historicism has since been rehabilitated by art historians, the accusation of imitation, lack of
originality and eclecticism continues to be made in connection with buildings of the 19th century; contrary
to all appearances, for the unbiased observer sees at once that, in their play with tradition, these works of
art brought forth wholly novel forms. Where the New is perceived, it is, in turn, cause to reproach the
artist, here, Alfons Marmon: His altar, it was said, wasn’t Romanesque at all.
Actually, Marmon’s altars were not Romanesque for the simple reason that his type of high altar was not
known in the Romanesque. His Arch of Triumph stemmed from the Florentine Renaissance. Such fully-
sculpted relief altars are associated with the della Robia family. Marmon’s limewood sculptures keep a
most artistic balance of natural observation and stylisation: nervous, large hands, spirited heads amidst
waves of flowing Jugendstil robes. It is worthwhile dwelling on the conceptual design of the altar. Its
subject is the Incarnation. The gates right and left of the tabernacle lead into the Casa Santa of Nazareth
and the Nativity Grotto of Bethlehem, the two places associated with the Word becoming flesh. On the
altar of the historic Casa Santa, situated today in Loreto, is written in bronze letters, “Hic verbum caro
factum est” - here the Word was made flesh. This is a twofold reference, for Mary conceived Jesus in the
walls of that house, and on the altar in the Mass an incarnation likewise takes place. By recreating both,
the Annunciation and the Nativity of Christ, on his altar, he stressed both aspects of the Mass. He shifted
the emphasis from the sacrifice to the propitiation, God Incarnate. The message was that Christ was not
only sacrificed, but also born, on the altar.
Only very few pictorial inventions of the Latin Church can match the theological vigour and sensual
commitment of Byzantine icons; significantly, the most important originated in visions: the Pietà, the
Mother of God immersed in the contemplation of her dead Son, which stems from the mysticism of
Thuringia; the Immaculata of Lourdes from the vision of Bernadette, and the Heart of Jesus from the
vision of Marie-Marguerite Alacoque. The mysterium of God Incarnate is most manifestly expressed in
the Heart of Jesus image. The body in which it materialises is manifested in a burning heart, a blood-red
sliver of entrails from which pound the flames of divine love. Alfons Marmon placed a Christ of the Heart
of Jesus beneath the round arch of his Incarnation altar, not, however, in the intimacy of a Mass-card

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image intended for the meditation of an individual, but as Pantocrator. This union of the Christ of the Last
Judgement and the Heart of Jesus image was a perhaps unique achievement, containing a theologem of
unfathomable profundity. Marmon also found unorthodox motifs for the side altars; there, St. Charles
Borromeo was seen dispensing Communion to St. Aloysius of Gonzaga. Gerhard Tersteegen writes that
the true history of the Church is the history of the Saints, the rest could just as well be assigned to profane
history; I have seldom seen this thought as tellingly depicted as on this altar.
The liturgy creates its own space, this holding equally for the new liturgy of Pope Paul VI – it cannot be
repeated emphatically and often enough that this liturgy does not correspond to the reform guidelines of
the Second Vatican Council.
In 1968, the congregation of St. Raphael’s parish, in which the endowers of the altars still lived, was told
that the Marmon altars were “controversial”. The date should be noted, an axial year, as Karl Jaspers
would have it: student revolts in Germany, France, in the United States; the beginning of the Chinese
Cultural Revolution with millions of dead, with its iconoclasm, the devastation of temples and artistic
treasures, and the year of the liturgical reform. These events are interrelated, even if they appear not to be.
Future historiography will have no choice but to see a connection here. Yet, at St. Raphael’s in
Neuenheim the overthrow was not conducted in a revolutionary manner. The parishioners had a parish
priest who, at the same time, was Rector of the City of Heidelberg. He was commended for his “skill in
implementing in a masterly fashion the manifold reordering of the spiritual and pastoral domain and,
equally, of the church exterior (in keeping with the Council)”. In the manner of an experienced surgeon he
“gently” prepared the congregation “for the reordering”, as is related in the eulogy in honour of his fiftieth
anniversary as a priest, only to make the incision suddenly and radically. The falseness of the claim that
the Marmon altar was made of plaster became obvious as the sculptures were being chopped up and sawn
apart and the limewood beneath the painted mounting became visible. Photographs show the elderly
reverend, who, in his respectable priestly attire, did not resemble a vandal, gazing at his demolition work
with a calmly lucent smile. How had such a thing become possible?
I was born after the War, in 1951. As a child I experienced elder ladies and gentlemen at my parents’
home, intellectuals with snow-white hair, the men had a so-called Caesar cut, the women a ponytail and
wore unshapely amber necklaces on a sack-like dress. For me, Modernity had a senile countenance. The
formative experience of these people was the Youth Movement prior to the First World War. This was the
century’s great cauldron of ideas. It fostered political movements which became deadly enemies, one has
only to think of Communism and National Socialism. And not do only nudism, feminism, vegetarianism,
neo-Paganism, pseudo-Indian meditation, Gay liberation, guitar-strumming and the Bauhaus have their
roots and origins here, liturgical reform does, too. That the fervent idealism of good people who were
abused and betrayed is to be found at the root of all these movements is another story. But the destructive
lust once evoked by fiery cheeks at campfires, cobbling together the fantasised downfall of the Old and
the coming of some glorious new age, was to preserve itself from the infantile phase to an astonishingly
old age. “Though must within the cask may raise a pother, / It turns to wine no less at last”, says Goethe’s
Mephisto on seeing the youthfully moved Baccalaureus. In the 20th century, as Goethe could not have
anticipated, the process was devised to stop the fermentation. In mock youthfulness, the sweetness of the
must then remains conserved, yielding a fatal, head-aching concoction which one would not care to call
wine. The youth cult of the 20th century is fulfilled in a ghastly curse: Ageing is not arrested, but the aged
fail to mature and play the long-defunct games of youth until their demise. This is most prevalent in art,
this closest relation of religion, where the avant-gardisms of 1905 must still be reproduced as a sclerotic
ritual almost one hundred years later. And, in her aggiornamento, the Church felt compelled to
accommodate herself to this senile avant-gardism in order to survive.
The story of St. Raphael’s has not yet ended. The apse was now stripped bare. The “reordering was
conducted in a harmonious and, indeed, elegant fashion”, as is stated in the festschrift for the parish priest.
“The altar in table form is the Eucharistic table of the new-covenant congregation (. . . ), altar rails no
longer hinder the access of the Faithful. The chairmanship of the Eucharistic congregation is accorded to
the priest (. . . ), he presides over the assembly, he conducts the proceedings” - from precisely the place

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where previously the tabernacle stood. The latter had now slid over to the side of the altar as a cupboard in
the form of a jagged bronze tooth. “The order of things has simply shifted somewhat”, the parish priest
told the congregation, “the Eucharistic proceedings and the active participation of the come-of-age
Christian now stand in the foreground”. Yes, the order of things had indeed shifted somewhat. In what
manner did Mary and John actively participate as they stood beneath the Cross? In beholding what came
to pass, waiting and praying. But I do not wish to deal at length with the often and exhaustively debunked
Reform jargon. Like Moses, it was not granted to the parish priest to reach the Promised Land. He led his
People to the white plain. It was left to the next generation to fill the empty space.
Handicraft made its entrance into the world along with the Youth Movement, handicraft as
weltanschauung and intellectually elevated activity. Sticking and hammering together all manner of
rubbish and charging the resulting contraption with meaning became the shaman-like activity of the
advanced artist. To the same extent to which the Christian priesthood was dismantled, a new caste of
artist-priests emerged who laid the hand of benediction on their thus consecrated ‘work’. In Joseph Beuys
critics saw the “Mystic of the Lower Rhine”; Otto von Simson, who is truly knowledgeable about
medieval painting, discovered that two plastic sachets of blood plasma which Beuys mounted alongside a
broken-off length of stick - the work is called “Crucifixion” - “had the force of a Giotto”. If this is done
when the wood is green, then we cannot blame the parish priest of St. Raphael’s for ordering a Crucifixion
for the empty apse from a friend and fellow priest - an artist-priest in both senses - who dabbled in art-
rubbish in the Beuysian sense; a cross was missing, anyhow, and the altar, it goes without saying, was also
devoid of one. Once again, the congregation was “gently” prepared. “Whoever finds a Way of the Cross
appealing at first glance has arrived not at Golgotha, but at an allotment garden”, pronounced a
functionary from the Catholic Academy in Mainz. Cimbue, Botticelli, Tintoretto and Raphael ought to put
this maxim in their pipes and smoke it, had they dared to let the transcendent, incorruptible beauty of God
Incarnate shine through His sufferings. The contempt for the petit-bourgeois way of life is also
symptomatic. Liturgical art must also serve allotment gardeners, quite emphatically so. The miracle of
Catholicism consisted of a rite which met with the needs of the most illustrious minds of humanity and
with those of illiterate goatherds, Chinese and Africans, Crusaders and atomic physicists.
In contrast to the destruction of the Marmon altars, which was accompanied by the stunned and confused
silence of a congregation brought up to obey and respect their shepherd, objection was raised when the
parish priest set about the task of making the acquisition of a collage by the artist and priest Udo Körner
palatable to the congregation. The work was called “Cry and Cloud”. The corpus of the Crucified Christ is
made of bark and is merely hinted at; a mouth, from which a cry might emanate, is not distinguishable.
Cross and corpus are split apart, not, one might add, in evocation of the hacking job done to the Marmon
altar. Rusty wire netting hovers in the darkness above the cross. “Pious habits impede the beholder”,
Körner meant to say with his hackneyed graphic-artist statement. Aesthetic discussion is still conducted
along wholly bogus lines of engagement - as if the notorious “Belling Stag” were still battling against an
avant-garde undaunted by death. The “Belling Stag” simply no longer exists. Today, its place has been
taken by works such as “Cry and Cloud”, “thought-provoking art which poses piercing questions of a
ruthless candour”, as the unspeakably worn clichés proclaim. The dispute relating to the purchase of “Cry
and Cloud” for the apse of St. Raphael did, however, lead to some good. True, the work hangs in the space
where the Marmon altar stood, but an elderly member of the congregation made a remark well befitting of
the struggle, a remark of truly great simplicity: “Christ became flesh and thus Man - should he not be
depicted as Man?”
“They lunge as if in a thicket or forest, caring not whether they strike an altar or painting” lamented
Martin Luther on hearing of the iconoclastic excesses following the rabble-rousing sermons of his
erstwhile protégé Andreas Bodenstein von Carlstadt. Luther was not without blame for the iconoclasm of
1521 and 1522, which a great deal of Calvinistic iconoclasm was to follow. As was subsequently the case,
he was horrified when it became clear what harm his writings were doing. What iconoclasm looked like is
shown by a period report on the destruction of Reinhardtsbrunn Monastery, resting place of the
Landgraves of Thuringia, “(...) in the monastery the sacrilege proceeded in the most frolicsome manner.
With the desecrator’s hand the rabble destroyed the twenty-three altars with their precious carvings and

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images, these being artefacts of Catholic devotion, and threw them into the fire, ripped and slit asunder the
sumptuous altar linens, shattered the three organs and twelve bells and divided among themselves what
appeared to be of any use, spilled the Blessed Unction from an ornate vessel onto the earth and scattered
the Hosts with the Blessed Sacrament; they tore the Saints from their shrines, made mischief with them
and trampled upon them”. This is followed by the desecration of graves and a grand burning of books, the
entire handwritten library of the monastery going up in flames. No, the destruction was not perpetrated in
“harmonic and, indeed, elegant fashion”, no-one was “gently” prepared. The images of the great post-
Conciliar destruction and of the Post-Reformation iconoclasm are alike, but not equatable.
And yet it is iconoclasm that we have experienced in the last 35 years. The destruction of the pictorial and
pictorial incapability hallmark these decades. The wholly typical new altar image in St. Raphael’s is only
ostensibly pictorial, in reality it is denial of the pictorial.
Now, it could be asked: Where should liturgical images of God-Incarnate come from at a time in which
the prevailing course of art proscribes the depiction of the human being at all? Is not recourse to the
Second Commandment - “Thou shalt not make unto thee any graven image” - perhaps even most
convenient? The Byzantine and Reformation iconoclasm took place against the background of this Second
Commandment. With her icons and graven images the Church was accused of disregarding this divine
commandment from Mount Sinai. This was a terrible accusation, for who could have dared to transgress a
divine commandment in this way? From this accusation the fury can be explained with which images were
destroyed in Byzantium and during the Reformation; this fury claimed to be a holy wrath, and here,
perhaps, lies the greatest difference to the current iconoclasm, which is destruction out of fear and
weakness.
Did the Church commit a malfeasance when, in the catacombs, she became a church of images? The
Second Commandment is unequivocal. Only God himself can revoke it. And God did revoke it. He
created his own image. One could go as far as to call Jesus Christ God’s self-portrait, for if anyone after
Adam was God’s own image, Jesus was. Since Jesus, the Second Commandment of the Decalogue reads,
“Thou shalt make unto thee an image, and this image shall be Jesus Christ”.
This image, therefore, distinguishes itself entirely from the magnificent depictions of the mythical
godheads. It belongs to a wholly different artistic genre. The name has already been alluded to - the Jesus
image belongs to the genus of portrait, it is the portrait of a real person. At the time of the early Christians,
portraiture was a sophisticated art. In Fayum, in the Hellenistic Egypt of the time, portraits emerged which
are among the most realistic pictures of living persons; at the same time the art of the portrait bust
blossomed in Rome. Everyone knew what a portrait was. And Christ, of course, was not to be idealised
like a Greek deity. This was also not necessary, for there existed a real portrait, the impression on a great
linen cloth which the early Christians held to be the folded shroud from the empty tomb mentioned in
John. This cloth served as reference for the first painters of Christ icons. The unique face on this cloth
became the model for the Christ archetype which, although constantly modified through the centuries,
especially in the West, was recognisable for everyone until the most recent past, including our Christ of
the Heart of Jesus from the Marmon altar. It is revealing to see just how the masters of precisely that
epoch in which painting began to divorce itself from religion dealt with this Christ archetype: In the Last
Supper and Marriage Feast of Cana pictures of a Veronese, for instance, a curiously pale Christ appears
amidst a crowd of people modelled in full lifelikeness because the artist did not, or could not, dare to
depart from tradition in a depiction of Christ. The traditional archetype also remained binding for artists
who knew nothing of the Shroud. The same is true for pictures of the Mother of God, where it did not
depend in the first instance on whether the Evangelist Luke had actually painted Mary’s portrait - more
important is that the early Christians were concerned to own a real picture of Mary and not a fictive one.

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Christ is the truth we must behold because this truth transcends all knowledge, to quote a dictum of
Gregory of Nyssa, and what the Reformation termed ‘idolatry’ is, therefore, an essential part of the
Christian religion. As a weak vestige of the Incarnation, Christians can’t venerate holy pictures enough.
Even the most inept image is like the hem of Jesus’ garment, which the woman in the throng behind him
grasps, “for a power went out from him”, as is related in the Gospel of Luke, the painter of the Madonna.
It can, in any case, be counted among the peculiar coincidences of history that, at the beginning of the
century when the ability to paint man’s image disappeared, photographic negatives recalled to general
awareness the body on the Turin Shroud, as if the image of God Incarnate were not also to disappear in the
cultural catastrophe of imagelessness.
The liturgy is, of course, for its part, one grand image, for which reason the crisis of sacred imagery is
accompanied by a crisis of the liturgy. Just as the Christ image was bestowed by God himself and just as
the Christians tried to preserve the real image, they also linked the liturgy closely to the actual locations of
the Resurrection. In the Holy Sepulchre, where the folded shroud was found, the Mass has been celebrated
from earliest times because it was known that the Eucharist did not, in fact, primarily evoke the Last
Supper of Maundy Thursday, but the death and resurrection of the Lord. In the Church of the Holy
Sepulchre the way in which the local surroundings of the tomb came to form the liturgy can be felt even
today. I speak not of the church interior poised above the tomb, but of the narrow burial chambers, the
antechamber in which the women saw the youth in white robes, and the actual burial chamber with its
recess for the corpse. Only few people can partake in the Mass there. The priest stays in the antechamber
with the congregation until the Creed. For the Canon of the Mass he enters the burial chamber. There, he
is alone and unseen. The altar is the recess in which the body of Jesus lay. The white altar cloth is the
shroud, the Host the body. The manner and means by which the Host is filled with the divine presence
remain hidden from the congregation, who hear only the whispering of the priest. The Sacrifice of the
Mass and the Resurrection become one. At the same time it becomes clear where the early Christians’
desire stems from to have the holy mysteries unfold behind iconostasis, chancel screen and altar gates,
concealed by the priest’s body. The hermetic rapture with which the old Latin Liturgy girded the moment
of consecration represents nothing other than the Holy Sepulchre weighed down by a rock, in which God
Incarnate returned from the dead. This event was witnessed by the cosmos, but by no living person. What
appears as a later addition to the liturgy, as an epiphenomenon of Constantinian basilicas and Gothic
cathedrals, proves to be most intimately connected to the quintessence of the Resurrection. Christian
liturgy is the waiting beneath the Cross and before the Sepulchre. The liturgical reform attempted to erase
this image, also.
The Sepulchre of Jerusalem is the image of the old liturgy. The latter looked to the resurrected Christ and
thus turned towards the East. For the liturgy, the rising sun was the sign of creation, the Resurrection and
the Second Coming of Christ. In their expectation, priest and congregation prayed in the same direction.
Following the liturgical reform the priest has turned around, faces the congregation whilst purporting to
speak to God. The model of the new liturgy is the committee table with microphone and papers at a club
or political gathering, an Ikebana dish with an old root and bizarre orange-coloured exotic plants standing
to the left, on the right a TV candle in a hobby-pottery candlestick. The dignified and collected committee
members look into the audience, as do the clergy during the concelebration. Such a club meeting with
democratic procedural rules is the phenotype of the new liturgy, and this is only consistent, for whoever
renounces the timeless mysterium will inevitably end up in the political and social reality. There is no third
way. Naturally, the occasional problem arises. There are said to be clergymen who have difficulties
putting on the right face at the Consecration. Which facial expression suits the Consecration? Here, once
again, a Goethe quote from the dialogue of Faust and Wagner: “I’ve often heard the boast a preacher /
Might take an actor as his teacher. - Yes, if the preacher is an actor, there’s no doubt, / As it indeed may
sometimes come about.” It is only consistent that age-old Mass texts such as the Feast of the Martyrs
Perpetua and Feliciatas, in which the Mass is spoken of in relation to “sacred mysteries”, to “mysterious
gifts and joys”, were excised. It goes without saying that “mysterious gifts and joys” can be expected from
no committee table in this world.

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For where the Rite is no longer discernable in its power to evoke the Incarnation, those parts of the Mass
which, at first glance, are of a non-ritual nature also cease to be understood in the fullness they possess in
the liturgy, such as the Reading from the Gospel and the Credo. What is liturgical? The effective agency
of prayer is liturgical. Liturgical prayer is always sacramental - it effects the sanctifying and blessful
agency of Christ. The reading of the Gospel in the Mass is, therefore, not the conveying of a text with
which the listeners should grapple, but the sin-forgiving presence of the teaching and healing Christ, and
the Gospels would seem to be thus conceived. As a liturgical prayer, the Creed is no collection of dogmas
partly enforced - at various Councils - with truculence, but rather a new entering of each individual into
the purifying freshness of baptism, presence of the Communion of Saints, ecclesiasticising agency of the
Trinity. This agency is inconceivable in the new liturgy, it is not even desired.
It is part of the peculiar nature of this century that the axe was taken to the green tree of the liturgy and
that, simultaneously, the most profound insights into the liturgy were formulated, albeit not within the
Roman Church, but rather the Church of Byzantium. A pope violated the liturgy. The Orthodoxy which
broke with the pope preserved the liturgy and liturgical theology through the terrible ordeals of the
century. For a Catholic who denies himself recourse to the obvious cynical conclusions these facts present
an agonising puzzle. One is tempted to speak of a tragic puzzle, although the word tragic has no business
in the Christian context. The Mass of Saint Gregory the Great, the old Latin Liturgy, today finds itself at
the ‘lunatic fringe’ of the Roman Church, whilst the Divine Liturgy of Saint John Chrysosthom thrives in
full splendour at the centre of the Orthodox Church. The thought of learning from Orthodoxy is not
popular. One will, however, have to become accustomed to the thorough study of what the Byzantine
Church has to say on icons and the Liturgy. This applies undiminished to the essential nature of the Latin
Rite, indeed it would appear as if its full spiritual compass can be appreciated only from an Eastern
perspective. For me, it is among the most hopeful signs that the Pope has included the picture of Florenski,
who, incidentally, is not a Saint of the Orthodox Church and whose canonization is not under
consideration, in his private chapel.
Chesterton reminds us that hope founded on the remotest probability can no longer actually be deemed a
Christian virtue. Should the hope that the old Christian Liturgy be revived by a pope reading Florenski
therefore be considered all too naive, there might still remain enough room for the great absurd Christian
Hope. Whoever believes that the Liturgy of the Incarnation and sacred images are intimately and
fundamentally connected to faith in Christ, that they, indeed, emanate from him, and whoever can more
readily imagine the demise of religion rather than its continued existence without liturgy, may privately
think this demise a sure thing as far as the outcome of the catastrophe is concerned. As the example of the
Byzantine iconoclasm shows, one hundred years are nothing when it comes to overcoming such an
affliction. Until such times, the resistance of unbending priests and monks is required, as once in
Byzantium, to keep tradition alive in order that it must not one day be reconstructed from books. Some
parishioners from St. Raphael’s in Heidelberg rescued spolia from the destruction of their altars.
Following the example of Saint Francis, who rebuilt the Portiuncula Chapel, they might try to reconstruct
the Heart of Jesus Pantocrator altar. On the first Sunday of Lent, the Orthodox Church celebrates the
cessation of the Iconoclasm with the great ‘Feast of the Triumph of Orthodoxy’. And thus I dream of a
day when at this and at many other re-erected high altars the triumph of Latin Orthodoxy may be
gratefully commemorated.
Translated from the German by Philip Savage