A strenuous effort to promote a reactionary revision of the liturgies of the Second Vatican Council.

The Heresy of Formlessness, by the award-winning German novelist and writer Martin Mosebach, is a collection of essays and other pieces written at diverse times and for various purposes but unified in their theme: a deeply personal love for and defense of the classical Roman Liturgy in its external forms accompanied by an often implicit critique of the comparative formlessness of the Novus Ordo Missae, especially as it is commonly celebrated.
What is the heresy of formlessness? Mosebach phrases what amounts to his thesis rather colloquially: “I admit quite openly that I am one of those naïve folk who look at the surface, the external appearance of things, in order to judge their inner nature, their truth, or their spuriousness” (15). The heresy of formlessness, then, is the rejection of this principle of correlation between external form and internal content. Mosebach contends that modern philosophy has been responsible for firmly fixing in the minds of a great many people the idea of a separation between form and content to such an extent that the accusation of aestheticism in liturgical matters is deemed fatal (104), as if to be concerned with what is “merely beautiful” is to miss the point altogether. Hence Mosebach, especially in the essay entitled Liturgy Is Art, attempts a vindication of the importance of aesthetic beauty in liturgy.
Mosebach’s present volume could be taken as an eloquent depiction of the truth of then-Cardinal Ratzinger’s words in The Spirit of the Liturgy. Ratzinger’s context is the particular liturgical form of kneeling and other bodily postures, but the principle certainly applies to liturgical forms in general: “The bodily gesture itself is the bearer of spiritual meaning, which is precisely that of worship. Without the worship, the bodily gesture would be meaningless, while the spiritual act must of its very nature, because of the psychosomatic unity of man, express itself in the bodily gesture. The two aspects are united in the one word because in a very profound way they belong together. When kneeling becomes merely external, a merely physical act, it becomes meaningless. On the other hand, when someone tries to take worship back into the purely spiritual realm and refuses to give it embodied form, the act of worship evaporates, for what is purely spiritual is inappropriate to the nature of man” (190-91). When the forms of worship are changed or eliminated, especially as drastically as they were in 1969, it is impossible that the content of worship be not affected in the normal experience of human beings.
Mosebach’s modus operandi in this volume is truly compelling. He addresses himself directly to the hearts of ordinary Catholics with his vivid depictions of human experiences. His discussion of Gregorian chant begins not with citations from Pope St. Pius X’s Motu Proprio Tra Le Sollicitudine, a propos as that would be, but with a description of “a beautiful little church in the Rheingau where Gregorian chant had been given a niche as a tourist attraction, as a piece of folklore” (16). His essay on Christianity’s need for liturgy, and for sacred spaces, begins with a devout priest celebrating the traditional Mass in a humble chapel in the Villa Jovis, one of Emperor Tiberius’ villas on the island of Capri. Mosebach condemns the rampant iconoclasm that has followed in the wake of Vatican II not by referencing the Second Council of Nicaea, as well he might have, but by describing in vivid and shocking detail the havoc wreaked upon St Raphael’s church in the Heidelberg suburb of Neuenheim.
Also included in this volume is an uplifting piece on “Tradition’s Avant-Garde”, the Benedictines of Fontgombault, showing, rather than arguing, the classical Roman Liturgy’s power to move hearts and change lives. There is an essay on liturgical posture in the context of active participation, in which Mosebach appeals to the Eastern Rites for aid in understanding, as well as an interesting piece on the genealogy found in the Gospel according to St Matthew. It would be remiss to pass over in silence the passage from Mosebach’s Novel Eine lange Nacht (A Long Night), in which one of the characters experiences the classical Roman Rite in all its soul-stirring majesty. Finally, the two appendices are also worthwhile additions to the volume. The first is an essay on reverence due to the Sacrament of the Altar, and the second is on the manifold symbolism of the Missal of Trent in which Mosebach shows his remarkable familiarity with its intricacies.
Although Mosebach does not profess to be a liturgical scholar, he demonstrates an expansive knowledge of such liturgical authors as Dom Prosper Guéranger, Msgr Klaus Gamber, and then-Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, as well as great familiarity with the historical development of the liturgy. He can by no means be mistaken as one of those who blithely assume that the Missal of Trent fell from Heaven into the hands of the Apostolic Church.
Although Mosebach is clearly critical of what he perceives as a rupture of tradition, it is to his great credit that, despite his profound personal sadness at the suppression of the classical Roman Rite, he never calls into question the authority of Pope Paul VI or so much as implies that the rite promulgated by him is somehow invalid.
The question confronting us today is this: has the Roman Liturgy been de-formed rather than re-formed? Mosebach seems to think so, and his sound logic and firm common sense combined with his heart wrenching accounts of banality displacing beauty in our experience of worship demand a hearing. Mosebach’s rare virtue is his ability to appeal at once to the minds and to the hearts of his readers. This is a book that will resonate deeply in the hearts of many Catholics, especially those who love tradition and have not entirely forgotten its great power and beauty.