On The Clown Mass

 

On The Clown Mass

Peregrinus

    A strange religious phenomenon began to occur in the middle of the 20^th century. It was in the wake of the Second Vatican Council that clowns suddenly entered en masse into the sanctuaries of Catholic Churches. They began to say mass, act as servers, catechists, dancers, puppeteers, or ministers of whatever “liturgical” functions they wished to invent, and have remained doing so until the present. Even if the clowns themselves are absent, a parish priest who is so inclined, will channel the spirit of the clown by attempting to turn his church into a veritable circus through dancing, joking, and cultural performances. These bizarre spectacles have not been limited to a few far-off cases: the clowns and their spirit have left a deep mark on the Catholic Church and on the psyche of those who have been subjected to them.

            This is an obviously absurd phenomenon, and is thus easily and rightfully mocked; but while many have mocked the clown mass, it does not appear that any have attempted to understand the clown mass; and this is what I propose to do, to take the clowns seriously. To do this, we must dismiss the idea that the clown mass is just a matter of bad taste, or an isolated aberration, or just an earnest attempt at pedagogical adaptation for the children. We must discover what the clown mass tells us about the state of the world and Western religion. We will therefore examine what a clown is, the nature of the carnival, and the significance of the introduction of these things into the sanctuaries of the Catholic Church.

            The clown is firstly an entertainer, and like all entertainers, he is a man on the edge of society. His natural abode is the circus, a nomadic enterprise made up of other marginal figures who travel from city to city showcasing their novelties. It is no coincidence then that the circus sets itself up on the outskirts of the towns that it visits; as the act of going to the circus – the physical journey of travelling beyond the boundaries of the city (far away from the centre of society) – matches up with the symbolic reality of the circus itself (which is that of a meeting point of marginal figures). It is fitting that circus performers, who found no place in normal societies, would congregate outside of the bounds of the city. Furthermore, the circus is not limited to artists and performers, but includes novel curiosities, such as exotic animals and people with abnormal bodies.

            The function of the circus finds its roots in the carnival. To understand the full meaning of the carnival we need only consult Rene Guenon’s succinct and insightful chapter on it in his work Symbols of Sacred Science. Guenon asks: how is it that the festivals of antiquity and medieval times – in which hierarchies were inverted, disorder celebrated, and in which even sinister symbolism was allowed to manifest – were permitted by the authorities of a  society that was correctly and traditionally ordered? He answers that the function of ancient carnivals was

“a matter of somehow ‘channeling’ these [disordered] tendencies and rendering them as inoffensive as possible, by giving them an opportunity to manifest themselves, but only during very brief periods and in very set circumstances, and by assigning this manifestation narrow limits which it is not allowed to overstep. If it were not so, these same tendencies, for lack of the minimum satisfaction required by the present state of humanity, would be at risk of exploding, so to speak, and spreading their effects to the whole of existence…”

In this context, the existence of the clown is perfectly justified: he highlights the absurd and marginal aspects of humanity through humour, and more significantly, his observations of absurdity reach all men indiscriminately, even to those at the top of the hierarchy. The clown is even allowed to mock the sovereign, and in medieval times, the court jester had a juridical immunity to make irreverent and disrespectful comments that would normally merit punishment, even that of death. Disordered tendencies of contempt of authority and hierarchy are channeled through clowning around, but are kept innocuous and limited. This is a very common feature of carnivals; we need only recall the Saturnalia of the ancient Romans in which slaves become the master and the masters become slaves.

Nowadays, the carnival is hardly necessary, as disorder reigns supreme in both the structure of society and in minds of individuals. The gradual disappearance of carnivals starting in the early modern period can be seen as both a symptom and a cause of the general disorder. Vestiges of certain carnivals still exist in the West, but they are deprived of their original function and reduced to mere entertainment; this is the sad state of the clown in our day.

            Understanding this, we can see that the clown mass is where the most marginal elements of society take the place of the highest ideals in a brazen act of theft. For clowns to take centre stage during the Catholic mass is a complete inversion of normality, and since it deals with the highest and most sacred part of society, we can say with complete sobriety and objectivity that the clown mass takes on a truly satanic character, for, according to Guenon, “satanism, even when conscious, is always characterized by a reversal of the normal order; it is the exact opposite of orthodox doctrine, and intentionally inverts certain symbols or formulas.” The fact that the carnival has penetrated into the heart of society (where society comes into contact with its supra-human principle) testifies to the fact that we are living – according to Guenon – “in a sinister perpetual carnival” from which not even religion can any longer provide an escape from.

It is not a coincidence that these aberrations began to occur soon after the advent of the Novus Ordo, as the new rite is characterized by a flattening of hierarchy and a secular spirit. Therefore, we can say that the clowns did not impose themselves by violence on the Bogus Disordo, but that they emerged from it as a conclusion of the spirit and logic of the new rite. The clown mass – in a twisted way – is the highest form the Novus Ordo, it is the pattern to which all other performances of the rite imitate. When a Novus Ordo mass lacks acrobatic feats, it is due to the willpower of the celebrant who fights against the spirit of the ritual that he performs.

 The Novus Ordo is already an inversion of normality, a bizarre absurdity utterly foreign to Christianity which has been enshrined as Catholicism’s principal ritual form. Perhaps this grotesque incongruity summoned the clowns as sorts of geists or spectres that now haunt us and mock our spiritual degradation? For only complete spiritual blindness could have allowed a great part of the Western world sit idle in their pews as their rites were profaned and parodied before their eyes.