René Girard and the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass: Re-Assessing the Twentieth-Century Liturgical Reform

After being exposed to the writings of René Girard, it came as no surprise to me to learn that he supported the movement to provide for a wider use of the “Tridentine Mass.”¹ Given the centrality of Christ’s sacrificial self-offering to Girard’s later work, it makes sense that he would have been sympathetic to a ritual form that, perhaps more than any other Christian liturgy, involves a re-presentation of Christ’s Passion.² Unfortunately, nowhere in his published writings did Girard directly comment on the theological significance of the older form of the Roman rite. In fact, for the most part, Girard kept his distance from discussions of liturgical matters. Thus, while his work has made significant waves in the fields of anthropology and systematic theology, the field of liturgical studies remains ripe for a deeper engagement with Girard’s work. The underlying contention of the following study is that Girard’s scholarship can provide a fuller understanding of the mystery of the Eucharist in relation to Christ’s sacrificial work on the cross, thereby providing a fuller appreciation of the particular strengths of what is now known as the Extraordinary Form of the Roman rite.³ The first section of the article will examine how Girard’s thoughts concerning sacrifice provide a helpful grammar for talking about atonement, while the second section will bring his work into conversation with Catholic Eucharistic theology, specifically, with the notion of the Eucharist as an unbloody sacrifice. The third section of the paper will be more polemical in nature, arguing that certain aspects of the liturgical reform following the Second Vatican Council, in particular the Novus Ordo Missae, obscure the sacrificial character of the Mass, thereby blunting the force of the rite to communicate the way in which Christ’s sacrifice frees us from the cycle of violence that has plagued human culture from its very beginnings. My comments in this section of the paper will focus on the Ordo Missae strictly speaking. A broader analysis of the reform of the Missal could examine its different aspects—e.g., the structure of the liturgical year, the various prayers, lectionary readings, etc.—but this article will limit itself to an assessment of the Order of Mass. Finally, the conclusion will set forth a constructive proposal for concretizing Benedict XVI’s hope that the two forms of the Roman rite might be mutually enriching.

Violence and the Sacred: Sacrifice in the Thought of René Girard

Before getting to the heart of my argument, some brief comments on Girard’s theory of mimesis and its application to a Christian understanding of atonement are in order. In Girard’s view, human beings do not possess “natural” desires; rather, we learn what to desire by observing what others desire. While on the surface this mimetic desire seems harmless enough, it has a darker side in that shared desire inevitably leads to violence.⁴ Mimetic conflict represents a crisis not only in the relationships between individuals, but also at a societal level, due to the contagious nature of violence.⁵ Because of the human propensity to seek revenge, acts of violence tend to escalate into heightened levels of conflict, until the very structures of social order reach the brink of destruction. As a means of resolving this crisis, primitive societies often fell back upon the scapegoat mechanism, in which the anger and hostility of the community were directed against a randomly chosen victim. Just as two rivals can find solidarity through a shared enemy, so also this dynamic appears to work at the societal level. In a very real sense, social cohesiveness is constructed around the lynched body of a sacrificial victim.⁶ Throughout most of human history, it seems, societies have operated according to the principle of Caiaphas, that it is better for one man to die for the people than that the whole nation should perish (see Jn 11:50).⁷

Building on this idea of the scapegoat mechanism, Girard...