My latest column for Inside Catholic went up last night. It’s entitled “The Rubrics of Coffee“, and appeared in a slightly different form on a prior version of this blog.
For those of you who weren’t around back then, I hope you’ll find it interesting. It’s a look at the way God has imbued sacramentality into every day things - like coffee - through natural processes. Our daily lives, particularly when it comes to things like preparing food, are filled with a certain sort of ritual - rubrics, really - that are required to get the best out flavors and textures and to really enjoy the essence of the thing.
Coffee is not alone in this, but its preparation (and the process that gets it from coffee bush to cup, which is extremely complex) is exemplary in this regard. It takes a certain expertise, precision and care to get really good coffee.
Sure, you can do it the sloppy way, but what you’ll get will likely be pretty gross, and you’ll likely have to overload it with sugar and milk just to make it palatable.
Liturgy is the same way - sloppy liturgy has to be overwhelmed with filler and sweetener to try to get people to put up with it. Good liturgy doesn’t need those things - it’s rich, complex, robust, and subtle, all at the same time.
Anecdotally, I once overheard Fr. George Rutler, as he was preparing to give a talk, making comments on the selection of teas at the refreshment table. A large selection of decaffeinated teas was keeping him from finding what he was looking for, and he exclaimed, “These are all novus ordo teas…I want the Tridentine tea.”
I wasn’t a traditional Catholic at the time, but I must admit that I found it to be an apt analogy.
[...] can break complex ideas down into simple analogies! It’s how Jesus taught (parables) and I stumbled upon a column by Steve Skojec called The Rubrics of Coffee. This is a beautiful anaology of the [...]
All coffee is bad, no matter what the rite. I’ll bet even Sarum Rite Coffee is gross and horrid.
I’m a coffee Calvinist.
But, as you know, I”m with Fr. Rutler on the tea issue.
I once decided against a particular monastery, in my never-ending, (though mercifully currently suspended) search for a place to go, because all it had was “herbal tea” and decaf.
Good grief! I was there for nearly two weeks and there was nothing hot to drink. I finally got a lift to the local Walmart, where I was, miraculously (for this was in Oklahoma), able to purchase a box of Twinings. When I got back to the house, I asked for a tea pot. The sister pointed to the kettle. I felt as if I were in a village of grass huts in Borneo trying to explain to the natives what a bar of soap was for.
The liturgy was a wonder, and the Mass was in the True rite, and the sisters were lovely, and the place was beautiful, but the thought of spending the rest of my life with these tea-heathens was a source of indescribable pain.
I have to admit, however, that tea in the north of England is quite another affair. Despite my Tridentine Tea snobbery, I find my own standards slipping down to meet the Coronation Street level with which I am surrounded. I buy it in bags. I even heat it up in the microwave.
David Warren, the greatest tea snob in the world, would be rolling in his grave, if he were dead.
All coffee is bad, no matter what the rite.
Heathen!