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Views from the Choir Loft

The Use and Abuse of the “Via Media”

Dr. Peter Kwasniewski · October 23, 2014

0319_Kwasni-93-LG HE ANCIENTS LIKED TO SAY: “Nothing in excess.” Make sure you find a balanced perspective. Give a little, take a little. Don’t go overboard. Life is full of compromises. Whatever you do, avoid the extremes. When it comes to our opinions and modes of behavior, thoughtful people prefer to see themselves as exponents and practitioners of the via media, the middle way.

The problem is, this often becomes a substitute for real thinking, for the hard work of clinging to the truth even when it is so unpopular or unrecognized that it looks extreme. There are times when the middle way is the wrong way. There are times when the middle way is the broad path that leads to destruction.

Let me offer some examples of how easily the via media logic can be abused. “Believers are too credulous, atheists are too assertive in the opposite direction, so the via media is agnosticism.” “Sedevacantists go to one extreme in their rejection of the reigning pope, while most traditional Catholics are too flaccid in their acceptance of him; the via media is the SSPX.” One could play this game for a long time, and always come out sitting pretty.

To show that this is a real intellectual problem, consider the via media that Blessed John Henry Newman actually believed and defended for many years: “Roman Catholicism is at the excess of superstition and corruption, Protestantism is at the extreme of cutting away tradition, Anglicanism is the happy mean in the middle.”

THEN NEWMAN DISCOVERED, when studying the council of Chalcedon, that historically there were three parties—two extremes and a middle; but, in fact, the one extreme was where the Pope and the orthodox faith stood, the other extreme was pure Arianism, and the middle was a clever attempt at a compromise. The Holy Spirit did not choose the via media in this case; He led the Church to choose what looked like the extreme to everyone at the time.

And, perhaps I should add, the Church “on the ground” was a terrible mess on all sides for a long time. You couldn’t simply look to what your bishop was saying, because many of the bishops had fallen into heresy. (One might think that with authoritative catechisms from papal giants St. Pius V, St. Pius X, and St. John Paul II, bishops and cardinals today would know, teach, and defend the faith handed down to us, but sadly, this no longer seems to be part of the job qualification.)

I once saw the claim, in a bulletin from England, that there is a via media between progressivism/liberalism and traditionalism. Interesting. What kind of a mean is it, I wonder? No doubt we can have too much of the wrong kind of progress, or too heavy a dose of that liberalism condemned by Leo XIII and other pontiffs, but can we have too much tradition? Can we receive, embrace, live, love, and pass on the Sacred Tradition of the Church too much?

The same bulletin went on to claim there is a mean between “liturgical silliness or corruption” and “liturgical snobbery.” We know, perhaps, what they mean by the latter, but the way it’s phrased just supports my point: it’s so easy to caricature your opponents so that you end up comfortably as the via media. Maybe we should concentrate less on who the extremes are (for we might be tempted to judgmentalism), and concentrate more on the truths we should adhere to with all our mind, the goods we should aspire to with all our heart, the beauty we should long for with all our soul, the holiness we should pursue with all our strength. In this way, we will be the right kind of extremists.

Please visit THIS PAGE to learn more about Dr. Kwasniewski’s Sacred Choral Works and the audio CDs that contain recordings of the pieces.

Opinions by blog authors do not necessarily represent the views of Corpus Christi Watershed.

Filed Under: Articles Last Updated: January 1, 2020

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About Dr. Peter Kwasniewski

A graduate of Thomas Aquinas College (B.A. in Liberal Arts) and The Catholic University of America (M.A. and Ph.D. in Philosophy), Dr. Peter Kwasniewski is currently Professor at Wyoming Catholic College. He is also a published and performed composer, especially of sacred music.

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President’s Corner

    Urgent! • We Desperately Need Funds!
    A few days ago, the president of Corpus Christi Watershed posted this urgent appeal for funds. Please help us make sure we’re never forced to place our content behind a paywall. We feel it’s crucial that 100% of our content remains free to everyone. We’re a tiny 501(c)3 public charity, entirely dependent upon the generosity of small donors. We have no endowment and no major donors. We run no advertisements and have no savings. We beg you to consider donating $4.00 per month. Thank you!
    —Jeff Ostrowski
    “Booklet of Eucharistic Hymns” (16 pages)
    I was asked to create a booklet for my parish to use during our CORPUS CHRISTI PROCESSION on 22 June 2025. Would you be willing to look over the DRAFT BOOKLET (16 pages) I came up with? I tried to include a variety of hymns: some have a refrain; some are in major, others in minor; some are metered, others are plainsong; some are in Spanish, some are in Latin, but most are in English. Normally, we’d use the Brébeuf Hymnal—but we can’t risk having our congregation carry those heavy books all over the city to various churches.
    —Jeff Ostrowski
    “Yahweh” in church songs?
    My pastor asked me to write a weekly column for our parish bulletin. The one scheduled to run on 22 June 2025 is called “Three Words in a Psalm” and speaks of translating the TETRAGRAMMATON. You can read the article at this column repository. All of them are quite brief because I was asked to keep within a certain word limit.
    —Jeff Ostrowski

Quick Thoughts

    Antiphons Don’t Match?
    A reader wants to know why the Entrance and Communion antiphons in certain publications deviate from what’s prescribed by the GRADUALE ROMANUM published after Vatican II. Click here to read our answer. The short answer is: the Adalbert Propers were never intended to be sung. They were intended for private Masses only (or Masses without music). The “Graduale Parvum,” published by the John Henry Newman Institute of Liturgical Music in 2023, mostly uses the Adalbert Propers—but sometimes uses the GRADUALE text: e.g. Solemnity of Saints Peter and Paul (29 June).
    —Corpus Christi Watershed
    When to Sit, Stand and Kneel like it’s 1962
    There are lots of different guides to postures for Mass, but I couldn’t find one which matched our local Latin Mass, so I made this one: sit-stand-kneel-crop
    —Veronica Brandt
    The Funeral Rites of the Graduale Romanum
    Lately I have been paging through the 1974 Graduale Romanum (see p. 678 ff.) and have been fascinated by the funeral rites found therein, especially the simply-beautiful Psalmody that is appointed for all the different occasions before and after the funeral Mass: at the vigil/wake, at the house of the deceased, processing to the church, at the church, processing to the cemetery, and at the cemetery. Would that this “stational Psalmody” of the Novus Ordo funeral rites saw wider usage! If you or anyone you know have ever used it, please do let me know.
    —Daniel Tucker

Random Quote

“When we force a boy to be a mediocrity in a dozen subjects we destroy his standards, perhaps for life.”

— C. S. Lewis

Recent Posts

  • Urgent! • We Desperately Need Funds!
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  • “Booklet of Eucharistic Hymns” (16 pages)
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  • “Yahweh” in church songs?

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