https://www.quodlibet.it/giorgio-agamben-requiem-per-l-u2019occidente
Requiem for the West
Towards the end of the 19th century, Moritz Steinschneider, one of the founders of the science of Judaism, declared, not without scandalizing many right-thinking people, that the only thing that could be done for Judaism was to ensure it a worthy funeral. It is possible that his judgment has since then also applied to the Church and to Western culture as a whole. What has in fact happened, however, is that the worthy funeral of which Steinschneider spoke has not been celebrated, neither then for Judaism nor now for the West.
An essential part of the funeral in the tradition of the Catholic Church is the so-called Requiem Mass, which opens in the Introit with the words: Requiem aeternam dona eis, Domine, et lux perpetua luceat eis . Until 1970, the Roman Missal also prescribed the recitation of the Dies Irae sequence for the Requiem Mass . This choice was perfectly consistent with the fact that the very term that defined the Mass for the dead came from an apocalyptic text, the Apocalypse of Ezra , which evoked both peace and the end of the world: requiem aeternitatis dabit vobis, quoniam in proximo est ille, qui in finem saeculi adveniet , "he will give you eternal peace, because he who comes at the end of time is near". The abolition of the dies irae in 1970 went hand in hand with the abandonment of every eschatological instance by the Church, which in this way completely conformed to the idea of infinite progress that defines modernity. What is allowed to fall without the courage to explain the reasons for it – the day of wrath, the last day – can be picked up as a weapon to be used against the cowardice and contradictions of power at the moment of its end. This is what we intend to do here, trying to celebrate without parodic intention, but outside the Church, which belongs to the number of the deceased, a sort of abbreviated funeral for the West.
Dies irae, dies illa
solvet saeclum in sparkle,
test David cum Sybilla.
Day of wrath, that day
will destroy the world in ashes,
as David and the Sibyl testify.
What day is this? Certainly the present, the time we are living in. Every day is the day of wrath, the last day. Today the century, the world is burning, and with it also our house. We must be witnesses of this, like David and like the Sibyl. Those who remain silent and do not testify will have no peace now or tomorrow, because it is precisely peace that the West cannot nor wants to see nor think.
Quantus tremor est futurus
qua iudex est venturus
cuncta stricte discussurus.
How much terror there will be
when the judge comes
to strictly judge everything.
Terror is not the future, it is here and now. And that judge is us, called to pronounce judgment, the krisis on our time. To the word "crisis", which is constantly spoken of to justify the state of exception, we restore its original meaning of judgment. In the vocabulary of Hippocratic medicine, krisis designated the moment in which the doctor must judge whether the patient will die or survive. In the same way, we discern what is dying in the West and what is still alive. And the judgment will be severe, it will not let anything escape. (More at above Link)
Please do your part today to keep alive the flickering flames of originality.
I was only 6 in 1970, but I remember my mother lamenting that Latin being removed from the church services she attended with my grandmother, who was Greek Orthodox, though she was Romanian. I think the fact that I remember that is because of how it disturbed my mother at the time.
I attended my dear friends funeral service, he was from Lebanon and Catholic, the priest did the service in Aramaic and it was amazing to hear the unison chants I hear in English in the natural tongue of the man from Nazareth