Liturgical abuse and the future of Catholic liturgy

Vatican, Apr. 23 (CWNews.com) - The Vatican Congregation for Divine Worship has released the long-awaited new document, an instruction on the liturgy entitled Redemptionis Sacramentum ("On certain matters to be observed or to be avoided regarding the Most Holy Eucharist"), calling for careful compliance with the Church's norms for the celebration of the Eucharist.

This is the latest in a series of welcome instructions and directives coming out of the Vatican aimed at stemming the tide of abuses emanating from liturgical innovators since Vatican II in the mid-1960s. Which calls to mind one of Peter Kreeft's jokes

Question: What's the difference between a liturgist and a terrorist? Answer: You can negotiate with a terrorist.

But jokes like these would not be possible, and torrents of instructions and directives from the Vatican such as we have would not be necessary were it not for the Novus Ordo Missae (the new Mass) cobbled together by self-appointed liturgical innovators under an ad hoc advisory panel comprised of various Catholic and Protestant liturgical "experts" under the most irregular circumstances following Vatican II. When the new Mass was first demonstrated in the Sistine Chapel to a panel of Vatican officials, they were scandalized. Many Reformation-era English recusants, Catholics who refused to attend state imposed Anglican services under the administrations of William and Robert Cecil in the aftermath of Henry VIII's divorce from Rome, endured fines, loss of property and home, and even brutal execution rather than accept innovations far less radical in many ways than those stemming from the 1960s.

Thus, controversy continues to center on the new Mass and steps by which Pope Paul VI promulgated it. Many priests continued to celebrate the traditional Tridentine Mass of St. Pope Pius V in private, if not in public. Renegade groups, such as the Society of St. Pius X (SSPX), under the influence of Swiss Archbishop Lefebvre, refused to accept the new Mass altogether. Pope John Paul II, perhaps because of a personal protest lodged by the venerable Dietrich von Hildebrand, issued an "Indult" (1984) granting official permission for continued use of the traditional Tridentine Mass with permission of the local bishop, and in his Apostolic Letter, Ecclesia Dei (1988), called for a "wide and generous application" of the previous directives on use of the earlier Roman Missal. Yet questions and confusion continue to attend the implimentation of these directives, and approved celebrations of the Tridentine Mass continue to be relatively few in number, despite the fact that seminaries devoted to the traditional Mass are experiencing an unprecidented boom in vocations.

Unapproved Tridentine Masses abound in chapels of the schismatic Society of the SSPX. Many traditionalist Catholics have verged toward these kinds of positions under influential criticisms of the post-Vatican II liturgy, such as The Great Facade: Vatican II and the Regime of Novelty in the Roman Catholic Church, by Christopher A. Ferra and Thomas E. Woods, Jr. (For insightful criticism of the schismatic traditionalist fringe, see I. Shawn McElhinney's discussions.) But criticisms of the new Mass emanate not only from schismatic or near-schismatic quarters. Conservative Catholics in good standing with Rome have launched traditionalist critiques of the new Mass and liturgical innovations since Vatican II, such as the trenchant criticisms by Michael Davies and other members of traditionalist societies, such as Coalition in Support of Ecclesia Dei, and journals such as Latin Mass. And David Palm has written a very long and deeply sobering article, "Catholic Confusion at the Very Top," in the latest issue of The New Oxford Review (March 2004), pp. 18-30, drawing on, among other things, Romano Amero's massive study, Iota Unum: A Study of Changes in the Catholic Church in the Twentieth Century.

There is no question that the new Mass, as celebrated in most parishes throughout the Western world continues to be seriously marred by grave theological and liturgical defects that have confused and otherwise negatively affected the Catholic understanding and the religious life of the faithful. Not least is the erosion of the sacrificial character of the Mass, the real physical Presence of Christ in the Eucharist, the concomitant signs and gestures of reverance attendant to liturgical celebration, and sense of holiness attached to the sanctuary, altar, priest, and liturgical music. As a response to this, approved priestly societies, such as Priestly Fraternity of St. Peter, or FSSP (Fraternitas Sacerdotalis Sancti Petri) and their seminaries, such as Our Lady of Guadalupe Seminary, continue to prosper and flourish. Even Cardinal Ratzinger has called for radical revisioning of the liturgy in light of the deformations that have resulted over the last several decades, particularly in his book The Spirit of the Liturgy, even suggesting a restoration of the traditional orientation of altar and priest, with the priest with his back to the people facing the altar and East (ad orientem) rather than facing the people (versus populum), provoking considerable controversy.

Among the most vigorous champions of the hope that the new Mass can be salvaged, reformed, and brought to a worthy state of perfection is Fr. Joseph Fessio, S.J., president of Ignatius Press, chancellor of Ave Maria University, and founder of the Adoremus Society for Renewal of the Sacred Liturgy. Fr. Fessio denies that the new Mass as currently celebrated has much of anything to do with what the fathers of Vatican II envisioned in their Constitution on the Sacred Liturgy (Sacrosanctum Concilium). Instead, he views this mass as occupying one extremity of a spectrum. At "one extreme," he writes, "is the kind of informal Mass, all in English, facing the people, with contemporary music, which does not at all correspond with what the Council had in mind." Yet he is quick to add that "it is legitimate, it is permitted; it is not wrong." At the other extreme he places "those who have returned, with permission, to the [Tridentine Mass]," which he admits "is thriving and growing" and is the "Mass of the ages." But neither is this "what the Council itself specifically had in mind," he writes. Then there "the moderates" . . . and it is with these moderates that Fr. Fessio invests his hopes for a reform of the liturgy of the kind envisioned, he says, by the fathers of Vatican II. His vision, it must be admitted, is in many ways radical and impressive, calling for a renewal of a generous use of Latin, Gregorian Chant, and accent on reverance for the Eucharistic Presence in the liturgy. A summary of Fr. Fessio's views can be found summarized in a lecture he gave in 1999 entitled: "The Mass of Vatican II." Among other things, his lecture contains a fascinating account of the Jewish origins of Gregorian Chant.

Whether Fr. Fessio is right, and the new Mass can be salvaged in the wake of the liturgical experiments of the past decades, or whether the traditionalists are right in their claim that the liturgical life of the Catholic faithful can be restored only by a wholesale return to the traditional Latin "Mass of the ages" remains to be seen.