It has come to my attention that this blog (
Musings) has some new readers. First of all, a hearty welcome to one and all, even if we should be right in supposing that you may have much better things to be doing with your time than spending it here. Second, for those of you who have just recently joined us and may be feeling somewhat in the dark about the
policies,
perspectives and
personal commitments of the site owner, it may be helpful to have some of these spelled out for you. Long time readers may skip the rest of this post if they wish, since most of this will already be familiar to them.
Policies. Let me begin with our standard policies. These are laid out in "
Da Rulz" (the link is found in the right sidebar in the items listed under "Index"). These include guidelines for people commenting in the 'comboxes' (comment boxes), like "no rudeness," "stick to the point," "be concise," etc. There are three of these items to which I would like to call your special attention:
- No. 7 says: "When I link to other sites or books, unless I say otherwise, I am only recommending that you look at the material (or book) on the page that I link. The way this blog works, I often have need to document (or book) what I am saying by linking to a very specific piece of information, and I cannot endorse other material on sites containing this information." Thus, for example, when I linked an SSPX site in the post, "TLM in the Diocese of Charlotte," it was not in order to recommend attendance at SSPX chapels, but to document the existence of these chapels in the Diocese of Charlotte, NC.
- No. 8 says: "Related to rule 7, I hereby warn you that some material (or books) on sites I link may possibly be inconsistent with the Catholic faith or offensive. I try to minimize this, but engaging in apologetics -- and living in the real world -- means encountering material that is contrary to the faith or offensive. If you don't want to take a 'Test everything and hold fast to what is good' approach (1 Thes. 5:21) then you should avoid apologetics blogs (and the real world)."
- No. 9 says: "Except where stated otherwise, when I recommend a book, video, or other product, I am recommending it for individuals who are mature and secure in their Catholic faith. Such recommendations are not to be taken to mean that the material is perfect and free from every possible objection that could be made against them. Nor are they to be taken as recommendations for children or for people who are insecure in their Catholic faith. People falling in the latter lasses are not the subjects of my recommendations unless the contrary is stated."
Perspectives. Next, a word about perspectives. Blogs devoted to the defense of contested religious and intellectual claims ineluctably invite controversy from a variety of perspectives. We welcome commentators from any point of view, provided that they are willing to be courteous and respectful.
We also welcome topics for discussion from our readers via email (you can find the link to my email in the right sidebar under "Contact us"), and no topic is considered off limits as long as it is judged to be edifying and of interest to the general readership. We have seen discussions of everything from the views of vociferous Catholic radical feminist Mary Daly and dissident biblical theologian and Jesus Seminar member, John Dominic Crossan, at one end, to the views of Rama Coomaraswamy on the sedevacantist fringe, at the other end. We do not embrace controversy as an end-in-itself, but as a healthy and natural byproduct of discussion and debate premised on the conviction that the splendor of Catholic truth and dogma shines most brightly when it is allowed to be put to the test in the open forum.
Personal commitments. Finally a word about personal commitments. I am a Catholic. What this means to me is that I am committed to the Catholic Faith in its entirety. I am not a 'Cafeteria Catholic.' I believe all that the Church teaches. I assent to its truth without reservation as I trust in the promises of Christ. In times like these, this alone is enough to provoke controversy. Particularly controversial today among Catholics, however, are the changes in the Church associated with the Second Vatican Council and its aftermath. One of the flash points of such controversy is the Church's liturgy, a frequent topic of postings and commentary on this blog. The most important formal facts about my own personal position concerning this controversy are few, simple, and unexceptional. Because I believe all that the Church teaches, I accept without reservation the authority of the Second Vatican Council and, apropos of this context, the authority of its Constitution on the Sacred Liturgy,
Sacrosanctum Concilium (1963). Likewise, I accept without reservation the authority of Pope Paul VI in promulgating the new Mass in 1969 and, hence, the validity of the
forma ordinaria of the Roman Rite -- viz., the
Novus Ordo.
Likely of greater interest to my new readers, however, would be some remarks of a more personal nature with which I will endeavor to oblige them. Ever since I became acquainted with the Mass and came to understand it, I have loved it. Long before I formally became a Catholic, I saw in the Mass the source and summit of all that is dear in life. I saw this, for example, in the ineffable awe and sublimity evoked by the language of old Missals I picked up in used book shops, and in the numinous majesty summoned by classical Mass settings composed by Palestrina, Victoria, Mozart, Schubert, and others. Whenever I could, even before becoming Catholic, I would retreat into a Catholic church, especially when traveling, in order to revisit the particular mystery of God's Presence I found there, either hidden in the Blessed Sacrament amidst flickering candles in a darkened sanctuary, or beheld upon the altar before His worshipers at Mass. Because of my esteem for the Mass, it was also a grievous disappointment whenever I encountered liturgies celebrated in ways that seemed demeaning, dishonoring to God, and unworthy of the sacred mysteries that Vatican II describes so aptly as the "source and summit of the Christian life" (
Lumen Gentium, 11). Like many others, I suspect, at times I have felt put-upon by having to sit through more than my share of abusive liturgies, irreverent trivialized performances and hymnodic travesties that have been a dismal ordeal to endure. Like Martin Mosebach, I found myself "going to Church to see God and coming away like a theater critic."
Problems for legitimate discussion. I have nothing but gratitude for the boundless graces made available to me since my reception into full communion with the Church. Yet the experience of liturgical dissonance referenced above reveals that the life of a Catholic today, whether convert or cradle Catholic, is often not without its unique challenges.
It is natural for the Catholic faithful to wish to discuss such challenges, voice its concerns about the problems that beset it, and to encourage one another amidst the various trials and circumstances of life. This raises the question, of course, as to what constitutes legitimate areas of questioning, criticism and discussion on the part of the Catholic faithful. Without getting too technical, I offer the following areas as examples -- with two caveats. First, I am assuming an attitude of complete reverence for the Mass and fidelity to the Church in all that follows. Second, while the following examples are all concerned with liturgical questions since this is an area of particular interest and concern to most of my readers, it would be a mistake to conclude that liturgy is all we discuss here.
Liturgical problems preceding Vatican II. Liturgical problems, of course, are not a novelty of the post-Vatican II era. Most of us have heard the stories of the "ten minute Masses" for which some priests of yesteryear were notorious -- Masses rushed through by slurring rapidly over the Latin text, simply omitting large portions since, it was assumed, virtually nobody could hear or understand the words anyway, or noticed, or cared; Masses in which most of the congregation, it was said, were either saying novenas, rosaries, or, at early morning Masses, half asleep. This was hardly the "active participation" for which Pius X had called in his
Motu Proprio, Tra le sollecitudini (1903). Of course, part of the problem then was also, as it is now, one of implementation -- of doing what you are supposed to do, "praying the Mass" and "living the Mass." In fact, the
biggest liturgical problem in many quarters before the Council, as after it, was most certainly nothing more than this: a failure to 'work' the system (of worship) and thereby a failure to make the system 'work' -- which is precisely the meaning of
liturgy, the "work of the people" (from the Greek
leitourgia, compounded from
leitos, meaning 'people', and
ourgia, meaning 'work').
The defects in active participation prior to the Council, therefore, cannot be imputed
tout court to defects in the old Mass itself. It may nevertheless be the case that a number of infelicities had accrued over the centuries in the pre-Vatican II Missal that contributed to the problem. This, at least, was the consensus among many of the leading liturgical historians of the time, including many now regarded as generally conservative, such as Fr. Louis Bouyer, Msgr. Klaus Gamber, and Josef Andreas Jungmann. It was generally held that the Mass had become overly complicated and that the rubrics, at points, had perhaps become needlessly repetitious and redundant. Various modifications in the old Mass had been made during earlier liturgical reforms under St. Pius V (1570), St. Pius X (published under his successor, Benedict XV, 1920), Pius XII (1947), and Blessed John XXIII (1962). I do not know many Catholics who would dispute the claim that the old Mass may have needed, at times, certain reforms such as these. Yet another such reform, of course, was precisely what the Vatican II Constitution on the Sacred Liturgy,
Sacrosanctum Concilium, mandated.
Problems following Vatican II. The problems associated with the implementation of the Vatican II reform, of course, are notoriously familiar. These typically fall into three groups -- those involving (1) overt liturgical abuse, (2) licit innovations not mandated by Vatican II, and (3) alleged infelicities in the new Missal itself.
The
first kind of problem involves overt violations of published liturgical norms. These sorts of problems have very likely been among the most grievous and corrosive of confidence in the Church and her authority in the decades following the Council. These may involve anything from the attempted consecration of pizzas (as witnessed once back in the 1970s), clown Masses, and liturgical dancing at the more exotic extreme, to things as seemingly innocuous as the overuse of Extraordinary Ministers of Holy Communion
and changing words in the lectionary or Sacramentary in the interest of politically correctness, at the other end.
The
second kind of problem involves changes that were nowhere mandated by the Vatican II Constitution on the Sacred Liturgy,
Sacrosanctum Concilium, but which have come to be mainstreamed and regularized in subsequent years following the Council, such as the removal of altar rails, the removal of the Tabernacle from the Sanctuary, the reception of Communion in one's hand, reception standing rather than kneeling, reception often from an Extraordinary Minister of Holy Communion rather than from a priest, the use of lay lectors and female altar servers, etc. For whatever reasons, many of these sorts of changes have also been difficult for many Catholics, who have, whether rightly or wrongly, seen them as eroding their rich traditions of Catholic liturgical worship. (Our objective at this point is not to debate the question, but simply to lay out these sorts of questions as areas of genuine concern and legitimate discussion.)
The
third kind of problem involves questions about possible infelicities in the new Missal itself. Please note that we are not talking here about questions concerning the validity of the new Mass. All such questions have been laid to rest from the start as incompatible with our professed Catholic commitment. Neither are we talking about any question regarding the diminution of the full objective reality of what transpires in the Sacrifice of the new Mass. It is the selfsame Jesus Christ who is offered up as Sacrificial Victim on the altar of any valid liturgy whatsoever, whether old or new, Eastern or Western. These questions are not the issue here. The issue in view is, rather, of the same order as those questions raised concerning possible infelicities in the old Missal. More specifically, in this instance, they are questions generally concerned with how well the new Missal manages to preserve the organic development of and continuity with Catholic liturgical tradition. Such questions have been in discussion continually since the advent of the new Mass by those who were involved in the liturgical commissions of the Council themselves, such as Josef Andreas Jungmann and Fr. Louis Bouyer, as well as by many other faithful Catholic theologians and liturgical historians such as Msgr. Klaus Gamber, Aidan Nichols, Alcuin Reid, and even the Holy Father Pope Benedict XVI while he was still known as Cardinal Ratzinger.
Examples of legitimate criticism. What are some examples of legitimate criticism and discussion in this regard? Confining ourselves to problems following Vatican II, both for the sake of brevity and because there are few who would cavil at the legitimacy of questions raised about problems in the old Mass, we offer the following examples.
1.
Problems of overt liturgical abuse. Of the
first sort of problems mentioned above, it goes without saying that the Vatican has been consistently critical, issuing repeated directives aimed at correcting abuses; so no more need be said about the legitimacy of criticizing these problems here.
2.
Problems of licit innovations not mandated by Vatican II. Yet the Vatican has also been critical, at points, of the
second sort of problems associated with post-Vatican II innovations, even where these have eventually been accepted by Rome. Some of these are all-too-easily forgotten because of how readily we become habituated to new ways of doing things and forget how differently they used to be done (as well as the reasons why). I mention but two apparently innocuous examples -- first, the reintroduced practice of receiving Communion in the hand; and, second, the change from a Mass
ad orientem (with the priest facing liturgical East, or 'towards God') to a
versus populum Mass (with the priest facing the people). I note these examples only to illustrate how legitimate criticisms have been sometimes raised -- even by recent popes -- about practices that have come to be officially sanctioned and accepted as commonplace today.
First example. It is well known that instances of Communion-in-the-hand have been identified in ancient times.
It is also well known that Communion on the
tongue nevertheless became and remained the established Catholic norm until the 1970s. Relevant milestones in this story are the dogmatic definition of the doctrine of
transubstantiation (Fourth Lateran Council, 1215) and the declaration by the Council of Trent (1545-1563) that the long-standing custom of reception on the tongue was an apostolic tradition. It is also a fact that reception in the hand was seen by certain sixteenth century Protestant Reformers as a demystifying gesture by which the laity could be disabused of their 'superstitious' Catholic belief in the Real Presence in the Eucharist. An example of this is the
Censura of Martin Bucer (not to be confused with Martin
Luther), which condemned Anglican Archbishop Thomas Cranmer's 1549 Prayer Book for retaining the Catholic practice of administering Communion on the tongue for the reason that it might cause individuals to persist in their Catholic 'superstitions' about the Real Presence.
Hence, when the practice of Communion-in-the-hand was first re-introduced in Catholic circles in modern times in Belgium by Leo Jozef Cardinal Suenens in violation of the rubrics then in force under the Holy See, Pope Paul VI, although eventually lifting the ban against it, warned that the practice carried "the danger of a loss of reverence for the august sacrament of the altar, of profanation, of adulterating the true doctrine" and that the vast majority of bishops at the time believed that the discipline "should not be changed, and, that if it were, the change would be offensive to the sentiments and the spiritual culture of these bishops and of many of the faithful" (Pope Paul VI's instruction
Memoriale Domini, 1969).
Note that these criticisms were raised by Pope Paul VI (as well as by the majority of the Church's bishops at the time in their voiced reservations). Of course it is true that the practice has been subsequently mainstreamed and sanctioned by the Vatican, albeit not without unmixed signals.
In light of these facts, a Catholic may in good conscience receive in either way under contemporary liturgical law; and it may be wise, as the Holy Father counsels, not to make too much of this matter. It certainly is no hobby horse of an issue for me personally. Yet the case is clearly instructive. It is not hard to see how the new practice might present certain difficulties for individuals sensitive to particular aspects of its history and development. In any event, I have little doubt that individuals may in good faith reasonably debate which form of reception they find most fitting and proper, without prejudice to the faith of those who disagree with them.
Second example. It is well known that examples may be found in ancient times of priests who celebrated Mass with their backs turned to the apse of the church and facing the narthex (entrance). Sometimes these examples have been used in the context of a theology of
ressourcement and
aggiornamento as an argument in favor of a
versus populum Mass. But as Msgr. Klaus Gamber points out in his classic study,
Reform of the Roman Liturgy
(1993), these cases typically involved ancient basilicas that faced West, not East, so that the priest and the congregation together turned around in order to face East (
ad orientem) during their liturgies in symbolic anticipation of the return (
parousia) of the resurrected Lord.
When the practice of the
versus populum Mass became mainstreamed in the 1970s, following the 1969 promulgation of the new Mass, the legal justification for the change was found in paragraph 262 of the
Institutio Generalis Missalis Romani (1969), which suggested the preferability of an altar "constructed away from the wall so that one can easily walk around the altar and celebrate facing the people (
versus populum)." The General Instruction of the Missal in 2002 added the subordinate clause, "which is desirable wherever possible," which was widely taken as hardening the 1969 text to mean that there was now a general obligation to set up altars facing the people 'wherever possible'. This interpretation, however, was rejected by the Congregation for Divine Worship on 25 September 2000, as Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger points out in his
Foreword to Uwe Michael Lang's
Turning Towards the Lord: Orientation in Liturgical Prayer (2005), when it declared that the word 'expedit' ('is desirable') did not imply an obligation but only made a suggestion. "At a propitious moment," says Ratzinger, accordingly, Lang's book "resumes a debate that, despite appearances to the contrary, has never really gone away, not even after the Second Vatican Council." He writes:
The Innsbruck liturgist Josef Andreas Jungmann, one of the architects of the Council's Constitution on the Sacred Liturgy, was from the, very beginning resolutely opposed to the polemical catchphrase that previously the priest celebrated 'with his back to the people'; he emphasised that what was at issue was not the priest turning away from the people, but, on the contrary, his facing the same direction as the people. The Liturgy of the Word has the character of proclamation and dialogue, to which address and response can rightly belong. But in the Liturgy of the Eucharist the priest leads the people in prayer and is turned, together with the people, towards the Lord. For this reason, Jungmann argued, the common direction of priest and people is intrinsically fitting and proper to the liturgical action. Louis Bouyer (like Jungmann, one of the Council's leading liturgists) and Klaus Gamber have each in his own way taken up the same question. Despite their great reputations, they were unable to make their voices heard at first, so strong was the tendency to stress the communality of the liturgical celebration and to regard therefore the face-to-face position of priest and people as absolutely necessary.
More recently the atmosphere has become more relaxed so that it is possible to raise the kind of questions asked by Jungmann, Bouyer, and Gamber without at once being suspected of anti-conciliar sentiments. Historical research has made the controversy less partisan, and among the faithful there is an increasing sense of the problems inherent in an arrangement that hardly shows the liturgy to be open to the things that are above and to the world to come.
Accordingly, Cardinal Ratizinger, like Jungmann, Bouyer, Gamber and others, finds reason to take issue with the licit but unmandated innovation of the
versus populum Mass permitted by the
Institutio Generalis Missalis Romani of (1969).
3.
Problems of alleged infelicities in the new Missal itself. One of the harshest criticisms of the new Missal -- the product of liturgical committees of the
Concilium presided over by the controversial Archbishop Annibale Bugnini after the close of the Council -- comes from Cardinal Ratzinger as well. In his Preface to the French edition of Msgr. Klaus Gamber's
Reform of the Roman Liturgy, Cardinal Ratzinger writes:
What happened after the Council was something else entirely: in the place of liturgy as the fruit of development came fabricated liturgy. We abandoned the organic, living process of growth and development over centuries, and replaced it -- as in a manufacturing process -- with a fabrication, a banal on-the-spot product.
Clearly this criticism does not mean that the Holy Father questions the validity of the new Mass, which he celebrates daily in his private chapel as well as in public Masses in the Vatican. Nor does it mean that he questions its holiness, spiritual richness or theological depth, to which he has recently attested.
It means simply that there may remain unresolved questions concerning how well the reforms mandated by
Sacrosanctum Concilium were implemented by the Missal promulgated by Paul VI. These questions should not be seen as detracting from the fullness and reality of mysteries and Sacrifice involved in the Mass, but they are important and remain a matter of ongoing discussion concerning the "reform of the reform" among faithful Catholic scholars and theologians among whom Pope Benedict XVI is but the most distinguished by reason of his office.
We now find ourselves in a somewhat anomalous situation. Pope Benedict has just declared unequivocally that the old Mass has never been abrogated. He has also said that we are no longer to speak of the old and new versions of the Roman Missal as if they were "two Rites." This would be "inappropriate," he says. Rather we should refer to "a twofold use of one and the same rite" -- the
extraordinary use (the 1962 Missal of Blessed John XXIII) and the
ordinary use (the 1969 Missal of Paul VI).
This declaration effectively constitutes an acknowledgement that certain mandates of the Vatican II Constitution on the Sacred Liturgy remained unfulfilled. On the one hand, we now have a normalized and protected
unreformed pre-Vatican II form of the Mass -- one that has not yet undergone the reform mandated by the Second Vatican Council. On the other hand, we also have a normalized and officially sanctioned post-Vatican II form of the Mass that contains many institutionalized innovations never mandated by
Sacrosanctum Concilium, as well as notorious irregularities in the manner in which it is often celebrated at the parish level -- a form of the Mass that has yet to undergo the much called-for "reform of the reform."
It may be that Pope Benedict, by consistently resisting a "hermeneutic or rupture" and doggedly reiterating a "hermeneutic of continuity" is endeavoring to bring about by circuitous means what the decades following Vatican II have failed to achieve directly -- namely, the fulfillment of the Conciliar mandate. At least he may be seen, perhaps, as laying the groundwork for such a goal, which at best may be one or two generations distant. The old (
extraordinary) form of the Mass according to the Missal of Blessed John XXIII, whatever one may think of it, is a relatively stable one with a venerable history. The new (
ordinary) form of the Mass, according to the Missal of Paul VI, still seems far from settled, exhibiting the after-effects of the turbulent decades following the Council, especially as it has been implemented in politically charged and polarized atmospheres in all-too-many parishes and dioceses throughout the world. The Holy Father's hope may be that in the next generation or two, this "twofold use of the same Rite" may eventually yield the reform envisioned and mandated by the Council fathers of Vatican II. This would seem to be the import of his statement in his
Cover Letter to the bishops accompanying the
Motu Proprio,
Summorum Pontificum (2007) that "the positive reason which motivated my decision to issue this Motu Proprio ... is a matter of coming to an interior reconciliation in the heart of the Church."
The foregoing three areas with accompanying examples, then, represent areas in which ongoing discussion, questioning, and airing of concerns from the perspectives of the "twofold use of the same Rite" would not only seem to be natural and healthy, but, in light of the Holy Father's clearly stated objectives, a necessary precondition for the interior reconciliation in the heart of the Church he envisions.
Notes
I am absolutely, no-holds-barred, flat-out delighted to see this dramatic narrative brought to the printed page under the title of