The Once and Future Roman Rite: What We Lost from 1948 to 1962 and Why We Should Recover It Today

a wonderful time so i'm you've probably seen the the name of this talk the once and future roman rite what we lost from 1948 to 1962 and why we should recover it today before the internet before the internet exploded with traditional catholic resources there were fairly predictable paths along which catholics discovered tradition here's one version of the story jane and joe catholic wander into a low mass or a high mass having no idea what it is and decide to stay they find it strange but somehow appealing they go back a second time they learn that this is how catholics used to worship within a few months they are hooked this is now their standard sunday mass eventually they get to know people in the tlm community and are invited to a baptism this baptism baptism is like nothing they've ever seen before it starts at the back of the church with exorcisms of salt water and the baby and proceeds to claim the child for the holy trinity and the court of heaven the whole ritual is profoundly moving and deadly earnest jane and joe start to realize that it's not just the mass that was tampered with but baptism too and the blessing of holy water and well probably every right the church uses as they grow in their faith they find out that certain catholics in the old days used to pray prime and compliment that is the shorter morning office and the nighttime office so they start to do that as their schedules allow in doing so they come to learn that the divine office or roman breviary which was renamed the liturgy of the hours after vatican ii was also massively changed for example prime was abolished the psalms were spread out over a month instead of a week and lots of psalm verses and three whole psalms were removed because they were deemed harmful to christians in other words jane and joe gradually discover how the entire public worship of the catholic church was altered radically altered leaving not a stone upon a stone or perhaps leaving about as many of the stones as one finds in the wailing wall of the jerusalem temple thrown down by the romans several years into their attendance at the latin mass some friends of theirs in another state who happened to attend a parish run by the institute of christ the king tell them on the phone we have just been to the most incredible holy week liturgies it was like nothing we've ever seen before as their friends describe some of the highlights jane and joe feel some puzzlement they thought that their nearby parish which offers the traditional latin mass was doing the old holy week and yet their friend's description doesn't match up and in this way jane and joe graduate into that select group of catholics who understand that major tinkering with the liturgy was already happening before vatican ii was even a twinkle in roncalli's eye and before montini ever darkened a papal throne the novus ordo did not emerge out of thin air like the apparition of mephistopheles and goethe's faust it was painstakingly prepared for by decades of scholarly utopianism ambitious experiments and trial balloons the period after world war ii was a period of restlessness of experts itching to modify or abandon old forms and introduce new ones we can narrow the dates more specifically to 1948 when pius xii established the so-called pian commission for liturgical reform that gave a certain anabale bounini his first official vatican job and so that's the one date 1948 and then 1962 when john the 23rd modified the roman canon for the first time in over a millennium and promulgated a baudelarized misali romanum accompanied by an entirely new code of rubrics pope pius xii is usually portrayed as an arch conservative and surely on the doctrinal front he was but he allowed the trojan horse of a redesigned holy week to enter into the city of god inaugurating the conquest and devastation of the roman rite jane and joe decided that next easter they would take a road trip visit their friends and see for themselves what the roman rite used to look like in its centuries-old splendor nowadays however thanks to that great equalizer the internet jane and joe might not have followed such a slow and meandering path to enlightenment perhaps they would start listening to taylor marshall and get red pilled in a matter of weeks perhaps they would watch a live stream from an institute parish and go from 1970 to 1570 in less than five seconds this is both a good situation and a problematic one it is good in the sense that the information is not hidden away or difficult to find it is problematic in that lay catholics are seldom equipped to be able to understand what they're seeing why it is the way it is or why it isn't the way something else is and how to navigate the thorny questions that arise about the pope's authority the church's fidelity to tradition the duty of obedience and the limits thereof and so forth my talk today is about a large topic what the roman rite lost between 1948 and 1962 believe it or not it is a very large topic and why we should make it a high priority to recover today what was lost in that period in order to impose reasonable limits i will focus on the mass the divine office would be a whole separate consideration which is not to say we couldn't have questions about it afterwards more particularly i will look at palm sunday the easter triduum the vigil of pentecost corpus christi and the feast of the holy innocents followed by five general features of the mass then i will turn to some practical and canonical issues including the question of what kind of permission is necessary in order to recover these lost elements the holy week liturgies with their exquisite gregorian chants rich prayers dense symbolism and elaborate ceremony developed in the roman rite over a lengthy period of time from antiquity to the middle ages the core elements came from both the ancient roman tradition and the ancient galacan or frankish tradition north of the alps these two streams were combined in the later middle ages to form the mature roman rite that culminated in the missal of pius v in 1570. as with every other historic christian liturgy of apostolic descent the tridentine rite reached a state of perfection a beauty of form and fullness of content that allowed for no further substantial improvement a scholar once described mozart's piano concertos as artworks quote beyond which no progress was possible because perfection is imperfectible unquote as with the mature byzantine divine liturgy of saint john chrysostom for example so with the traditional roman rite nothing essential needed to be added or removed from that point on change would concern only matters of detail such as the calendar and hence that's the positive way of looking at the fact that for over 400 years there's practically no change in the roman liturgy from 1570 onwards tragically pius xii allowed himself to be talked into a project for revising holy week which had not been changed in any notable way for over 500 years under cover of the excuse that the triduum liturgies needed to be restored to their original or authentic times of day holy week was brought before the pian commission a sort of dry run for the later concilium and palm sunday good friday and the easter vigil underwent alterations on a scale unprecedented in western liturgical history in 1951 pius xii launched an experimental easter vigil and in 1955 he promulgated new liturgical rites for all the days of holy week that is why people often call the old holy week by which i mean the tridentine one the pre-55 because it was in 55 that pius xii promulgated the new ones i still remember clearly the first time i attended a pre-55 holy week in full i had expected to be impressed i was blown away i had expected to be bewildered i was dazzled and provoked the old palm sunday liturgy begins with a miss sikka or dry mass at the beginning with an epistle gradual and gospel and then a preface leading into the blessing of the palms all of this mind you prior to the procession with palms the entrance after knocking at the doors and the mast of the day with the chanting of the passion according to saint matthew the first prayer of blessing after the preface has an astonishing kinship with eucharistic consecration quote we beseech thee oh holy lord almighty father everlasting god that thou wast vouchsafe to bless and hallow this creature of the olive tree which thought its cause to shoot out of the substance of the wood and which the dove when returning to the ark brought in its mouth that whosoever shall receive it may find protection of soul and body and that it may be unto us o lord a saving remedy and a sacrament of thy grace unquote this prayer is typical of the entire liturgy of the day with the pre-55 holy thursday one thing that was quite new to me was the omission of the mandatum or ceremonial washing of the feet a ceremony that migrated into the mass only in the mid 20th century and has caused all manner of debate and distraction as i'm sure you're aware instead the mandatum was done as a pera liturgy after mass in the church basement where a temporary altar had been set up with candles once the altars upstairs had been stripped of their altar cloths in imitation of the humiliating treatment of christ in his passion everyone proceeded downstairs thirteen men sat in a row of chairs the canon had explained in his homily at mass that the number 13 goes back to a vision of saint gregory the great the priest deacon and subdeacon entered with acolytes the ceremony began with the solemn chanting of the gospel after which the priest donned an apron and washed the men's feet while the choir sang ubi karitas the priest returned to the altar chanted a number of versicles and sang a collect all bowed and left doing the mondatum on its own aftermath gives it a special place or dignity one can focus more directly on the lesson of the high serving the low that lesson doesn't get swallowed up in in all of the other lessons of the day it also matches better the idea that first we worship god for love of him and then with his grace we go out into the world to love others made in his image by the way i i'm not i'm not commenting on all the differences because there are hundreds of them i'm just commenting on some of the ones that struck me the most and probably would strike a lot of people the most the pre-55 good friday opens with two chanted lessons and two chanted tracts which allow the faithful to slow down and ease into the enormous mystery of the day the chanting of the passion by the priest deacon and subdeacon follows with the confident commanding base melody for christ the skipping along matter-of-fact narrator and the eerie high-pitched ringtone of the one who speaks for peter pilot the jews the crowd and every other shady character when the passion is finished the readers split up and the deacon chants the proper gospel of the day in a special tone recounting the burial of christ after the great intercessions the veneration of the cross begins with a shoeless procession of ministers who genuflect three times on their way to the sanctuary once at the far end of the church a second time in the middle of the aisle and the last time right before the cross which is lying on a cushion as if a royal personage on his divine the chanting of the reproaches and the crooks fidelis accompanies the slow procession of many people it is well for us that it takes time it burns our time like incense the strangest aspect of the venerable good friday liturgy is the treatment of the most holy eucharist only one large host has been reserved from the night before this veiled host is carried in procession accompanied by the mighty hymn vexilla regis the priest incenses the blessed sacrament places the host on the corporal prepares a chalice with wine and water incenses the oblation and the altar washes his hands and says pray brethren that my sacrifice and yours may be acceptable to god the father almighty but receives no response he chants the lord's prayer in the ferial tone mixes a particle of the host into the unconsecrated wine elevates the host with one hand for all to see and adore and then receives the host with the usual prayer and the wine in the chalice without the usual prayer this is why it's called the liturgy of the pre-sanctified because there's no consecration the good friday liturgy symbolizes the states of the passion as christ was taken into captivity and then hauled into court the host is brought forth from its place of reservation as christ was lifted up on calvary so the host is lifted up on high and as christ was taken down and placed inside the earth so the host is consumed abruptly the liturgy has ended with the priest bowing before the altar and departing in silence the real presence of christ in the blessed sacrament is no more to be found in the church in the tabernacle on the altar or even in the congregation he is gone the desolation of good friday reaches its peak the total surrender of the sun has been enacted and we await the resurrection and the renewal of the glorious sacrifice of the mass the priest alone receives communion everyone else it is the adoration of the cross that takes center stage the acolytes the deacon and subdeacon the faithful are all coming up to commune with the cross this is what replaces holy communion on good friday of course we encounter the mystery of the cross every time we receive the eucharist but the veils of bread and wine can in a sense distract us from our union with the death of christ once a year good friday makes the cross stand out visibly the cross is the sacred sign we touch and kiss in its medieval elaboration as codified in the tridentine rite good friday is the one day of the year when we truly live through the desolation that the virgin mary and the apostles lived through the church could hardly have come up with a better way of doing this than by depriving us of sacramental communion on this day the one who has died and been laid in the tomb is away from us instead the liturgy focuses our adoration on the life-giving cross by which he won our salvation and bids us pray for the needs of the church and the entire world this good friday liturgy is far more like a mass than the glorified communion service of pius xii or its subsequent replacement in the novus ordo yet it feels like a tragically incomplete mass one could even say a hollow mass at the start the lessons and lengthy tracts are chanted without anything preceding them at the end the priest silently receives the host and then the liturgy just stops as if it's been beheaded or like a play interrupted in mid-stream before the actors are done with their lines and with the plot at loose ends although jesus says it is finished in the gospel the liturgy transmits the strong feeling it is not finished i see this as a typically marvelous liturgical paradox on the day that confronts us with the historical event by which our redemption was objectively accomplished the liturgy itself through which we subjectively commune with christ is allowed to be the most incomplete in feel all the changes from the 1950s onward greatly diminished how strikingly different this day was meant to feel as the living representation of that day when the maximum disorder redounded to the restoration of order pius the 12th holy week abridges the passions of saint matthew saint mark and saint luke by removing their accounts of the institution of the eucharist it very deliberately removes that that narration from each of the of the gospels as a result the synoptic accounts of the institution of the eucharist do not occur anywhere in the liturgical year in the 1962 missile coupled with the radical redesign of the good friday ceremony which deliberately excises or minimizes all that imitates the right of mass how do these changes not communicate a radical divorce between the institution of the eucharist and the sacrifice of the cross the pre-55 easter vigil is sublime the 55 and 69 rights come across instead as arbitrary collections of rituals in the tridentine easter vigil these rituals coalesce in a single act of worship that has the unity of a man's walking step by step towards a goal a mighty recapitulation of all the mysteries of christianity from god's inner nature to the revelation of the trinity to the incarnation of the word to the bloody redemption to the glorious resurrection the old easter vigil has a majesty to it a mounting series of mingled but unconfused symbols which the orations and lessons and ceremonies bring forth at a stately leisurely pace fire candle water all directly addressed in words of power the church takes command of the rudiments of creation and literally orders them to serve christ and the salvation of souls implanted in the visual liturgy are two ceremonies that resemble a missa sikka or dry mass first the preface preceded by the usual dialogue leading up to the consecration of the candle second the same structure for the consecration of the water in both cases we start with worldly elements and set them apart for god asking him to make them in some sense himself to make them sacraments or sacred signs of his grace sacraments in a broader sense of course the liturgy begins outside the church with the blessing of the fire not of the candle but just the fire itself symbol of the eternal divine nature from this fire is lit the tricarion or three-branched candlestick that carries multiple symbolisms it represents the trinity or the progressive revelation of the trinity in salvation history as one by one the candles of the trikerian are lit in procession to the sanctuary or the three days in the tomb and the three mary's approaching the tomb on easter morn really it symbolizes many things it's multivalent it's polycemus the staff represents the bronze serpent which moses fashioned on a rod to heal the israelites in the desert this procession culminates in the exalted the text of which makes sense only in the pre-55 context when the actions described in the exalted are actually performed on the candle then and there the deacon places the five incense nails into the candle symbol of the lamb slaying before the foundation of the world and then lights it from one of the three candles of the the second person taking flesh to save us from this point onward all flames in the church are taken from that candle the twelve prophecies have a compelling directionality to them they are preoccupied with water light fire and sacrifice with an underlying theme of resisting and overcoming the devil made explicit in the prayers surrounding the blessing of the font the first half or so of the readings hinge on major figures adam noah abraham moses with david touched on the second half shifts shifts to the calling of israel old and new the final reading is the tale from daniel chapter 3 of shadrach meshach and abednego refusing to worship the giant idol and being thrown into the fiery furnace it is sung to a special tone surprisingly lyrical and joyous the antiphon secret chervous which is very famous in its setting by palestrina in particular that antiphon then makes perfect sense as the accompaniment to the procession that moves from the sanctuary to the baptistery baptistery or a font at the back of the church as the deer panteth for streams of living water so hath my soul longed for thee oh my god having heard all these prophecies it is time to make their promises really and truly present in the regenerating water so that new christians can be buried and raised with christ whereas in pious the 12th ceremony the water to be blessed is bizarrely placed up front at the sanctuary so that no procession can take place to the baptistry in the pre-55 rite the formal procession to the font with the paschal candle at its head makes it clear that the candle the candle is the column of fire at the red sea and that israel is about to be delivered from egyptian bondage through the death dealing and life-giving waters the easter vigil liturgy the the old one as a whole is set off by many delightful irregularities such as the triple alleluia chant followed by a verse and a tract no offertory antiphon no anustai and instead of a communion antiphon a truncated vespers with magnificat just as with good friday's irregularities such features drive home the truth that this liturgy is different from all others the strangeness of it is an incentive to a deeper interior participation might it be confusing to the faithful yes for sure and that's good the mortal conflict of life and death is not a tea party the old easter vigil is one vast hymn of praise to the might of god revealed in the creation of the world the creation of the old israel and the creation of the new israel possessing a cosmic sweep historical narrative and immersion into mystery that are found nowhere else to the same degree in the liturgical year all of its parts are seamlessly interconnected without those embarrassing modular joints or ceremonial breaks typical of the work of vatican committees after 1948. the pre-55 easter vigil may indeed be called the crown jewel of the tridentine right as with palm sunday and good friday i'm astonished that any reformers would have dared to lay hands on such perfect marriages of art and theology nearly everything that i've just described nearly everything was reduced to rubble or reconfigured in a new way a priest friend of mine who has celebrated both forms of holy week the pre-55 and the 55 or starting in 56 told me the old liturgies are coherent in what they contain and when they present it the new versions are piecemeal and chaotic within the movement to restore tradition in the catholic church recovering the old holy week and giving it once again its due prominence is an urgent task another casualty of the 1950s was the vigil of pentecost as early as tertullian who died in the middle of the third century the vigil of pentecost was the second most common day for initiating the faithful if for some reason they could not be initiated at easter for example they fell sick or if there were more converts wishing to enter the church once they talked to their friends who had been initiated at easter then they knocked on the door they said we want in on this too the holding of a liturgy the day before pentecost that heavily reflects almost parallels that of the easter vigil was well established by the fifth century so we're talking about something very ancient here by serving as a kind of last echo of the great easter vigil this pentecost vigil served as an admirable hinge for swinging to the great feast of the holy spirit and the long green season afterwards it was also as typical for all vigils a day of fasting and abstinence to prepare well for the solemnity to follow the orations after the readings focus each in its own manner on the continuity between the two testaments that is such an important subject in theology and it's right there in the old pentecost vigil thus the prayer after the second reading reads as follows just to give you a sample oh god who by the light of the new testament has expounded the miracles wrought in the first ages of the world so that the red sea was a figure of the sacred font and the deliverance of the people out of the bond of bondage of egypt did represent the christian sacraments grant that all nations who have now obtained the birthright of israel by the merit of faith may be born again by the participation of thy spirit in 1955 pius xii reduced this vigil to its mass alone stripping away the prophecies procession and blessing of water and casting into the shade the strong connection the old liturgy made between baptism and confirmation many of the prayers used in this vigil are unique to it and were effectively obliterated in 1969 as if to complete the the process even this diminished vigil was abandoned and replaced with an evening anticipatory mass now i turn to corpus christi in response to our lord's request to saint juliana of the edge early in the 13th century this feast a very beloved feast to all catholics was instituted by pope urban iv in 1264 who established it with an octave the point of an octave this is a really important point for the rest of my talk the point of an octave is to bask in the light of a great mystery for eight days a symbol of eternal life the octave allows due honor to be paid to the lord or his mother or an especially important saint it was inconceivable that a feast to thank our lord for the gift of himself in the holy eucharist and to offer him a special annual homage would be celebrated for one day only about 500 years later on june 16 1675 to be precise our lord appeared to saint margaret mary alacoque and said quote i ask of you that the friday after the octave of corpus christi be set apart for a special feast to honor my heart by communicating on that day and making reparation to it by a solemn act in order to make amends for the indignities which it has received during the time it has been exposed on the altars i promise you that my heart shall expand itself to shed in abundance the influence of its divine love upon those who shall thus honor it and cause it to be honored unquote thus was born the also beloved feast of the most sacred heart here i would simply draw attention to the fact that jesus specifically asked for it to be on the friday after the octave of corpus christi how absurd then that pius xii 1955 suppressed all octaves all of them except for christmas easter and pentecost prior to 1956 there were a minimum of 23 octaves observed in any diocese these octaves came in three basic forms privileged common and simple which affected whether other feasts could take precedence and which office was said for that day at their highest level every day in the octave was treated as as the feast day at the lowest level only the eighth day or octave day would be observed with a proper mass all this made the calendar considerably richer more interwoven with the mysteries of christ and the memory of his saints the loss of the octaves is connected with a larger problem in in my opinion the loss or thinning out of the notion of sacred time which increasingly gave way to a secular linear work oriented approach to time the continual pressure to shorten the liturgy has to be understood from this vantage modern people think they have so many more important things to do than worship god the inability to see and to feel that worship is our highest best most human and most divinizing activity is arguably our gravest spiritual sickness my last example from the liturgical calendar is the feast of the holy innocents prior to 1956 there was a most beautiful custom whereby this feast on december 28th in recognition of the mournful character of the slaughter of the infants was celebrated in violet vestments without a gloria and with a tract instead of an alleluia whereas on their octave day which remember signifies eternal life the same mass was celebrated in red vestments with the gloria and in alleluia announcing their heavenly triumph as martyrs this to my mind is a perfect example of the theological and psychological subtlety of the old liturgy and it's it's the kind of subtlety that you would notice and you'd think about it why is he wearing violet on a feast day why is there no gloria what's going on and again this was dropped in 1955 along with all the other octave stuff was not only the temporal and sanctual cycles that suffered tinkeritis but also general features of the mass so i will describe five of these features that were changed or discarded in the period prior to 1962. all of which deserve to be recovered first folded chasables and broad stoles now we're really getting into the into the nitty-gritty stuff the early christians in the roman empire did not have distinctive liturgical vestments but simply wore what they were accustomed to wear at the time their sunday best you might say the full outer garment was called the chasable again this is for all the romans who could afford it the deacon and subdeacon who sang the lessons would either take off their chasables or fold them up and wrap them over one shoulder for convenience so that they could move about more freely and hold the lectionaries as secular fashions changed the church ever conservative in her mentality preserved the original roman garments which in time came to be seen as clerical garments for liturgical use later in the fifth century the more convenient as well as more sumptuous dalmatic for the deacon and tunical for the subdeacon were introduced initially they were white and adorned with purple vertical bands like the senatorial garb of ancient rome they were viewed as vestments of joy and innocence which made them entirely appropriate which made them entirely inappropriate for penitential seasons consequently in the penitential seasons which in rome have always been characterized by the persistence of older customs the folded chasm continued to be used all the way through the middle ages and the baroque right up to the time of pius xii often the folded chasm was replaced by a stylized version of it the so-called broad stole which is as i say it's a stylized folded chasm in 1955 pius xii legislated that the deacon and subdeacon would henceforth incongruously wear their vestments of joy and innocence during holy week four years later in 1960 john the 23rd coat of rubrics abolished the folded chasm and broad stole altogether in this way one of the most striking signs of penitential days or seasons advent lent and ember days was put down the memory hole and popes once again demonstrated that their pens could do more damage to liturgical customs than any number of barbarian invasions wars plagues famines or political revolutions second multiple orations now obviously some of what i'm talking about will be familiar to you from your own parish right because the institute is at the in a way i would say at the forefront of recovering some of these elements i want to explain to you why they're important and why we should do this um but i was just thinking about tonight's mass there were three orations so you had a demonstration of what i'm going to be talking about so in each mass there are three very important prayers called orations the collect which comes near the beginning the secret said silently at the end of the offertory and the post-communion set after the ablutions for centuries it was the custom for priests to say or to sing more than one set of orations at mass the rubrics often told the priest which additional prayers to use for example in advent from the first sunday the pre-56 missile prescribes the addition of a second collect of the blessed virgin mary and a third collect for either the church or for the pope although if there are saints to be commemorated their prayers would be used instead to give you a sense of the power of these prayers these additional prayers here is the collect for the living and the dead which would be said daily from ash wednesday to passion sunday o almighty and eternal god who hast dominion over both the living and the dead and hast mercy on all whom thou for knowest shall be thine by faith and good works we humbly beseech thee that all for whom we have resolved to make supplication whether the present world still holds them in the flesh or the world to come has already received them out of the body may through the intercession of all thy saints obtain of thy goodness and clemency pardon for all their sins that's the that's the kind of prayer i like to say you could teach a whole theology course out of that prayer this was being prayed daily for a month each year and all of the other prayers are comparably potent on sundays too saints would be commemorated instead of simply ignored just to give you a sense of how this would work in practice let's take sunday june 30th 2019. so get we'll get a nice traffic jam on july 30th 2019. i choose this day because it is a typical roman constellation it was it was the third sunday after pentecost in the octave of the sacred heart in the octave of the birth of saint john the baptist but also the commemoration of saint paul who is always accompanied by his fellow apostles saint peter so the priest at mass would say or sing five collects sundays followed by saint paul saint peter the sacred heart and saint john the baptist on other days it was possible for the priest especially at private masses to add votive orations or orations for community needs drawing from the magnificent roman treasury of prayers such as to implore the intercession of the saints for people in authority and those under their charge we could use that prayer nowadays against persecutors and evil doers we could use that prayer too in time of earthquake for rain for fine weather to avert storms for the gift of tears for those in temptation and tribulation against evil thoughts and so on there are many of these prayers i imagine some of you are thinking to yourselves wait a minute this almost sounds like the general intercessions or prayer of the faithful in a way that's correct the roman rite already had within itself a way of praying for the celebrant's own needs and for those of the local community the larger world or certain categories of people it was already all there it didn't need to be fabricated in the new form of the prayer of the faithful prior to 1955 the maximum number of orations at a low mass on simple days was five or seven depending on circumstances in 1955 this number was reduced to three and mandatory prayers of the season were abolished like the one i quoted before in 1960 the possibility of additional orations was reduced still further and done away with altogether for most sundays of the year all this was done in pursuit of a streamlined rational simplicity the end game was the novus ordo which never has more than one set of variations per mass so that's what the reformers had in mind they were just trying to get there incrementally as for why they thought there should only be one i'm afraid to say that it has to do with um their their rationalistic view that we should only be thinking about one thing at a time and we're only capable of thinking about one thing at a time so it's confusing to introduce more than one prayer which i don't think speaks very highly of their view of our intelligence and of our piety okay my third example is the repetition of the readings by the priest prior to 1956 the priest at the altar in a solemn mass would read quietly to himself all of the antiphons prayers and readings of the mass even while other ministers were singing them according to their roles in the liturgy this custom developed out of the low mass where the priest had become accustomed to saying everything in 1955 the priest was instructed no longer to do the readings during holy week but just to let them be done by others and in 1960 he was instructed never to do the readings if someone else was doing them on any day in 1969 with the novus ordo he was told not to say the kirier gloria creed sanctus or anjuste if a choir or the people were also singing it but instead to sing it with them if he could or to listen this trend was a mistake for two reasons on the practical side there is a subjective or personal value devotional value in reading with one's own eyes and lips the epistle and the gospel and the ordinary of the mass it allows for maximum textual and ceremonial continuity from day to day regardless of the greater or smaller scope of the liturgy offered so there's there's less of a there's a much less difference between the different grades on the theological level we know that the priest stands at the altar in persona christi but this means he stands in the person of the whole christ head and body as an image of the one mediator between sites prayers both in the direction of god to the faithful the downward mediation of sacred things and in the direction of the faithful to god the upward offering of gifts and prayers at the consecration the priest is identifying with the head of the church during the confetti or or when he says allowed nobis coque picatoribus he is identifying with the people since the priest represents the whole christ head and members it is fitting that he maintained this role of complete representation from start to finish when the priest recites the introit he is standing in the person of christ the prophet announcing some mystery to be accomplished when he recites the threefold kyrie he is beseeching the mercy of almighty god again acting visibly in the person of the high priest who offers sacrifice on behalf of sinners when he reads the gospel it is as the living image of christ that he reads it none of this downplays or dilutes the roles that belong to other ministers or to the people instead it merely draws into maximal unity the liturgical action by having it flow from and return to the same alpha and omega christ himself whose unity of being and operation is represented by the celebrant fourth the recitation of the credo the niceno constantinopolitan creed was not originally included in the roman rite of mass it was imported from the north from over the mountains like many other features however once it found its place i believe it was in the 13th century or the 12th century once it found its place the usual process began by which it was assigned for more and more occasions for reasons of fittingness in the tridentine rite it is said on all sundays and high-ranking feasts of our lady and the apostles and their octave days but also on the feasts of the angels because their creation is mentioned in the creed the doctors of the church because the creed embodies the catholic doctrine of which they are the most exalted expounders and defenders and on the feast of saint mary magdalene because she was the apostle to the apostles honored with the first appearance of the resurrected lord all of this seems perfectly reasonable and fitting no one could complain an opportunity to sing one of the beautiful gregorian settings of the creed is always welcome and as for reciting it at low mass it takes a little over a minute and gives us the opportunity to honor the blessed trinity with three bows of the head and a genuflection at least if we're if we're paying attention in 1950 the restless liturgical reformers abolished the creed for the angels saint mary magdalene octave days and a few others in 1960 it was abolished for doctors of the church and solemn votive masses and then fifth and final my fifth and final example is the use of the phrase benedict domino in the trinity right whenever a mass contained the gloria the priest or deacon concluded with ite missaest but if there was no gloria the phrase used instead was benidicamos domino let us bless the lord the response to either was the same deo gracias this was just one of many subtle ways in which feast days were distinguished from ferial days or penitential days in the 1960 rubrics every mass has concluded it with benedict domino to be used only when a procession or other function follows this is a small detail to be sure but a lot of small details add up to general impressions there was and is a certain unity of spirit to the tridentine rubrics so what i what i would say to you is no one small change makes a big difference but many small elements act insensibly upon us they form us in ways that we're not even aware of and i've experienced this a lot of time when i've when i've realized how much a liturgical custom actually has shaped the way i approach um the mass or the thinking of about something and so we don't even have to be always conscious of these things they're meant to act on us in a kind of subconscious way right and that's why it's important to have all of them that the liturgy is psychologically very subtle in this way it knows the power of signs and of of alterations of what we usually expect as i was saying with good friday with the eastern vigil this unity of the tridentine right of the tridentine rubrics was increasingly lost in the reforms of the 1950s and early 60s before being simply chucked out chucked out the window from the mid-60s forward having looked at these nine elements of the classical roman rite of mass i would now like to address some practical and canonical issues it is important to note that certain rubrical changes from 1960 are almost never observed in celebrations of the traditional mass today anywhere these discrepancies are not only tolerated but practiced by high-ranking prelates at least some of whom know perfectly well that in so doing they are following older rubrics than the most current ones the most obvious is the retention of the confetti or immediately before communion right that was abolished in 1960 but almost everybody does it it has survived with tenacity and is more common i would say than than otherwise another example is the priest bowing towards the crucifix when he says oremus when according to the 1960 rubrics he should be bowing towards the book instead finally it is quite common to see at a solemn mass the insensation of the priest after the deacon's chanting of the gospel even though this too was terminated moreover the pontifical commission ecclesia dei before it was folded into the congregation for the doctrine of the faith had been giving indications that approaches to the rubrics could be a little more shall we say flexible in a typically roman fashion instead of issuing an instruction they simply issued a liturgical ordo that had two noteworthy features first it said for masses of advent septuagisma and lent that is without the gloria benedicamos domino may be used instead of it second it made reference in small print to the octave of corpus christi as if hinting that indeed an octave of this feast can be observed i am aware of two benedictine monasteries that celebrate full corpus christi octaves with the festival mass and office every day together with processions adoration and benediction it is uh it is an absolutely awesome way to celebrate the octave of corpus christi more importantly as i'm sure many of you know perhaps even all of you ecclesia dei granted official permission to the institute of christ the king and to the fraternity of saint peter to utilize the authentic tridentine holy week for three years 2018 2019 and 2020 with a decision to be made thereafter about making the permission permanent official permission has also been granted for the old pentecost vigil but again in a typically roman way that was in a letter that was responding to somebody who asked if they could do it so you're supposed to infer from this so this raises the next question what kind of permission is needed to recover the kind of lost elements of the tridentine right that i've been discussing the fundamental principle is this a liturgical right possesses authority from itself from its long use and reception and not primarily from the decree of any authority the inherent weight of immoral tradition is such that no pope can abolish or abrogate it we could call it the sacred and great principle as expressed in benedict the 16th letter to bishops of july 7th 2007. this is one of my favorite quotations it's my it's actually my email signature line you know okay i should have it memorized by now but quote what earlier generations held as sacred remains sacred and great for us too and it cannot be all of a sudden entirely forbidden or even considered harmful it behooves all of us to preserve the riches which have developed in the church's faith and prayer and to give them their proper place unquote so notice he says that what earlier generations held as sacred remain sacred and great and cannot not should not but cannot be forbidden or considered harmful this argument by which sumorum bears witness to the continuing listedness of the 1962 missile and other rights establishes exactly the same for the tridentine inheritance in general including the old holy week the vigil of pentecost the corpus christi octave the differentiation between the feast of the holy innocents and its octave folded chasables and broad stalls multiple orations doubling of readings the recitation of the creed and the use of benedicamos domino all of it as martin mozabach memorably says the traditional liturgy has more ecclesiastical authority than any decision of a pope or curial office and here's another favorite quotation of mine quote the liturgy is the church every mass celebrated in the traditional spirit is immeasurably more important than every word of every pope it is the red thread that must be drawn through the glory and misery of church history where it continues phases of arbitrary papal rule will become footnotes of history unquote martin mosbach is good official permission from ecclesia dei or now the glamorous fourth section of the cdf can be helpful for res reassuring delicate consciences and avoiding arbitrariness but it is not strictly necessary every year more and more diocesan churches do the old holy week the authorities in the cdf know about it and do nothing to stop it this is a very italian way of signifying go ahead just don't make fools out of yourselves tacit non-verbal approval is an approach that the anglo-saxon mentality does not always understand we would rather have it in writing in legalese on a piece of paper but we have to remember that it is much more difficult and dangerous for officials at the vatican especially today to put something into writing than merely to let it be understood my earlier example of the vatican ordo for the uss antiqui or illustrates the italian method there is no document that says you may use the benedicamos domino or observe a corpus christi octave the ordo simply mentions them in latin without comment so that only the cognoscenti will know there's the people who have to make the decisions they will know and they can do it it is true that over the centuries certain rights or codes of rubrics are promulgated by the hierarchy but that is not what bestows legitimacy on the rights and rubrics it merely identifies a certain book as the correct printing or standard of its kind the mere fact of promulgation in other words is a necessary but not a sufficient condition for the book's reception by the church it was not saint pius v who fashioned the tridentine rites and bestowed authenticity upon it this it already had of itself before he even existed the missile of 1570 is in all important respects the same as the roman curious missile of 1474 which in turn transmits the right as it was found in earlier centuries in a continuous organic sequence at most pius v was responsible for specifying that a certain edition of a book valid legitimate and fitting in itself is to be used at the altar for practical reasons and that would certainly be um important in the era when there were a lot of printing errors and there were a lot of unauthorized printers who were just making stuff up so the vatican had to be very careful about the care of the typography and the accuracy of the contents in this prudential area you know of of of deciding this is the addition now you should use it um mistakes are possible that is one of those areas in which papal decisions um can be mistaken that is the pro prudential determination of these things it does no harm it does no harm for a pope to issue an indulge that is an act of positive law directed to individuals or groups such as john paul ii indulged in 1984 and 1988 for the use of the 1962 liturgical books if that pope is under the impression that he needs to do so or that it will assist the beneficiaries but if benedict xvi is correct to state that no permission is needed for the old rights because it was never abrogated and could not be abrogated then logically this permission would either have to attach to the last iteration of this right before its replacement by the novus ordo which would mean the semi-solidified lava of 1967 or in view of the instability of the roman rite from 1948 onward it would have to attach to the status quo ante circa 1948. permission to celebrate the roman rite as of 1948 would thus be universal not by virtue of positive law but by virtue of custom and tradition the very basis of sumorum pontificom's argument that the uss antiquior was never abrogated this it seems to me is the rock solid basis of the gradual restoration of the tridentine right even in situations where no explicit permission has been requested or obtained put differently it is positively laughable to think that a holy week that lasted for only about 14 years could have more binding force or canonical authority than a holy week that endured for a thousand years that would that would be a sort of reduxio absurdum of legal positivism the principal argument used by defenders of strict adherence to the 1962 liturgical books is that we should all do what the church asks us to do i'm sure you've heard that in this period of chaos however it is no longer self-evident that the church refers to an authority that is handing down laws for the common good of the people of god from at least 1948 on the church and i'm putting this in scare quotes in the sphere of liturgy has meant radicals struggling to loosen the bonds of tradition pushing their own agenda of simplification abbreviation modernization and pastoral utilitarianism on the church and sealing it with papal approval that is by an abuse of papal power these things are not rightful commands to be obeyed but aberrations that deserve to be resisted of course they should be resisted patiently intelligently and in a principled manner but nevertheless with a firm intention over time to restore the integrity and fullness of the roman rite sometimes one will hear people complain that the old right is frozen in time i i'm sure that some of you have heard that it's frozen in time it's ossified it's fossilized that is not my impression in the wild west which is where we're all living organic development is happening only it is not moving towards towards the unreachable utopia of modernization dreamt of by paul vi but rather towards recovering piece by piece noble idiomatic and highly expressive elements of the roman liturgy that were paired away or transmogrified during the 20th century while the greatest example remains the ever-increasing return of the pre-55 holy week one sees here and there the recovery of vigils octaves multiple collects doubled readings and many features that were suppressed by positive law when old customs are tried anew clergy and faithful find that they make sense they work beautifully it was a strange bout of madness that led to their suppression in the first place perhaps for the first time since vatican one's past pastor eternus and certainly for the first time since vatican ii's sakura sanctum concilium we are privileged to be living at a moment when it is possible to be taking the steps needed to recover our glorious inheritance the febrile atmosphere of the current pontificate is helping in a big way to facilitate the re-examination of liturgical questions and i would say every other kind of question the lord wants us to see very clearly that we must find sounder principles than the autocratic will of whoever happens to be seated on the papal throne if the pope will not honor tradition and pass it down without meddling and messing with it we for our part are compelled by love of our genealogy our family inheritance our dignity as sons of god and heirs to his kingdom to defend catholic tradition uphold it live it and hand it on intact for those of us who believe that the tridentine right represents as a whole and in its parts the pinnacle of the roman rite a missile from circa 1948 or even the odyssey typica of benedict the 15th from 1920 gives us the stable ground we need for the future thanks be to god not only is the us antiquier coming back to our churches but the authentic rights of the uss antiquior are returning as well at the end of 70 years of liturgical captivity beginning around 1948 with pius xii creation of the liturgical reform commission we are in a position to say with the psalmist who shall give out of zion the salvation of israel when the lord shall have turned away the captivity of his people jacob shall rejoice and israel shall be glad thank you very much for your kind attention

Channel: Peter Kwasniewski

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Id: P6lzt4-A11E

Length: 65min 28sec (3928 seconds)

Published: Mon Oct 12 2020