The most important aim of the early Liturgical Movement was not
the reform of the Liturgy to suit the people, but of the people to suit the
Liturgy. This would mean, as St Paul exhorts the Romans, to "not be
conformed to this world but be transformed by the renewal of your mind,"
(Romans 12:2) and is therefore not a task to be treated lightly. As the
Liturgical Movement grew and evolved, only then did the aims shift towards a
more substantial reform of the liturgy itself.
I contend, together with Dom Reid in his book The Organic Development of the
Liturgy which I have been reading, that the ideology that had captured
the mind of prominent liturgists in the lead up to the Second Vatican Council
and that held vogue during the Concilium which produced the Missal of Pope
VI, now the Ordinary Form of the Roman Rite, was an unhealthy mix of
antiquarianism and twisted pastoral concern. What I consider to have happened
is this: a new rite of Mass was produced to suit the perceived needs of
contemporary society by piecing together forms which were considered ancient
enough, usually from the Patristic era, both Eastern and Western. The
artificial collage of liturgical elements produced is a break from the received
liturgical Tradition, and in my opinion has been liturgically disastrous since its
introduction.
I will not try and defend here the fundamental premise that the
only suitable reforms and developments of the Liturgy are those which follow
organically from the objective liturgical Tradition, but I will briefly
enunciate what that means. As Cardinal Ratzinger noted in his review of Reid's
work:
"Between [...] the radical reformers and their radical
opponents, the voices of those people who regard the Liturgy as something
living, and thus as growing and renewing itself both in its reception and in
its finished form, are often lost. These latter, however, basing this on the
same argument, insist that growth is not possible unless the Liturgy's identity
is preserved, and further emphasize that proper development is only possible if
careful attention is paid to the inner structural logic of this
"organism": Just as a gardener cares for a living plant as it
develops, with due attention to the power of growth and life within the plant,
and the rules it obeys, so the Church ought to give reverent care to the
Liturgy through the ages, distinguishing actions that are helpful and healing
from those that are violent and destructive."
So an organic development is one which is in line with the
Liturgy's identity, authentically preserving its character, which will
sometimes mean altering the Liturgy but never in an overly dramatic way. Any
complete overhaul of the Liturgy cannot be considered organic and is
consequently to be rejected. Whether one thinks it is the best change since
Christ first changed the bread into his own Body at the Last Supper or a
catastrophic change, the Missal of Paul VI is undeniably not an organic
development.
I think an interesting question to consider is what would count as organic
development in light of the teaching of the Second Vatican Council on the
Liturgy. The Dogmatic Constitution on Sacred Liturgy produced by the Council, Sacrosanctum Concilium,
certainly gave mandate to make some reforms to the Liturgy. What would reforms
true to the nature of the Liturgy have been? Taking the Mass as it stood in
1962, I consider the following modest proposals to cover the requisite bases:
1. Reform of the Church's liturgical calendar such that the
temporal or seasonal calendar has marked pre-eminence over the sanctoral
(saints) calendar. This would not mean a complete overhaul of the liturgical
calendar, but mainly a reform of the rubrics which specify how the two
calendars would interact.
2. The participation of the faithful in the responses normally
said only by the altar servers during the fore-Mass and Mass. I think an
abbreviation of the prayers at the foot of the altar by having only one Confiteor said by the
celebrant, altar servers and faithful is appropriate, although it is more
important that the congregation have a Confiteor
than that there only be one. This is in part a development covered by the
emergence of the Missa dialogata.
3. Removing the need of the priest to repeat the sections of the
Mass sung or said by the faithful, particularly the Ordinary (Kyrie, Credo,
Gloria, Agnus Dei...) and readings, if done by a lector.
4. The Propers of a Mass should have the option of being prayed in
the vernacular, particularly at a Missa
lecta. These are the Introit,
Collect, Epistle, Gradual, Gospel, Offertory, Secrets, Communion verse and Postcommunion. This
restores them to them to their intended place, particularly consonant with the
fact that all these (except the Secret,
which can remain in Latin) are said aloud precisely so that they are
intelligible to the faithful. The introduction of the vernacular for these is
an authentic development of liturgical Tradition as it is a reform that
restores these parts to their original intelligibility. The problem of adapting
the vernacular to chant means that it is likely that a Missa cantata or Missa solemnis will retain
the chanted Latin propers, but the option should remain of making some
adaptation as is required.
5. The fore-Mass (Liturgy of the Word, Mass of the Catachumens)
should be celebrated from the chair, as in pontifical Masses. This is a return
to the fore-Mass's original place, which had been changed because of how the
low Mass was developed for private Masses.
6. The more extensive use and preaching of Scripture, which would
mean a slight amplification of the fore-Mass, but more importantly a re-structuring
of the reading cycle, which I am unsure of how to do in an organic manner,
given the venerable antiquity of the Roman lectionary.
7. Some rites lost in history could be returned in a reverent
manner, including the Prayer of the Faithful and the Offertory procession.
8. Though I am weary of touching an artifact so old and venerable
as the Roman canon, I am inclined to agree with Fr Brian Harrison when he said:
"I would suggest two changes to emphasise the role of the
Holy Spirit at those key moments of the Eucharistic Prayer, the epiclesis, or
invocation of the Spirit over the gifts, and the doxology. First, the words
Spiritus Sancti virtute (“by the power of the Holy Spirit”) could well be
inserted into the epiclesis prayer which begins Quam oblationem after the word
quaesumus; and secondly, the entire doxology (which begins, “Through him, with
him, in him, in the unity of the Holy Spirit”) could be given greater emphasis
by saying or singing it aloud, as in the new rite, while elevating the chalice
and paten, as an invitation for the people to respond with the final “Amen.”
The contrast between this moment and the preceding silence of the rest of the
Canon would provide a beautiful and dramatic consummation to the majesty of the
Eucharistic Prayer." (Address to the St. Thomas Aquinas Society
Eucharistic Conference, Colorado Springs, March 26, 1995)
9. Restoring the Ite,
missa est to its place at the end of the Mass, and the abolition of
the Leonine prayers in public Masses as well as the Last Gospel being either
brought before the Ite or
returned to private recitation by the priest.
If we are to include what I consider to be duplicated or excessive
sections, I would mention the sentence added at the end of the Munda cor meum (the prayer before the
proclamation of the Gospel) as one that could be removed as a repetition
of what has just been prayed for, or the irrelevant later verses of the Lavabo psalm (Ps. 25) during
the Offertory, which goes for longer than is required anyway. It may be
possible to re-introduce some of the prefaces which were suppressed in history.
But these would be relatively minor changes to the prayers of the Mass.
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It is clear that some of these changes were made with the
introduction of the Missal of Paul VI. Yet, whilst I have listed a number of
changes, what this might cloud is how much would remain the same: almost
everything. Using a one of the common booklet of the 1962 missal for usage of
the faithful in this reformed Mass would be fairly straightforward. Latin has
been retained for almost everything except the changing parts of the Mass. The
Canon is still silent. Mass is ad
orientum. The prayers are the same.
Not only do I consider these changes essentially the sum of what Sacrosanctum Concilium called
for, I consider that these reforms would be all that was required to bridge the
gap between priest and congregation which had so much been decried. The task
would then continue to be what it has always been: for the entire People of God
to be elevated and transformed in conformity to the Divine Liturgy, and
ultimately, to God himself.
