A Self-Contradictory Liturgical Reform
Dr. Carol Byrne, Great Britain
With Mediator Dei of 1947, Pius XII had set the stage
for “active participation” of the laity. Not only did he strongly
encourage the “Dialogue Mass” and congregational singing in this
encyclical, but he also exhorted the Bishops to set up diocesan
committees to ensure that these revolutionary measures “in which the
people take part in the liturgy” would be everywhere promoted as a
“liturgical apostolate” for the laity. (1)
Here we see the first intimation of the “theology of lay liturgical
ministry” that would be ordered by Vatican II, whereby the whole
assembly shares the responsibility for celebrating Mass. Thus, Pius XII
effectively undermined his own teaching on the Catholic priesthood found
elsewhere in the same document. With such confusion between the
ordained and the non-ordained, is there any wonder that there developed a
crisis of priestly identity?
Today's lay eucharistic ministers
act as participants of the priesthood
- Diocese of Austin, Texas
act as participants of the priesthood
- Diocese of Austin, Texas
Almost immediately following the encyclical, Pius XII placed Fr. Annibale Bugnini in charge of a Commission for the General Reform of the Liturgy staffed by a few hand-picked “progressivist” satraps. (2)
The first result of the Commission’s work was the restructuring of the
Easter Vigil rite (1951) with a view to promoting “active participation”
leading to an entire revision of the Holy Week liturgy in 1955. This in
turn would spawn all subsequent liturgical reforms up to and after
Vatican II, with the same rationale in mind.
There was no doubt in the minds of the two most influential members of
the Commission, Fr. Bugnini and Fr. Ferdinando Antonelli, that the
reforms they devised in the 1950s were based on the same principles as
the post-conciliar reforms.
Bugnini made several statements to the effect that the 1955
reforms were a transitional stage of a more general liturgical reform,
“the first step toward measures of a wider scope,” “an arrow” pointing
forward. (3) Fr. Antonelli, future Secretary of the Liturgical
Commission of Vatican II and Secretary of the Congregation of Rites,
stated that his revision of the Roman rite under Pius XII was simply a
“kind of novitiate” for the official reforms of Vatican II and later.
(4)
When Bugnini’s chickens came home to roost
A first reformer, Fr. Antonelli was granted
a cardinal's hat and prestige from the Popes
a cardinal's hat and prestige from the Popes
How ironic that Fr. Antonelli (later Cardinal), who had been given chief
responsibility on Pius XII’s Commission for the reform of Holy Week,
later deplored the outcome of what he had initiated in the 1950s. In
his memoirs, he noted:
“Many of those who have influenced the reform ... and others, have no
love and no veneration for that which has been handed down to us. They
begin by despising everything that is actually there. This negative
mentality is unjust and pernicious … with this mentality they have only
been able to demolish and not to restore.” (5)
Precisely. Yet at that critical point in history when papal support for
the protection of the traditional rites was essential, Pius XII was on
the wrong side, aligning himself with those who aimed to demolish
Tradition.
The hermeneutic of rupture
Continuity with Tradition was exactly what Pius XII’s Commission did not
want, as was made abundantly clear in the 1951 Decree (6) introducing
an experimental Easter Vigil service and also in the 1955 Decree (7)
making it (and the whole of the Holy Week reforms) obligatory for the
Roman rite. Both of these Decrees, as we shall see below, contain
unjustified criticisms of the traditional rites; they are also
accompanied by Instructions for new rites in which the emphasis was
placed on the “active participation” of the laity.
The ‘horizontal’ church reflected in
an egalitarian architecture & liturgy
an egalitarian architecture & liturgy
Here we see the first glimmerings of a new approach to liturgy – known
later as “horizontalism.” The ordering and meaning of the Catholic
worship was now in the hands of the reformers who began systematically
to replace rituals that transmitted a sense of reverence and awe in the
presence of God with “simplified” man-centred constructs promoting
“active participation.”
By 1955, with the Decree Maxima Redemptionis, the shape of this most
ancient of Vigils (which St. Augustine called the “Mother of all
Vigils”) was reformulated and some texts were massively curtailed. And
new arrangements were invented for the priest to face the people,
involving “dialogue” with them in the vernacular. One could say that the
decline of the sense of the sacred began in embryonic form with the
1951-1955 changes.
Fr. Hewko: "Cathechism on True Mass vs Modernist New Mass"
False dawn of the Easter Vigil reform
Under pressure from the French and German Bishops, Pius XII made a new
rule that the Church should no longer hold the Easter Vigil in daylight
hours, as had been the case since the 7th or 8th centuries, but should
revert to the practice of the first Christians who held it after dark.
No convincing reason was given by the Congregation of Rites as to why
the night time should be deemed the “proper hour” for the Vigil service.
In fact, there is no “proper” hour for a vigil.The mystery of the
Church's liturgy is, in its essence, not bound by the clock. In
liturgical terms, a vigil refers to the eve of a feast day and can be
celebrated with propriety at any time of the day.
However, Maxima Redemptionis arbitrarily insisted that the
ceremonies “may not begin before twilight, or certainly not before
sunset.” But the timing of the Easter Vigil had never been set by
astronomical calculation, as if everything depended on how many degrees
the sun is above or below the horizon.
The self-contradictory nature of the Easter Vigil reform
The Church was ordered to return to the catacombs. It is perplexing that
the same Pope who had condemned such a retrograde step in the strongest
terms as “antiquarianism” only four years earlier, could have
countenanced this reversal of his own teaching:
“The liturgy of the early ages is most certainly worthy of all
veneration. But ancient usage must not be esteemed more suitable and
proper, either in its own right or in its significance for later times
and new situations, on the simple ground that it carries the savor and
aroma of antiquity. The more recent liturgical rites likewise deserve
reverence and respect. They, too, owe their inspiration to the Holy
Spirit, who assists the Church in every age even to the consummation of
the world. They are equally the resources used by the majestic Spouse of
Jesus Christ to promote and procure the sanctity of man.” (8)
A post-Vatican II Easter Vigil celebration in the Los Angeles Cathedral |
But the point about his 1955 Decree Maxima Redemptionis was that it did
state that the early Christian Easter Vigil was “more suitable and
proper” than what had developed over the intervening centuries; and it did
reject the principle that “the more recent liturgical rites likewise
deserve reverence and respect.”
There is no mistaking the language used in the Decree to denigrate the
liturgical tradition as it had developed up to the 1950s. Maxima Redemptionis
carried a note of reprobation of what had been approved and maintained
as Catholic practice for centuries, with the scarcely veiled implication
that for most of her history the Church had conducted her worship on
wrong lines.
In it, the accusation was made that the Easter Vigil had lost its
original clarity and the meaning of its words and symbols when it was
“torn” from its “proper” nocturnal setting and was no longer in line
with the Gospel accounts. According to the reformers, it had even become
“harmful” to the symbolic meaning of the Vigil. (9) Anyone would think
they were referring to a monstrous iniquity that must be removed from
the Church.
In other words, the Holy See (echoing the reformers) was claiming that
the public prayers of the Church celebrated continually for many
centuries, sanctified by long usage and codified by the Council of Trent
were theologically defective and liturgically “improper.”
Is it conceivable that the traditional manner of celebrating the Easter
Vigil in the daytime was a disastrous mistake and that the Church had to
wait 14 centuries for Bugnini and his henchmen to put the matter right?
Of course not, and in the next installment we will be examining the
spurious reasons for the Easter Vigil changes, which were published in
the 1951 and 1955 Decrees.
To be continued
...
- “Wherefore We exhort you, Venerable Brethren, that each in his diocese or ecclesiastical jurisdiction supervise and regulate the manner and method in which the people take part in the liturgy, according to the rubrics of the Missal and in keeping with the injunctions which the Sacred Congregation of Rites and the Code of Canon Law have published. … It is also Our wish that in each diocese an advisory committee to promote the liturgical apostolate should be established.” (Mediator Dei, n. 109)
- The members of the Commission in 1948 were: Card. Clemente Micara, Pro-Prefect of the Sacred Congregation of Rites (President); Fr. Annibale Bugnini CM (Secretary); Msgr. Alfonso Carinci, Secretary of the Congregation of Rites; Fr. Agostino Bea SJ; Fr. Ferdinando Antonelli OFM; Fr. Joseph Löw CSSR; Dom Anselmo Albareda OSB, Prefect of the Vatican Library.
- A. Bugnini, The Simplification of the Rubrics: Spirit and Practical Consequences of the Decree of the Sacred Congregation of Rites March 23, 1955, with a Preface by Ferdinando Antonelli, Collegeville, MN: Doyle & Finegan, , 1955.
- Cf. Nicola Giampietro, The Development of the Liturgical Reform: As Seen by Cardinal Ferdinando Antonelli from 1948-1970, Fort Collins CO: Roman Catholic Books, 2009, p. 69. Giampietro gleaned his information from research into Antonelli’s personal writings as well as archival material from the minutes of the Commissions on which the Cardinal had served.
- Ibid., p. 192. This is not to suggest that Card. Antonelli wanted to preserve intact the Church’s liturgical tradition. He was Secretary for the Liturgical Commission of the Second Vatican Council, a member of the post-conciliar Concilium and became Secretary of the Sacred Congregation for Rites in 1965.
- De solemni vigilia paschali instauranda, Acta Apostolicae Sedis, 1951, pp. 128-37. There exists no English translation.
- Maxima Redemptionis, Acta Apostolicae Sedis, 1955, pp. 838-847.
- Mediator Dei, 1947 n. 61.
- Maxima Redemptionis: “profecto non sine detrimento liturgici sensus, nec sine confusione inter evangélicas narrationes et ad eas pertinentes liturgicas repraesentationes. Solemnis praesertim paschalis vigiliae liturgia, a propria nocturna sede avulsa, nativam perspicuitatem ac verborum et symbolorum sensum amisit.” (certainly not without detriment to the liturgical meaning, creating confusion among the Gospels accounts and related liturgical ceremonies. Principally the solemn liturgy of the Easter Vigil, snatched away from its proper nightly time, lost its innate clarity as well as the meaning of words and symbols) The expression avulsa (“snatched away”) is offensive and unwarranted, as it has a particularly violent connotation in Latin, descriptive of robbery, abduction etc.
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