The Role of Josef Jungmann
in the Liturgical Reform

Dr. Carol Byrne, Great Britain

Another fault line in Pope Pius XII’s Assisi Address that was poised to release enough pressure for an earthquake (or should that be a Churchquake?) was the confidence he placed in the historical-critical studies carried out by contemporary liturgical experts. He expressed the hope that these would “bring forth a rich harvest, to the benefit of the individual members as well as the Church as a whole.” 

But, how realistic was this hope considering that the experts in question – international scholars of a progressivist bent – were none other than the promoters of the Liturgical Movement led by Bugnini?

Evidence of collusion 

Fr. Frederick McManus noted that Pius XII’s “1948 Commission was influenced in succeeding years by the meetings of (mostly) European scholars … with which Antonelli, Löw and Bugnini were in contact.”(1)

By far the most influential of these was Josef Jungmann, SJ, a Professor of “Pastoral Theology” at the University of Innsbruck and a Consulter to the 1948 Liturgical Commission. (2) (Bugnini later publicly endorsed Jungmann’s theory of the Pastoral Nature of the Liturgy). (3)

These were the men who colluded in secret to produce the revised Holy Week rites and other liturgical changes that were imposed on the Church in the 1950s. In fact, some of them were participants at the Assisi Congress, basking in the warmth of the Pope’s praise.

Jungmann would eventually play a major role in the drafting and implementation of Vatican II’s Constitution on the Liturgy and, also, in the fabrication of the Novus Ordo.

Jungmann: a liturgical giant with feet of clay

Josef Jungmann published his magnum opus on the history of the Roman Rite, Missarum Sollemnia, in 1948, (4) (see here) which was long hailed as a classic of liturgical scholarship and became the ultimate reference and definitive resource book for the Liturgical Movement.

  Jungmann's 2-volume American edition ushered in the New Mass

 His contemporaries conferred on him god-like status: his fellow-Jesuit, Fr. Clifford Howell, credited him with near “omniscience.”(5) Fr. Louis Bouyer rhapsodized that his book was “the greatest scholarly work of our times on the history of the Roman Mass,” (6) and Cardinal Ratzinger called him “one of the truly great liturgists of our time.” (7)

But, it turned out that Jungmann was ascribed authoritative status not through excellence in research integrity, but largely because he upheld the progressivist ideas of the liturgical establishment. It is now known that he “mined” the field of early Christian liturgies to produce data that supported his “antiquarian” agenda.

More recent scholarly research (8) has shown conclusively that Jungmann’s work was riddled with erroneous assumptions about the early Christian liturgies: he often hypothesized about events that he would like to have happened – for instance Mass celebrated versus populum (facing the people), an Offertory procession, bidding prayers at all Masses – thereby assuming tacitly that they did. And he did not scruple to skew the evidence in favor of his own preconceptions. One could say that, in some areas, Jungmann raised the falsification of data to an art form.

It was only later that he came to realize his error about versus populum liturgies. But, he said this orientation should nevertheless be adopted for “pastoral” purposes, thus laying bare the real reason for undertaking his research in the first place. Unfortunately, Pius XII, via Bugnini, relied on Jungmann’s compromised research for the Holy Week reforms and decided that some key aspects of it could be imported into the liturgy at the stroke of the Supreme Legislator’s pen.

Not so much a fact-finding mission as a fault-finding one

 Jungman: ‘The priest does not take the place of Christ at Mass, but is a server of the community’

 While many of his fellow priests were suffering and dying for the Faith in war-torn Europe, Jungmann spent most of WW2 comfortably ensconced in a convent in the Austrian countryside, (9) which he used as the perfect hide-away in which to research for and write his history of the Mass. There, like a captious pedant, he busied himself finding fault with almost every aspect of the Roman Rite as it had been celebrated over the previous 1500 years.

It is interesting to note that while the Nazis were persecuting the Catholic Church in his native Austria, Jungmann, in the safety of his “funk hole,” (10) was jack-booting his way through the history of the Roman Mass. So brutal were his attacks that one could say that he kicked it around and finally kicked it to pieces. When there was nothing left to criticize, he arbitrarily concluded that any prayers of the Mass used after the early centuries of the Church “would really all have to vanish.” (11)

The following are just a few examples of his criticisms:

• “The sacrifice of the Mass is not the sacrifice for the redemption of the world, but the sacrifice made by the redeemed.” (12)
  
• He questioned the authenticity of the words Mysterium Fidei in the consecratory formula of the wine, regarding them as an extraneous element, an unscriptural “intrusion” with no connection to transubstantiation. (13)
  
• He insinuated that the Catholic doctrine of the priest performing the sacrifice as an alter Christus was a later historical invention and was, therefore, by implication, a false teaching. (14)
  
• He accused priests of usurping the role of the laity, creating a gap between the clergy and the people and preventing the latter from participating in the liturgy. (15)
  
• He presented a paper at the Assisi Congress in which he placed the principal emphasis of the Mass on the “community meal aspect” and the “gathering of the People of God,” described the Mass as primarily a service of thanksgiving by the assembled community, disparaged the silent recitation of the Canon as a barrier to participation, and stated that the Mass should be in the vernacular “so that the people can speak and sing together.” (here) (16)

While all of these positions were directly contrary to Catholic doctrine, the last two were the subject of a special condemnation at the Council of Trent.

Modernism re-enters the Church under Pius XII

To those liturgists present at the Assisi Congress who included Jungmann among their number, Pius XII said in his Address that it was “a consolation and a joy for us to know that we can rely on your help and your understanding in these matters.” But the aim of the Liturgical Movement was to restructure the Mass so that it would no longer reflect essential Catholic doctrine, an aim that would be eventually realized in the creation of the Novus Ordo.

  Pius XI’s warning in Inter multiplices

Thus, he trusted “men with itching ears” (2 Tim 4:3) with the reform of the liturgy, men whose theology represented the “striking departure from the Catholic theology of the Mass as it was formulated in session XXII of the Council of Trent,” mentioned later by Cardinal Ottaviani with reference to the Novus Ordo.

In 1924, Pius XI had warned about the dangers of blind reliance on “expert” testimony based on shoddy historical scholarship and neo-modernist ideas:

“However, in these studies concerning ancient Rites the necessary groundwork for knowledge must first be undertaken in a spirit of piety and docile and humble obedience. And if these are lacking, any research whatever into ancient liturgies of Mass will turn out to be irreverent and fruitless: for when, either through ignorance or a proud and conceited mind, the supreme authority of the Apostolic See in liturgical matters, which rightly rejects puffed-up knowledge, and, with the Apostle, ‘speaks wisdom among the perfect’ (1 Cor. 8: 1,2: 6), has been scorned, there immediately looms the danger that the error known as Modernism will be introduced also into liturgical matters.” (18)

In fact, a resurgent Modernism had gained such a foothold in Pius XII’s time that even a Protestant theologian, cheering on the progress of the Liturgical Movement from the sidelines, noted in 1954 that “It is especially in its theological method that the Liturgical Movement evidences a relationship with the errors of Modernism as condemned by Pius X in Pascendi … certain of the most fruitful trends condemned by Pius X in his blanket condemnation have served to make the Liturgical Movement the great power it is today.” (19)