Pre-1956 Holy Week (Part I): Introducing Monsignor Leon Gromier
Monsignor Leon Gromier (1879 – 1965):
(Consulter to the Congregation of Rites since the time of Pope St. Pius X, and Ceremonieri of Pope Pius XII)
Last month, we posted a study on the changes to the traditional Holy Week rites written by Fr. Stefano Carusi, IBP (i.e., an Ecclesia Dei
priest) which transpired between 1951-1956. Our introduction to that
study contained a quote by the well-known American sedevacantist priest,
Fr. Anthony Cekada, who, speaking of Fr. Carusi’s study observed:
It is worth noting that Fr. Carusi is a
member of the IBP (Institute of the Good Shepherd), a Vatican-approved
society for priests (mostly former SSPX-ers) who offer the traditional
Latin Mass under the banner of Benedict XVI’s 2007 Motu Proprio — which,
in theory at least, prescribes the use of the John XXIII Missal that
contains the very rites Fr. Carusi criticizes.
It is significant that even in
these circles many are now examining the pre-Vatican II liturgical
changes with a critical eye, an undertaking previously regarded as
exclusively “sedevacantist” territory.”
Today, we continue with the theme of non-sedevacantist liturgists
critiquing the pre-conciliar Holy Week changes under Bugnini and Pius
XII, by presenting to you an article written by Fr. Christopher Smith,
STD/PhD (a priest of the Diocese of Charlston, South Carolina, USA) on
the person of Monsignor Leon Gromier: An intense opponent of the crude
and incoherent experimental Holy Week revisions which were later
promulgated by Pius XII’s Maxima Redemptionis in November/1955.The present article will familiarize you with Monsignor Gromier.
A subsequent installment will review his critique of the revised rites in greater detail.
Our purpose in interspersing Sodalitium Pianum with articles written by non-sedevacantist authors defending and advocating recourse to the traditional Holy Week rites (or, those who at least critique the strange revisions of the 1955/6 Holy Week of Pius XII and Bugnini), is to:
- Explain to the world that the fully Catholic traditional rites need not become the sole possession of sedevacantists, simply because the SSPX has preferred the modernized rites of Bugnini/Pius XII which were in force at the time of the 1962 Missal;
- To rebut the suspicion of sedevacantism which is often triggered simply on the basis of recognizing the painfully obvious superiority of the traditional Holy Week rites in comparison to the man-made, incoherent, manufactured Holy Week revisions of Bugnini and Pius XII;
- To explain that one need not consider himself “locked in” to the 1956 revised Holy Week simply because Pius XII was a valid Pope, as some sedevacantists argue: We have, in Fr. Carusi’s Introduction to the article referenced above, the example of Pope John XXIII deferring to the traditional Holy Week in 1959, three years after Pius XII promulgated the new modernized Holy Week in 1956. Clearly, John XXIII did not consider himself obligated to use the revised rites of a man he certainly regarded as Pope. One possible explanation and justification of John XXIII’s deference to the fully Catholic rites may lie in this 1984 spiritual conference of Archbishop Lefebvre, in which he argues that not all universal ecclesiastical disciplinary laws are the secondary objects of infallibility….but this is another conversation for another time, and we intend to have it).
Changing the way we pray was a prerequisite to changing what we believed.
Léon Gromier: Liturgical Reform Between Rupture and Continuity
by
Fr. Christopher Smith
11/19/12
Up until a few years ago, any peep of
concern about the 1970 Missal of Paul VI was adduced as evidence of
schism and obscurantism. Klaus Gamber’s The Reform of the Liturgy,
first published in 1981 in Germany and in English translation in 1993,
changed all that. Likewise, in traditionalist circles, peeps of concern
about the 1962 Missal of John XXIII were squelched. Today, however,
searching questions about the Pauline Reform are being asked out loud
from the halls of the Vatican to blogs with a readership of 2, and
questions about the liturgical reforms of both John XXIII and Pius XII
are beginning to be taken seriously. Now, there are still some quarters
where the very mention of such criticism is laughed at. Those who
suggest a closer analysis of the pre-Vatican II liturgical reform are
often accused of wanting to found a Society of Pope Pius II.5, since X
and V already exist, and they are rejected as hopelessly wedded to
“older is better” in the face of scholarship and common sense.
Yet, there are thinkers in the Church who
are earnestly trying to understand where a hermeneutic of rupture has
been applied to various aspects of the Church’s life, and just how
continuity is or is not reform. The only approved form of the
Extraordinary Form of the Roman Rite is the 1962 Missal and its
associated books. But the provision in Universae ecclesiae 52
allowing religious orders to use their proper rites may give hope to
some that a further liberalization to employ previous editions of the
Roman Missal, such as those pre-dating the 1955 Pian Reform of Holy
Week, is possible.
But why should we even bother looking at
the pre-Vatican II liturgical reform? The Church’s current liturgical
law only allows the 1962 Missal and most EF enthusiasts seem perfectly
content using it. But if we are to discern, under the Church’s
authority, where a hermeneutic of rupture has been applied to the
liturgical life of the Church, it seems nonsensical to stop at an
arbitrary date or edition of the Missal such as 1970, 1962, 1955, or
even 1570. Is every abridgement, replacement or omission evidence of
rupture, or can they be seen as little pieces of thread in the larger
tapestry of liturgical reform? I should like to argue that a closer
look needs to be paid to the pre-Vatican II liturgical reform.
Recently I came across a name that I had
never heard before, and I would bet that even the most seasoned of Chant
Café readers are unlikely to be familiar with him either. Léon Gromier
(1879-1965) is best known as one of the Ceremonieri of Pius XII’s papal
liturgy. But this priest of Autun had been in Rome since his
ordination in 1902 and was a consultor on matters liturgical from the
time of St Pius X. As early as 1936, he expressed loud reservations
about the trajectory of liturgical discussions, such as that of
restoring the Easter Vigil to celebration during the night. With
characteristic aplomb, he made his opinions loud and clear, and did not
rise in an ecclesiastical career, but his knowledge was such that even
those who disagreed with him still respected him.
You can find some information on Gromier and excerpts of his works in Italian and Frenchhere. He is best known for his commentary on the old Caeremoniale Episcoporum,
which I have tried in vain to obtain. But what struck me as the most
interesting was a conference Gromier gave in Paris in 1960. You can
read it in its original French or in its English translation by the always interesting-to-read Anthony Chadwick.
This conference makes for interesting, if
difficult, reading. As the transcription of a talk, it often reads,
especially in its translation, not very linearly. One must be patient
with editorializing and the occasional shot across the bow at his
liturgical adversaries. But there is also much here that I find
fascinating.
An impression that I have gotten from
studying the successive series of texts of the Holy Week ceremonies, as
well as their accompanying rubrics, is of a certain amount of “cut and
paste.” Anyone who is familiar with the Breviary of St Pius X who has
then switched to that of John XXIII knows of those awkward moments
where et reliqua is preceded by a mental ma da dov’é abbiamo cominciato qua? Gromier
in this talk often points out where the “cut and paste” mentality has
produced some very difficult to explain things in the liturgical reform
up to 1960. One wonders if these were things which Evelyn Waugh found so
irksome in his letters to Cardinal Heenan.
But before we look at what some of those
things are, there is an observation in order. Before we cut anything,
it behooves us to really understand why what was there, was there in the
first place. Often, we invent a reason why something should be changed
or removed, which does not respect the reason for its existence and
also does not foresee unintended consequences. This is true in many
aspects of our life, and, as Gromier points out, is also true in the
liturgy.
Gromier makes a distinction between what he
sees as the true Roman liturgical spirit embodied in the texts, rubrics
and ceremonial traditions of the Roman liturgical books, and a very
different spirit animating those he calls les pastoraux, what
we might call the “pastoral liturgists” one assumes were imbued with
Liturgical Movement ideas more akin to Guardini than Guéranger.
He begins his talk with the indication that
the proposed restoration of Holy Week was to commence with the timing
of the service. Fifty years out from Sacrosanctum concilium,
many priests and lay faithful are shocked to hear that, up until the
middle of the last century, centuries had gone by with the Triduum
services celebrated in the morning. The usual quips about the “Mass of
the Lord’s Breakfast” and the flame of the paschal candle not being able
to be seen because of light bathing the church usually come up. Most
liturgists just dismissed the idea of having services at those times as
an inexplicable anachronism tied to some idea that Mass was not supposed
to be celebrated after noon. But Gromier points out that the timing
was intimately connected with the Church’s ancient discipline of
fasting, which of course had been significantly relaxed.
He talks about the renaming of the services. He asks why the ancient name of Good Friday asIn Parasceve had to be replaced by the Passion and Death of the Lord, when passion as
a concept included death, and if so, why not call the Passion Gospel
the Passion and Death Gospel? He talks about why the Passion and the
Gospel were two distinct things, which were then in 1955 melded into one
history. Gromier also complains of the fact that in the 1955 Holy
Week, Vespers is omitted in Holy Thursday and Good Friday and Compline
on each day of the Triduum.
One of the more interesting parts of the talk is when he takes issue with the adjective solemnas
applied in the 1955 Reform. He writes, “The solemnity of liturgical
services is not an optional decoration; it is of the nature of the
service . . . Outside of this, so-called solemnity is not an amplifying
enticement, to impress and score the goal . . . we made a prodigious
use of the word solemn even for necessarily or intrinsically
solemn acts. We use words, believing that we can put more solemnity
into the Procession of Palms than into that of Candlemas, more solemnity
into the Procession of Maundy Thursday than that of Good Friday
(abolished as we shall see). Always on the same slippery slope, we
learn that the Passion of Good Friday is sung solemnly, as if it could
be sung in another fashion.”
Here Gromier identifies a crucial
characteristic of the Reformed Liturgy that I had never been able to put
into words. Theologians often talk about the svolta antropologica, a man-centeredvolte-face of
theology after Rahner. Here we have a clear liturgical
complement. Solemnity no longer arises from the nature of the
Christological mystery being celebrated, but of how we go about
celebrating it, and what we do to celebrate it. The Eucharistic
Processions of Maundy Thursday and Good Friday were solemn before
because of their reference to Christ being carried to and from the
Sepulchre. After 1955, Maundy Thursday remains solemn because incense
and song and candles accompany the Procession. Good Friday ceases to be
so because those things that we do are omitted. I think this is a
point worthy of further reflection. How often in our parishes, basilicas
and papal liturgies have we seen attempts at solemnization of the
liturgy interpreted as our use of Latin, candles and incense rather than
the solemn nature of certain ceremonies rising from their intrinsic
Christological import?
Our French liturgist here also speaks at
length about blessings being done no longer on the altar or as close to
the altar as possible (ashes, palms, candles, oils) but on a table in
front of the people. He also points out that, after placing these
blessings in front of the people so they could ostensibly see what was
going on, the rites were so drastically simplified so that there was not
much left to see.
He blames the pastoral liturgists for
creating a situation which introduced several ambiguities and
contradictions within the ceremonies themselves. He points out the fact
that the clergy are instructed to no longer hold palms on Palm Sunday
during the Passion, forgetting that the reason the clergy held the palms
was in deference to a reference to St Augustine, whose homily was read
that day in Matins.
Often the changes in rubrics belie
confusion as to their origin. The change of color in the Palm Sunday
liturgy is an example. In the pre-Pian liturgy, Gromier, claims the
Roman color was always purple (and black in Paris and red in Milan). In
1955, the Procession is in red and the Mass is in purple, stemming from
the introduction of the idea of red and triumphant, and downplaying the
predominant theme of Passion in the Palm Sunday liturgy. Now, of
course, Palm Sunday and Good Friday in the Ordinary Form of the Roman
Rite are entirely in red, a sign of the capitulation of the Roman
liturgy to the idea of triumph which, arguably for Gromier at least, is
not a properly Roman liturgical idea.
While Gromier derides the symbolic and
liturgical value of the changes, he also indicates the practical
ramifications of the changes. The celebrant having to walk around
sprinkling palms everywhere in the church, introducing laymen into the
sanctuary for the Mandatum, the lack of instructions as to the veiling
of the processional cross or the altar for Palm Sunday, the removal of
the Cross from the altar just to be brought back to it on Good Friday,
the changes of the vestments on Good Friday, carrying a large and heavy
paschal candle, etc.
It is common nowadays to hear that the
central focus of the liturgical action is the altar. Some argue that
the tabernacle should not even reside on or near the altar because it
“distracts” from the Action during Mass. Everyone is taught that the
altar is the symbol of Christ and is worthy of respect with a bow. But
Gromier states, “The Roman Pontifical teaches us that we do not greet a
new altar before having placed its cross. The altar itself is not the
object of veneration, but the cross that dominates it, and to which all
prayers are addressed. The altar without a cross, if it is worthy of
being kissed, has no right to a bow or genuflection . . . for an altar
is not invoked.” Common practice today is for the Cross to not be on
the altar at all, and for the altar as table to occupy much of the
attention in reverence. One wonders what Gromier would say about the
later rubric which directs the Celebrant at the Oremus for the collects
to bow towards the book and no longer towards the cross. Today, the
altar and the cross have been separated as if they no longer belong
together, much as altar and tabernacle have been separated (malgré Pius XII’s admonition against it). Pope Benedict XVI’s custom of having the Cross on the Altar, referred to as the Benedictine arrangement although it is perhaps more accurately referred to as the Roman basilica arrangement,
has restored the unity between Cross and Altar and re-oriented
liturgical prayer towards the Cross and away from the Celebrant at the
Altar. I have no idea if Josef Ratzinger, developing this idea in The Spirit of the Liturgy was
aware of Gromier’s critique on this point or not, but it is a happy
phenomenon that clergy are imitating the papal liturgy in this fashion
and giving priority to the cross as a focus of liturgical action, no
longer separated from the altar.
The confusion of symbolism in the 1955 Holy
Week led to some oddities that Gromier criticizes. “The procession of
Maundy Thursday, definitively instituted by Sixtus IV (+1484), and that
of Good Friday, instituted by John XXII (+1334), therefore by the same
authority, have the same object, same purpose, same solemnity, except
the festive character of the first and the mourning of the second. Why
abolish one and keep the other?” He asks why, when fonts, baptismal
water and baptisms go together, they are separated out during the Vigil:
“the pastorals make baptismal water and baptize in a basin, and in this
container they carry it to the font, singing the song of a thirsty
deer, which has already drunk, and which is going towards a dry
font.” Why is the renewal of baptismal vows from the custom of First
Communion of children inserted into the Vigil after baptisms have
already been done, and if so, why not renew the marriage vows of all
present at a wedding?
It may be easy to surmise in reading
Gromier’s talk that the man was just a curmudgeon opposed in principle
to all novelty. Yet he does not argue entirely against the reform of
the times of the Triduum, even as he protests against the removal of
them from the context of their fasting discipline and Breviary
accompaniment. He does not argue against the distribution of Communion
at the Good Friday Liturgy of the Presanctified, even as he lambastes
the rubric of eating the Host without also drinking the ablutions
associated with it, as if anyone ever ate without drinking. The
impression that comes across is that Gromier issues a pointed challenge
to the pastorals to provide better theological, historical and practical
rationales for all they accomplished during the reform.
As Gromier declares, “Certain modifications
of tradition, so well-known, are just as dishonest as they are
daring.” It is a lapidary statement, meant to provoke. Fifty-two years
after he made it, these words still provoke strong reactions. If we are to explore how Vatican II is an exercise in continuity with the tradition [*],
and to see how the liturgy can be reformed and still be in conformity
with the tradition, we must go back to the sources. Far from accepting tout court the
accepted history of the liturgical reform and Vatican II as proffered
by the Bologna School and the Liturgical Establishment, we have an
opportunity for true ressourcement. We need not discard the
words of criticism of the liturgical reform, whether it be Léon
Gromier’s often acerbic analysis of the changes in the liturgy in the
pre-Vatican II period, or the linguistic observations of those who
express reservations against the new English translation of the third editio typicaof the Pauline Missale Romanum. All
of these critiques should be entertained, not out of a sense of
ideological protest or loyal dissent, but in an effort to serenely
ascertain what has happened, why it happened, and how to recover the
spirit of the liturgy, ever ancient and ever new, for today and
tomorrow.
[*] If this
statement was intended to suggest that the “hermeneutic of continuity”
could be used to make Vatican II consistent with Tradition, obviously we
reject that contention as false.SOURCE
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