No Gospel for Pentecost? A Radical Proposal Made to the Consilium

If one honestly compares the Roman Rite and the post-Conciliar rite, one will inevitably wind up asking oneself, frequently, Why on earth did they change or delete X, Y or Z feature of the historical liturgy? How did we benefit from this? This coming week, from which the very rich and ancient liturgy of the Pentecost octave was deleted, is one of the best examples of this – how are we better off for reducing the celebration of so great a mystery to a single day?

The prayers for the Mass of Pentecost Monday, and the Collect for Tuesday, in the Gellone Sacramentary, ca. 780 AD.  

But in some ways, the post-Conciliar liturgy is what it is because even more radical and deleterious novelties were discussed, but blocked by wiser heads. For example, I was once told the following story by a friend who studied at the Pontifical faculty for liturgy in Rome, Sant’ Anselmo (famously not a hotbed of rad-traddery), something that he learned in one of his classes. A serious proposal was made to the Consilium ad exsequendam, the committee in charge of inventing the new rite, that all episcopal vestments and insignia be completely abolished. (This would have been the logical continuation of the line laid down by the very first post-Conciliar reform.) But the majority, led by Abp Bugnini himself, recognized that this was a step way too far, and the proposal was shot down.

Our colleague Mathew Hazell, the mighty and tireless, tweeted today about a similarly bizarre idea, which was, fortunately, likewise voted down. A proposal was made to the subcommittee in charge of creating the new Mass lectionary (known as “Coetus XI”) there should be no Gospel on Pentecost, so that the Scriptural readings could culminate with the descent of the Holy Spirit in the first part of Acts 2 (verses 1-11). Here is Matthew’s translation of the relevant part of one of the subcommittee’s schemata (working notes), and the Latin original.

Now obviously, this proposal was not enacted, but the fact that it was ever made at all shines a light on the mindset of at least some of the reformers, and not a flattering one. In declaring that the traditional arrangement presents “a peculiar difficulty”, they are sitting in judgment of the entire liturgical tradition of all of Christianity, and finding it lacking, because every historical Christian rite has always had a Gospel as the last Scriptural reading at every Mass. And notice that this is called “a general rule”, where it is actually a universal rule, without any exception. (Was a similar aberration suggested for, say, the Conversion of St Paul, another event only narrated in the Acts, or for the feasts of the Ss Matthias and Stephen, who are only mentioned in the Acts?)

This then is where the magic word “pastoral” is pronounced, the free pass to do anything and everything to the liturgy, no matter how bizarre. And what makes such an idea “pastoral”? It is the assumption (which is omnipresent in the reform) that the faithful are morons, and in their ineducable stupidity, will be hopelessly confused and miss the point of the feast altogether, if the main event of the liturgical day is not presented as “the climax of the liturgy of the Word.”

As Matthew writes to me, “the schema itself is pretty light on other details, and the only indication of how seriously it was taken is a handwritten annotation which says ‘Relatores voted against this proposal’. (No information about the voting breakdown.). This would have been a vote taken among the members of the subcommittee: as Bugnini notes (Reform of the Liturgy, p. 140), in the week before the general meetings of the Consilium, the relators of each study group would meet as a ‘court of first instance’ to study the schemata which would be presented to the Fathers, and to smoothen the passage of these schemata.

It would seem, then, that the proposal was taken seriously enough to actually have a meaningful vote on it before the revised Ordo lectionum was presented to the Fathers, rather than it just being quickly dismissed out of hand.”

Although this lunatic idea was rejected, it cannot be said that Coetus XI was otherwise respectful of the Roman tradition on Pentecost. The readings of the vigil Mass, Acts 19, 1-8 and John 14, 15-21, were replaced with others that have no basis in the Roman tradition, Romans 8, 22-27 and John 7, 37-39. (The latter is taken from one of the two Ambrosian Masses of Pentecost Sunday.) On the feast, the traditional reading of Acts 2 is kept as the first lesson, and a Pauline epistle (1 Cor, 12, 3b-7 and 12-13) is added, which partly overlaps with the Ambrosian epistle (ibid. 1-11).

In the original version of the new lectionary, the vigil and the feast were not on the three-year reading. The Roman Gospel of Pentecost, which continues from that of the vigil (John 14, 23-31), was replaced with John 20, 19-23, which the Byzantine Rite reads not at the Divine Liturgy, but at Orthros. With the abolition of the octave, this meant that not one of the traditional Roman Gospels of Pentecost retained its place.

However, when the lectionary was revised in 1981, Epistles and Gospels for years B and C were added, albeit as options. The two epistles (Gal. 5, 16-25 and Rom. 8, 8-17) also have nothing to do with the Roman tradition; the Gospel for year B, John 15, 26-27 and 16, 12-15, is a shortened version of the Ambrosian Gospel for the vigil (John 15, 26 – 16, 14). The Gospel for year C, however, is John 14, 15-16 and 23b-26, which includes at least some of the historical Roman Gospels for the vigil and the feast.