Some Useful Reminders in the Liturgy Debate

I have often brought to our readers attention the wise musings of Brian Holdsworth, certainly one of the smartest and most consistently interesting Catholic voices on social media. He recently posted this very useful video in which he responds to one of the most common tropes of the ongoing debate over liturgy in the Church, which runs more or less as follows, that it doesn’t matter so much how we celebrate the liturgy, and specifically, whether we celebrate it in the Ordinary Form (or “unique expression”, if you prefer), or the Extraordinary Form, because the really important thing is that the Eucharist is validly celebrated. And therefore, the argument goes, no one should contend that any given form of it is better than another; a fortiori, no one should contend that any practice permitted by the Church’s liturgical law, (say, never using the Roman Canon) is better than any other.

But as Mr Holdsworth rightly points out, this doesn’t just run altogether contrary to what the Church itself says and has always said about the liturgy. It runs contrary to the whole putative justification for the invention and imposition of the post-Conciliar Rite, which is premised on the idea that everything that we do in the liturgy does matter and is important. The liturgical reform itself is, or was supposed to be, an expression of the Church’s “grave concern” for every aspect of the rite of Mass, which in turn means that we ourselves should also be concerned that everything in it be done not just validly, but beautifully, reverently, and in manner consonant with tradition, as the Second Vatican Council wanted and asked for.

Speaking of which, on Sunday, another decimal anniversary of the most recent ecumenical council, the sixtieth since its closing, passed with the usual lack of fanfare; there were no celebrations of note, and even the Pope barely mentioned it in passing at the Angelus. But in matters liturgical it is always worth reminding ourselves that the Novus Ordo is not the liturgy of the Council, and does not represent what it wanted and asked for. Very few people are as well-versed in this matter as Dom Alcuin Reid, who offers a very useful of the problem in a column published two days ago in the Catholic Herald. As is always the case with Dom Alcuin’s writings on these matters, no summary or excerpt really does it justice, but the crux of the matter is this: 

“In marking the sixtieth anniversary of the closing of the Council it is important that we are clear about the facts. The Mass promulgated in the Missal of 1970, its successors and their various vernacular translations included, is not that which was called for or authorised by the Second Vatican Council. It is the product – duly authorised by the Pope, and sacramentally valid, but a product nonetheless – of a group of enthusiasts whose Secretary would later boast in respect of their work: “Fortune favours the brave.” In other words, what we have in our parishes in the modern rites, even faithfully celebrated, is not what the Council called for. It is in some part a broad interpretation of the Council’s Constitution on the Liturgy and in other parts an ideologically and politically motivated flagrant departure from what it authorised, ...

If we understand this we can see why it is possible to question and even reject the modern rites without being disloyal to the Council. ... The liturgical reform desired by the Fathers of the Second Vatican Council – and glimpsed by them with satisfaction sixty years ago today – quickly became a runaway train. Its engineers took it far beyond its intended destination, and those who attempt to control it today are unwilling and/or unable to get it back onto the tracks the Council laid down for it.”