The Displacement of the Mysterium Fidei and the Fabricated Memorial Acclamation

July 1st is the feast of the Most Precious Blood of Our Lord Jesus Christ in the traditional Roman calendar, into which it was introduced by Pius IX in 1849; it was suppressed by Paul VI in the new general calendar of 1969, or rather, with typical rationalism, was folded into the feast of Corpus Christi (so named since the 13th century) as the feast of the Corpus et Sanguis Christi. The following article, on the postconciliar transmogrification of the formula spoken over the chalice, therefore suits well the liturgical day.

The story of how the words of consecration spoken over the chalice were changed for the Novus Ordo Missae is a potent exhibition of many interrelated problems characteristic of the liturgical reform in general: false antiquarianism; a defective understanding of participatio actuosa; an infatuation with Eastern praxis coupled with a contempt for what is uniquely Western; disdain for medieval piety and doctrine; a lack of humility in the face of that which we cannot fully understand and a lack of reverence for that which is mysterious; a mechanistic reduction of liturgy to material that we can shape as it pleases us (as we try to do with the natural world using our modern technology); and an itch to construct new forms due to boredom or discomfort with old ones. This example, therefore, serves as a crystal-clear illustration of the errors and vices that permeate the reform as a whole.

Pope Innocent III and St Thomas Aquinas

1. The Traditional View

For centuries, going back into the mists of time, the priest has said the words “Mysterium fidei” in the midst of the words of consecration whispered over the chalice. These words powerfully evoke the irruption or inbreaking of God into our midst in this unfathomable Sacrament. The consecration of the wine completes the signification of the sacrifice of the Cross, the moment when our High Priest obtained for us eternal redemption (cf. Heb 9:12), the re-presentation of which, together with the application of its fruits, is the very purpose of the Mass.

On November 29, 1202, Pope Innocent III sent a letter Cum Marthae circa to Archbishop John of Lyon—a letter always included in Denzinger [1]—in which he wrote:

You have asked who has added to the words of the formula used by Christ himself when he transubstantiated the bread and wine into his Body and Blood the words that are found in the Canon of the Mass generally used by the Church, but that none of the evangelists has recorded… [namely] the words ‘Mystery of faith’ inserted into the words of Christ… Surely there are many words and deeds of the Lord that have been omitted in the Gospels; of these we read that the apostles have supplemented them by their words and expressed them in their actions… Yet, the expression ‘Mystery of faith’ is used, because here what is believed differs from what is seen, and what is seen differs from what is believed. For what is seen is the appearance of bread and wine, and what is believed is the reality of the flesh and blood of Christ and the power of unity and love.

The pope’s answer amounts to this: there are many things Christ gave to the Apostles to hand down that are not recorded in Scripture, and this could well be one of them. Writing only about seventy years later, St. Thomas Aquinas turns the Archbishop’s question into the ninth objection against the fittingness of the words of consecration of the wine:

Further, the words whereby this sacrament is consecrated draw their efficacy from Christ’s institution. But no Evangelist narrates that Christ spoke all these words. Therefore this is not an appropriate form for the consecration of the wine. [2]

He responds to this objection:

The Evangelists did not intend to hand down the forms of the sacraments, which in the primitive Church had to be kept concealed, as Dionysius observes at the close of his book On the Ecclesiastical Hierarchy; their object was to write the story of Christ. Nevertheless nearly all these words can be culled from various passages of the Scriptures. Because the words, “This is the chalice,” are found in Luke 22:20, and 1 Corinthians 11:25, while Matthew says in 26:28: “This is My blood of the New Testament, which shall be shed for many unto the remission of sins.” The words added, namely, “eternal” and “mystery of faith,” were handed down to the Church by the apostles, who received them from Our Lord, according to 1 Corinthians 11:23: “I have received of the Lord that which also I delivered unto you.”

St. Thomas could have noted that the first Epistle to St. Timothy includes the expression “holding the mystery of faith in a pure conscience” (1 Tm 3:9). Later, in his treatment of the exact wording of the formulas of consecration, Aquinas reiterates that such liturgical details were deliberately hidden in the early Church; Scripture does not have as its purpose the revelation of the precise manner in which sacramental mysteries are to be celebrated. [3]

2. The Phrase’s Antiquity and Obscurity

Even the great demythologizer of twentieth-century liturgical scholarship, Fr. Josef Jungmann, SJ, does not attempt to dismiss or deconstruct what he calls “the enigmatic words”:

The phrase is found inserted in the earliest texts of the sacramentaries, and mentioned even in the seventh century. It is missing only in some later sources. Regarding the meaning of the words mysterium fidei, there is absolutely no agreement. A distant parallel is to be found in the Apostolic Constitutions, where our Lord is made to say at the consecration of the bread: “This is the mystery of the New Testament, take of it, eat, it is My Body.” Just as here the mysterium is referred to the bread in the form of a predicate, so in the canon of our Mass it is referred to the chalice in the form of an apposition…. Mysterium fidei is an independent expansion, superadded to the whole self-sufficient complex that precedes.
What is meant by the words mysterium fidei? Christian antiquity would not have referred them so much to the obscurity of what is here hidden from the senses, but accessible (in part) only to (subjective) faith. Rather it would have taken them as a reference to the grace-laden sacramentum in which the entire (objective) faith, the whole divine order of salvation, is comprised. The chalice of the New Testament is the life-giving symbol of truth, the sanctuary of our belief. How or when this insertion was made, or what external event occasioned it, cannot readily be ascertained. [4]

Several points are worth underlining. This phrase appears in all the oldest sources of the Mass we have, which suggests a great antiquity for its origin. The critical edition of the Canon of the Mass, published by Brepols in the Corpus Orationum series, shows no variation whatsoever of the position of the mysterium fidei. [5] The Roman text is cited in over fifty manuscripts of various ages and origins, with no significant variations. The Ambrosian text, which is the product of a Romanization of the Ambrosian Rite effected in the Carolingian era, has only five manuscripts—but they have it in the same place as well.

The oddness of such an insertion, and the fact that it would be so jealously guarded and passed on, implies that it was considered not an incidental feature of the rite but something that pertained to the essence of the rite of Rome. While we might disagree with Jungmann’s subtle dig at Innocent III’s interpretation, the notion that the “mysterium fidei” points to nothing less than “the entire objective faith” of the Church, “the whole divine order of salvation,” as localized (so to speak) in the symbol of the chalice and its precious content, is an impressive one. The axis of reality runs through that vessel tilted on the altar.

Jungmann’s account, together with the paleographical records, brings strongly to the fore the basic problem that faces liturgical historians when they cannot know with certainty the origin of a particular custom. In such circumstances it is impossible to exclude the hypothesis that it is of apostolic institution or subapostolic institution in Rome. If even the most rigorous scholarship cannot detect a particular moment in history when the words mysterium fidei were added for the first time, and if we have a monolithic witness of extant manuscripts, is it not far better—indeed, is it not a solemn obligation of reverence for the most sacred things we have in our possession—to preserve the formula exactly as it has been handed down? Doing otherwise would surely risk profanation. This, indeed, would have been both the hypothesis and the attitude of all Catholics until the 20th century.

3. A Campaign to Remove the Phrase from Office

In an act of astonishing hubris, this phrase was removed from its immemorial place and turned into the prompt for a “memorial acclamation” that had never existed in the Roman rite before. What had been a secret and sublime acknowledgment of salvation—hidden, like the Christian, with Christ in God (cf. Col 3:3)—became an extroverted announcement to the public, for the sake of “participation” reductively understood as saying and doing things. How exactly did this take place, and why?

Around the time of the Second Vatican Council, liturgical surgeons had been itching to ply their scalpels on the Roman Canon, as soon as authority would permit them to remedy its “defects.” In a book chapter pompously called “The Principal Merits and Defects of the Present Roman Canon,” Cipriano Vaggagini, OSB, held forth in 1966:

The third important defect in the way it [the Canon] relates the instituting of the Eucharist is the insertion of the phrase mysterium fidei in the midst of the words said over the chalice. This has no parallel in any other liturgy, and within the Roman rite itself its origin is uncertain and its meaning debatable. However, it is obvious that in its present form at least the insertion mysterium fidei serves to break up and interrupt the words of institution. [6]

Bugnini tells us in his mighty tome The Reform of the Liturgy that Vaggagini, “in three months of intensive work in the library of the Abbey of Mont-César (Louvain) during the summer of 1966…composed two models of new Eucharistic Prayers, which he presented to the group for discussion.” [7] Subsequent discussion concurred that something had to be done about that pesky mysterium fidei:

The addition “the mystery of faith” in the formula for the consecration of the wine in the Roman Canon: is not biblical; occurs only in the Roman Canon; is of uncertain origin and meaning. The experts themselves disagree on the precise sense of the words. In fact, some of them assign the phrase a quite dangerous meaning, since they translate it as ‘‘a sign for our faith’’; interrupts the sentence and makes difficult both its understanding and its translation. The French, for example, have been forced to repeat the word “blood” three times: “This is the cup of my blood, the blood of the new covenant, mystery of faith, blood shed…” The same is true to a greater or lesser extent in the other languages. Once again, many bishops and pastors have asked that in the new anaphoras the addition “mystery of faith” be dropped. All this explains the course followed in the new anaphoras with regard to the words of consecration. [8]

Moreover, it was felt to be desirable that there be some “acclamation of the congregation after the consecration and elevation of the chalice”; and why?

The practice is native to the Eastern Churches, but it seems appropriate to accept it into the Roman tradition as a way of increasing the active participation of the congregation. Regarding the exact form of the acclamation, the rubric says that it can use “these or similar words approved by the territorial authorities.” Since the acclamations are to be said, or even sung, by the congregation, it is necessary to leave enough freedom for them to be adapted to the requirements of the various languages and musical genres. [9]

At this point in the process, then, the idea was to remove the words “mysterium fidei” altogether and simply have an acclamation follow upon the elevation of the chalice.

On June 26, 1967, Cardinal Ottaviani, in his capacity as head of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith sent a letter to Annibale Bugnini, [10] expressing the changes that the Congregation would prefer to see made to the four Eucharistic Prayers that had been submitted for doctrinal review. Those who see Ottaviani as a hero for placing his name on the Short Critical Study two years later may be surprised and disappointed to see how readily he was rolling along with the Consilium’s plan:

About the omission of the parenthesis (inciso) “mysterium fidei”: affirmative.
       With regard to the “acclamation” immediately after the elevation, “Mortem tuam...,” we would prefer a text that expresses more clearly an act of faith, and thus replaces the disappeared “mysterium fidei”—[a phrase] certainly inopportune for the position in which it found itself, but obviously indicated as a call to awaken faith at that solemn moment. The evangelical phrase “Deus meus et Dominus meus” has been suggested.

While Ottaviani consented to the removal of the formula, his suggestion that a text other than Mortem tuam be used as the acclamation was evidently disregarded.

At the famous Synod of Bishops in October 1967—the participants of which counted as the first significant body of “outsiders” to be shown the Missa normativa or rough draft of that which Paul VI would later call the Novus Ordo Missae [11] and then asked to vote on it and contribute comments—the following question, among others, was put to the Synod Fathers, as reported by Bugnini:

Should the words “mysterium fidei” be removed from the formula for the consecration of the wine? Of the 183 voting, 93 said yes, 48 no, and 42 yes with qualifications. In substance, the qualifications were these: 1) The words should also be omitted in the Roman Canon. 2) The words should not completely disappear from the liturgy but should be used as an acclamation after the consecration or in some other formula. [12]

If we take the no votes and the qualified yes (placet iuxta modum) votes together, we see that the majority unqualifiedly in favor of removal was narrow: 93 to 90. Nevertheless, it seems that the attitude of most was like that of Ottaviani: why not take advantage of the general upheaval and turn this phrase into a vehicle of participation?

One cannot escape the impression of people “making things up as they went along,” bereft of any real reverence for tradition or fear of the Lord.

4. Paul VI Insists on Repurposing the Phrase

The issue remained controversial within the Consilium. As Bugnini narrates, the topic came up again at the tenth general meeting (April 23–30, 1968), which met to discuss the six changes on which Paul VI had had the temerity (in the experts’ view) to insist in regard to the Missa normativa. “The whole matter caused some dismay, since the Pope seemed to be limiting the Consilium’s freedom of research by using his authority to impose solutions.” [13] The special subcommittee created to deal with the problem included, among others, Rembert Weakland, Joseph Gélineau, and Cipriano Vaggagini.

In regard to our present topic, Paul VI—not surprisingly for a pope who had chosen the title Mysterium Fidei for his great encyclical of 1965 defending transubstantiation and condemning certain heretical tendencies in Eucharistic theology—disliked the idea of going straight from the elevation to the acclamation and had requested specifically that “the words ‘mysterium fidei’ are [still] to be spoken by the priest before the acclamation of the congregation.” Bugnini relates:

What were the difficulties raised by the study group against the adoption of what the Pope wanted?... Mystery of faith. If the words were said by the celebrant before the acclamation of the congregation, (a) this would be an innovation not found in the liturgical tradition; (b) it would alter the structure of the Canon at an important moment; (c) it would change the meaning of the words in question, since they are no longer connected with the consecration of the chalice. If the words are to be kept, the report said, they should be connected either with the formula of consecration of the wine or with the acclamation. [14]

In the end, Paul VI prevailed. We are therefore not surprised to find this change and its pastoral “benefit” announced in the Apostolic Constitution Missale Romanum of April 3, 1969. The irony of its immediate context, however, deserves close attention:

As to the words Mysterium fidei, removed from the context of the words of Christ our Lord and spoken by the Priest, these open the way, as it were, to the acclamation of the faithful.
       Regarding the Order of Mass, “the rites have been simplified, due care being taken to preserve their substance.”… Furthermore, “there have been restored…in accordance with the ancient norm of the holy Fathers, various elements which have suffered injury through accidents of history.”

Unlike the justification for “restoring” the “responsorial psalm,” which is based on false antiquarianism and a reductive theory of participation, here the pope offers no explanation except that it shall “open the way, as it were, to the acclamation of the faithful.” Yet this change to the venerable Roman Canon (and then replicated in all the neo-anaphoras) cannot have been done with “due care” to “preserve [the] substance” of the rites, as the ironic reference to “restoring elements that have suffered injury through accidents of history, in accordance with the ancient norm of the holy fathers” indicates. [15]

In regard to the mysterium fidei, the ancient norm was expressly violated; the only injury inflicted was of the Consilium’s design. It was rather through the accidents of the postconciliar liturgical reform that the Roman rite suffered injury.

Continue Reading this Article. . .

Lessons from the Sixties: Selective Synodality and Princely Protests

NLM is pleased to offer readers a translation of a thought-provoking article that appeared at the German site Motu-proprio: Summorum-Pontificum.

The Ottaviani Intervention

Clemens V. Oldendorf

It is actually astonishing how little of Paul VI’s liturgical reform, especially his Novus Ordo Missae, which he promulgated fifty years ago, is being commemorated this year. The isolated contributions and initiatives that remind us of it come from the criticizing corner. [1] But it is noticeable that yesterday, September 25th (as of the original writing), as far as we can see, passed completely unnoticed. [2]

On this date, Cardinals Ottaviani and Bacci transmitted to Pope Paul VI the Brief Critical Examination of the “Novus Ordo Missae,” which had previously been prepared by a working group of tradition-oriented theologians. This was greatly enhanced by the signatures of the two princes of the Church who made this criticism their own, especially since Ottaviani was at the time the supreme guardian of the purity of the doctrine of faith, and could have been referred to as “the Panzerkardinal” far earlier than Joseph Ratzinger, who would later follow him in the same position.

If the advocates of liturgical reform and the representatives of university-based liturgical studies overlook and ignore this jubilee with almost complete silence, perhaps it is because they do not want to unnecessarily remind people today, in a time that is forgetful of history, that the liturgy of the Church was ever celebrated in a manner visibly different from what is now the common practice, and is, in principle, also prescribed in such a way as to be normative.

With the keyword “normative”, we are referring to the Missa normativa, which at the Synod of Bishops in 1967 was presented, as it were (not to say demonstrated) as the prototype of the Novus Ordo, and which was broadly rejected by the Synod Fathers. The votes and decisions of a Synod of Bishops do not bind the Pope in his decisions, and since the Novus Ordo, which came two years later, corresponded almost perfectly to this Missa normativa, one could already see back then what “synodality” means if its tendency does not actually fit in with the Holy Father’s agenda.

But back to the Brief Critical Examination. This document criticized above all a softening of the doctrine of the Eucharistic Real Presence and sacrificial character of the Mass as seen in the liturgical texts and gestures, both in details and in totality, of the rite as Paul VI had presented it. The Cardinals therefore implored the Pontiff not to deprive the Church of the possibility of offering the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass according to the former Missale Romanum. Looking at the ecclesiastical constellation at that time, this action was, in point of fact, much more explosive and massive than, for example, what the Dubia to Amoris laetitia represent today. Above all, the process was more remarkable than the interventions that Cardinal Burke and Bishop Schneider have been submitting at regular intervals, since the Dubia remained unanswered.

The investigation — later also called the Ottaviani Intervention — was, by the way, not momentous in effect, yet not completely without consequences, inasmuch as Paul VI had the entire first edition of the Novus Ordo Missae books pulped (!). Nevertheless, in the next edition, only the definition of the Holy Mass contained in [the introduction to] this Ordo was half-heartedly “improved” by the insertion of an addition [with Tridentine language]; nothing more changed in the rite itself.

What remains to be recorded, and what should one perhaps learn from the events of that time for today?

The critique mounted by the Brief Critical Examination did not hinge upon liturgical abuses. The object of criticism was a Novus Ordo in Latin, at the high altar, without altar girls or communion in the hand. In the eyes of the authors and signatories, this already deviated considerably from the doctrine of the Council of Trent on the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass, and yet such a celebration today, in circles that were close to or still hope for the idea of a Reform of the Reform, would certainly already be regarded as an expression of the continuity of the contemporary liturgy with the traditional Roman practice. In theory, this form is probably also most likely to be the so-called usus ordinarius, which in purely theoretical terms is to be the reference point for liturgical celebrations according to the motu proprio Summorum Pontificum. With this motu proprio in 2007, at least what Ottaviani and Bacci requested in 1969 — but did not then receive — was finally made possible.

And to be historically fair, it must be said that Ottaviani later celebrated exclusively in the Novus Ordo and even in Italian alone — despite the fact that, due to his position, and also on account of his blindness, he could undoubtedly have easily obtained the special indult to adhere to the earlier missal, an indult that was intended from the start for old, handicapped, and frail priests, as long as that they celebrated privately with one altar boy, and none other present. Later, Ottaviani never again spoke a word of criticism against what the liturgical scholar Klaus Gamber described as “the new papal rite,” to distinguish the Novus Ordo from the Ritus Romanus that had been passed down from Gregory the Great and Pius V to Paul VI.

After a footnote in Amoris laetitia and before the Amazon Synod [3], it is certainly instructive to remember Ottaviani’s silence, though whether it would be a model for Burke and Schneider to follow suit I leave open; but such silence would surely be more consistent for the circles of people who, at least under John Paul II and Benedict XVI, considered papalism to be, in principle, in conformity with tradition. Under Francis, of course, we experience a papolatry of emotions which is now completely uncoupled from theology, and that would have been utterly unthinkable even under Pius IX.

NOTES

[1] See, e.g., “The Strange Birth of the Novus Ordo”; “The New Mass: Fifty Years of Problems”; “Hyperpapalism and Liturgical Mutation”; “Lament for the Liturgy”; “Critique of the Novus Ordo in Two Recent Books”; “A Half-Century of Novelty: Revisiting Paul VI’s Apologia for the New Mass.”

[2] See, however, this article: “The Ottaviani Intervention Turns 50: A Perceptive and Still Relevant Critique,” which was published on the date the study bears (June 5) rather than the date it was delivered to Paul VI (September 25).

[3] This article was published on September 26, prior to the opening of the current Synod.