A Visit to the Rectory of Vancouver Cathedral

On a trip last fall to give lectures in Vancouver, I was kindly hosted by the staff of the rectory of the cathedral. During my stay, I took a few photos of some items that will be of interest to many readers of NLM. First, the rectory from the street:

In the hallway at the top of the stairs on the way to the small private chapel is found a rather beautiful alcove with a statue of the Sacred Heart (click to enlarge any image):

The small chapel itself is well appointed for the offering of the traditional Mass, a regular occurrence there:

A parlor nearby features one of the finest statues I’ve ever seen of St. Peter Julian Eymard:

Hanging on the wall, a portrait of Christ, with the inscription “I desire mercy.”

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A Tale of Two Collects: Different Worldviews in Old and New Prayers

Every year, as we come to the feast of St. Albert the Great on November 15, I am struck again by the enormous difference in theology between the traditional Collect for his feast (as found in MR 1962) and the rewritten Collect published in the Missal of Paul VI. One can see this particular pair as emblematic of a shift from one understanding of Christianity to another.

The old collect, translated literally, reads thus:

O God, who didst make blessed Albert, Thy bishop and Doctor, great by his bringing human wisdom into captivity to divine faith: grant us, we beseech Thee, so to adhere to the footsteps of his magisterium, that we may enjoy perfect light in heaven.[1]

The new collect, as given in the current edition of the modern Roman Rite, reads:

O God, who made the Bishop Saint Albert great by his joining of human wisdom to divine faith, grant, we pray, that we may so adhere to the truths he taught, that through progress in learning, we may come to a deeper knowledge and love of you.[2]

In the former prayer, God makes Albert great because he brought human wisdom into captivity to divine faith (in humana sapientia divinae fidei subjicienda). The prayer echoes St. Paul writing to the Corinthians about the destruction of worldly wisdom: “For the weapons of our warfare are not carnal, but mighty to God unto the pulling down of fortifications, destroying counsels, and every height that exalteth itself against the knowledge of God, and bringing into captivity every understanding unto the obedience of Christ” (2 Cor 10:4–5). It is also reminiscent of the verse from the Psalms: “Thou didst ascend the high mount, leading captives in thy train, and receiving gifts among men, even among the rebellious, that the Lord God may dwell there” (Psa 67:19 [68:18]).

The perspective is not that human wisdom is bad, but that it is likely to be rebellious if not subordinated to divine faith, and that it will “come into its own” when the pride with which it is pursued is crushed and the knowledge is made, to so speak, obedient unto death, as was Christ in His humanity. There has to be a certain mortification and re-alignment of human wisdom if it is to be in harmony with the ineffable mysteries of God and a tool of sanctification. This is why the collect concludes on a note of ascension, with the enjoyment of perfect light in heaven: that is where the very font of truth and all wisdom is perfectly found, and it must be the measure of all we do in this earthly pilgrimage. We ask to be guided by Albert’s teaching because “our conversation is in heaven” (Phil 3:20). We cannot seek earthly knowledge for its own sake: “If you be risen with Christ, seek the things that are above” (Col 3:1). In this collect, the notes of asceticism and mysticism are strongly sounded.

In the latter prayer, however, all of these elements have been deliberately muted. Here, God is said to have made Albert great because he joined human wisdom to divine faith (componenda). The two are placed parallel to each other, as if two links in a chain, or two peas in a pod, or two doughty comrades in arms. No hierarchy, no dependency, no subordination is expressed; no mistrust of wayward human thought, no necessity of bringing the worldly into subjection to the heavenly, no implicit asceticism. Here, reason is not governed by faith and destined to a goal beyond itself, but the two are like Church and State according to modern liberalism.

Not surprisingly, what we are said to gain through adhering to the truths he taught is not the ascetical-mystical ascent to heavenly light which casts all earthly knowledge into the right (finite) perspective, but “a deeper knowledge and love of you”—the kind of inspiring sentiment one will find on the higher-priced Hallmark cards. Shifting the focus away from Albertus Magnus as a great philosopher and theologian of the conquest of knowledge for celestial beatitude, the prayer turns platitudinous by invoking “love” in the pairing “knowledge and love.” No one would doubt that a canonized saint lived a life of heroic charity; but that is generic and beside the point when commemorating this particular saint. What he exemplifies in the Mystical Body is exactly what the old prayer conveyed and the new one nearly contradicts.

To underline the this-worldliness of the paradigm at play, we note that the means suggested to us for arriving at this deeper knowledge and love is none other than — you guessed it! — “progress in learning” (scientiarum progressus). Homage is thus paid to the modern ideal par excellence, that of Progress, which we might interpret as evolution, the leitmotif of all modern thought. Might this be the progress by which we modern Christians have learned to set aside the sixth commandment, which we now understand to be more than ordinary people can reasonably bear? Or the progress by which we have become so superior to our bloodthirsty ancestors that we must give an utterly novel interpretation to the fifth commandment?

The contrast between the two collects is extremely telling. It tells of a deliberate shift from a hierarchical worldview rooted in faith and aspiring to the beatific vision, to a humanistic worldview of scientific progress through diverse “sources” of knowledge that is meant, in an unspecified way, to deepen our knowledge and love of God.

As Lauren Pristas and others have shown, this shift in attitude towards or evaluation of worldly realities is programmatically present in the heavily-redacted Collects of the Missal of Paul VI when compared with their predecessors in the Missal of the usus antiquior. The number of examples is vast; in order to limit myself, I have chosen to look at a one-month (!) period of the liturgical year, namely, September 18 to October 19. The biblical, patristic, and medieval Christian assessment of terrena or earthly things as we find it in the old collect of St. Albert appears again and again.

For the traditional feast of St. Joseph of Cupertino on September 18 — suppressed in the Novus Ordo calendar — the Church prays, with a lovely reference to the saint’s famous levitations:

O God, who hast ordained that Thine only-begotten Son when lifted up from the earth should draw all things to Himself: mercifully grant through the merits and example of Thy seraphic Confessor Joseph, that we may be lifted up above all earthly desires and be found worth to come unto Him: Who liveth and reigneth…

Or, for St. Francis of Assisi on October 4:

O God, who, through the merits of blessed Francis, didst give increase to Thy Church by enriching her with new offspring: grant us that following his example we may despise earthly goods and ever be glad to partake of Thy heavenly gifts.[3]

(Here, for comparison’s sake, is how the new Collect for Francis reads: “O God, by whose gift Saint Francis was conformed to Christ in poverty and humility, grant that, by walking in Francis’ footsteps, we may follow your Son, and, through joyful charity, come to be united with you.”)

Or, for the commemoration on October 9 of the martyrs SS. Denis, Rusticus, and Eleutherius — likewise suppressed on the new calendar:

O God, who this day didst strengthen blessed Denis Thy martyr and Bishop with fortitude in suffering, and didst associate Rusticus and Eleutherius with him in preaching Thy glory to the heathen: grant, we beseech Thee, that following their example we may for love of Thee despise worldly success and may not fear worldly misfortune [pro amore tuo prospera mundi despicere, et nulla ejus adversa formidare].

On October 10, the feast of St. Francis Borgia, also suppressed in the Novus Ordo, the traditional liturgy prays:

O Lord Jesus Christ, who art the model of true humility and its reward: we beseech Thee, that as blessed Francis took Thee as model in contemning worldly honors and Thou hast glorified him, so Thou wouldst associate us with him both in the contempt and in the glory: Who livest and reignest…

On October 16, the feast of St. Hedwig — a saint who miraculously stayed on the modern calendar — we find this potent Collect in the usus antiquior:

O God, who didst teach blessed Hedwig to renounce the pomps of this world, that, with her whole heart, she might follow the humble way of Thy cross: grant that, through her merits and example, we may learn to trample under foot the perishable delights of this world, and by cleaving to Thy cross, surmount all obstacles: Who livest and reignest…

(The new missal’s collect for St. Hedwig is thin gruel: “Grant, we pray, almighty God, that the revered intercession of Saint Hedwig may bring us heavenly aid, just as her wonderful life is an example of humility for all.”)

The special postcommunion for St. Margaret Mary Alacoque’s feast in the usus antiquior (October 17) includes the petition: “make us renounce the proud vanities of the world.” Nothing like this is found in the new Missal. (In fact, the word “vanity” or “vanities” never appears in the current altar missal.)

The old collect for St. Luke (October 18) focuses on mortification:

Let holy Luke, Thine Evangelist, we beseech Thee, O Lord, intercede for us, who for the glory of Thy name ever bore in his body the mortification of the Cross.

The new collect, although more customized to St. Luke,[3] drops all reference to asceticism, in keeping with the prevailing bias Pristas and others have documented.

Lastly, on October 19, in celebrating the triumph of St. Peter of Alcantara (also removed from the new calendar), the Church in her traditional liturgy prays:

O God, who didst vouchsafe to ennoble blessed Peter, Thy Confessor, by gifts of marvellous penance and highest contemplation: grant, we beseech Thee, that by his merits pleading for us, we may so mortify the flesh as the more easily to take hold of the things of heaven.

All of the above, mind you, are Collects from a one-month period, namely, September 18 to October 19. Do we detect a pattern? Yes, without a doubt. The dogmatic and disciplinary freight of the lex orandi is unmistakable. The liturgy is asking the Lord for a specific attitude of contemptus mundi, which St. Albert all the more impressively illustrates precisely because he is a scholar, author, scientist, naturalist, and man of affairs who has nevertheless held firm to the primacy of the kingdom of heaven. Century after century, collect after collect, the liturgy lucidly expressed and tirelessly inculcated this lofty vision of man’s vocation, the finality of the celestial fatherland, and the relativity of earthly affairs — until the 1960s, when Progress built a home for itself in a Church that had once anathematized the statement: “The Roman Pontiff can, and ought to, reconcile himself, and come to terms with progress, liberalism, and modern civilization.”[4]

“How’s that dangerous liaison with Progress been working out for you?,” asks Historical Consciousness.

St. Albert the Great — great because you subordinated the human to the divine, the temporal to the eternal, the natural to the supernatural, the secular to the sacred, the earthly to the heavenly — pray for us, that we may be made worthy of the promises of Christ.

NOTES

[1] Deus, qui beatum Albertum Pontificem tuum atque Doctorem, in humana sapientia divinae fidei subjicienda magnum effecisti: da nobis, quaesumus, ita ejus magisterii inhaerere vestigiis, ut luce perfecta fruamur in coelis.
[2] Deus, qui beátum Albértum epíscopum in humána sapiéntia cum divína fide componénda magnum effecísti, da nobis, quǽsumus, ita eius magistérii inhærére doctrínis, ut per scientiárum progréssus ad profundiórem tui cognitiónem et amórem perveniámus.
[3] Lord God, who chose Saint Luke to reveal by his preaching and writings the mystery of your love for the poor, grant that those who already glory in your name may persevere as one heart and one soul and that all nations may merit to see your salvation.
[4] Pope Pius IX, Syllabus of Errors, n. 80, promulgated with the encyclical Quanta Cura on December 8, 1864.

Photos courtesy of Fr. Lawrence Lew, O.P.

“Enrichment” by Impoverishment? The Fate of the Propers for the 4th Sunday after Epiphany in the Modern Missale Romanum

The collect, secret and postcommunion in the traditional Roman Rite for this coming Sunday, the 4th after Epiphany, have over a millennium of attested use in the liturgy. It is concerning, therefore, to note that, despite this, neither the collect nor the postcommunion for this Sunday are contained anywhere in the Novus Ordo, a book so often described as an “enrichment” of the Roman Rite, and more recently as containing “all the elements” of it. Let us take a brief look at the history of this Sunday’s prayers, and their fate in the post-Vatican II liturgical reforms.

The 4th Sunday after Epiphany (Dom IIII post Theophaniam), in the
Sacramentarium Triplex, Zürich, Zentralb. Ms. C 43, ff. 35r-35v

Collect (CO 1898)

Deus, qui nos, in tantis perículis constitútos, pro humána scis fragilitáte non posse subsístere: da nobis salútem mentis et córporis; ut ea, quæ pro peccátis nostris pátimur, te adiuvánte vincámus.

O God, who know that our human frailty cannot stand fast against the great dangers that beset us, grant us health of mind and body, that with your help we may overcome what we suffer on account of our sins.

The Corpus orationum tells us that this prayer appears in a total of forty-three manuscripts, dating from the 8th century. In all of these, it is an Epiphanytide collect, and in the vast majority of them (thirty-seven), it is used on the 4th Sunday after Epiphany, just as we find in the 1962 Missale Romanum.

It has completely disappeared from the Novus Ordo. It seems more than likely that the phrase in tantis perículis constitútos, pro humána scis fragilitáte non posse subsístere was deemed not suitable for the new, post-Vatican II “modern mentality”. [1]

Secret (CO 749)

Concéde, quǽsumus, omnípotens Deus: ut huius sacrifícii munus oblatum fragilitátem nostrum ab omni malo purget semper et múniat.

Grant, we pray, almighty God, that what we offer in sacrifice may cleanse us in our frailty from every evil and always grant us your protection.

This prayer has a variety of use in the tradition, the two main groups being:

• as an Epiphanytide secret, in forty manuscripts from the 8th century onwards (thirty-three of which use it on the 4th Sunday after Epiphany);
• as a Lenten secret: thirty-one manuscripts, from the 9th century onwards (note that in twenty-five of these, it is also used as an Epiphanytide secret).

The Corpus orationum also gives a third group of ten manuscripts, dating from the 8th century onwards, which use this prayer in diverse ways, with frequent duplication: in Advent (five manuscripts), Lent (three manuscripts), the Proper/Common of Saints (four manuscripts), and Votive Masses (two manuscripts). In one of these manuscripts, this secret/super oblata prayer is actually used as a collect!

In the 1962 Missal, this secret is used on Saturday in Week 3 of Lent as well as the 4th Sunday after Epiphany, and in every one of the thirty-one manuscripts where this prayer occurs in Lent, it is duplicated on the 4th Sunday after Epiphany. As per the policies of Coetus XVIII bis of the Consilium, [2] in the Novus Ordo this duplication is eliminated, in this case by removing the prayer’s (slightly earlier and better-attested!) use in Epiphanytide, and retaining its Lenten use. However, it has been moved to Thursday in Week 4 of Lent, a day on which it is never attested in the manuscript tradition. Of course, the post-Vatican II liturgical reformers couldn’t possibly have retained this prayer on a Sunday – after all, the phrase fragilitátem nostrum ab omni malo purget semper et múniat is obviously much too difficult for most of the faithful!

Postcommunion (CO 3321 b)

Múnera tua nos, Deus, a delectatiónibus terrénis expédiant: et cæléstibus semper instáurent aliméntis.

May your gifts, O God, detach us from earthly pleasures and ever renew us with heavenly nourishment.

The Corpus orationum informs us that there is some limited variation in the use of this prayer: three manuscripts use it in the Proper/Common of Saints, with relevant textual additions. In the vast majority of manuscripts (forty-two), however, it is an Epiphanytide postcommunion, with thirty-five manuscripts using it on the 4th Sunday after Epiphany, as we find in the 1962 Missal.

But, like this Sunday’s collect, this postcommunion is nowhere to be found in the Novus Ordo. And, like the collect, it is highly likely it is the phrase a delectatiónibus terrénis expédiant that was deemed unsuitable for “modern man” and what Fr Carlo Braga called the “new perspective of human values”. [3] The only changes the Consilium was originally going to make to this postcommunion were two minor “restorations” to the text as it is given in the Gelasianum Vetus (n. 1267; cf. CO 3321 a): Múnera tua nos... was to become Mensa tua nos... and instáurent adjusted to instruat. Furthermore, it should be noted that all the prayers for the 4th Sunday after Epiphany were originally going to be kept intact as a set in the reformed Missal on the same Sunday: see Schema 186 (De Missali, 27), 19 September 1966, p. 18. [4]

Schema 186 (De Missali, 27), 19 September 1966, p. 18

So, this coming Sunday provides yet more material in the traditional Roman Rite – prayers used for at least 1,200 years in the Church – that was omitted from the post-Vatican II Missal because it was sifted through the ideological filter of the 1960s “experts” and considered “too difficult”. It is difficult to see this so-called “enrichment” of the Roman Missal as anything but an impoverishment in many respects. As Fr John Hunwicke has aptly put it:

[T]he motives controlling the selections [the Consilium] made, and their editorial alterations, have a consistent mens, videlicet, to enforce a levelling-down: [in the Novus Ordo] we end up with a liturgical culture squeezed everywhere into the straight-jacket of one decade. On the other hand, the Authentic Use, having evolved organically over two millennia, picking up like a glacier diverse materials from every age it passed through, contains within it so much more cultural diversity.

NOTES

[1] See, e.g., Lauren Pristas, “The Orations of the Vatican II Missal: Policies for Revision”, Communio 30 (Winter 2003), pp. 621-653, at p. 633 (quoting a 1971 essay by Dom Antoine Dumas): “In the liturgical renewal, from the beginning the revisers regarded concern for truth and simplicity to be particularly indispensable so that the texts and rites might be perfectly—or at the least much better—accommodated to the modern mentality to which it must give expression while neglecting nothing of the traditional treasury to which it remains the conduit.” Of course, more often than not, for the Consilium “accommodating the modern mentality” took priority over “neglecting nothing of the traditional treasury” of prayers, as the statistics show.

[2] See Schema 186 (De Missali, 27), 19 September 1966, pp. 1-2: Ergo, pro unoquoque textu, pluries in missali occurrente, perpaucis exceptis, usum antiquiorem retinuimus. Pro missis, quae exinde orationibus carent, novas selegimus. I QUAESITUM: Placetne Patribut ut, in missali romano recognito, textus orationum non repetatur? (“Therefore, for every text that frequently occurs in the Missal, its ancient use is to be retained, with very few execptions. For Masses which lack orations after this, new texts are to be selected. QUESTION 1: Does it please the Fathers that, in revising the Roman Missal, the text of orations not be repeated?”) It should be noted that this policy is a direct result of Coetus XVIII bis taking n. 51 of Sacrosanctum Concilium out of its original context, and applying it in a manner which was never envisaged by the Council Fathers: see my article “Continuity or Rupture, Again: An Example of the Consilium’s (Ab)use of the Constitution on the Liturgy”.

[3] See part four (of five) of my translation of Braga’s essay “Il «Proprium de Sanctis»”, Ephemerides Liturgicae 84.6 (1970), pp. 401-431 (at p. 419).

[4] For more on Schema 186, and an arrangement of it in parallel with the 1962 and 1970/2008 Missals, see my book The Proper of Time in the Post-Vatican II Liturgical Reforms (Lectionary Study Press, 2018) (Amazon USA, UK; PDF)

An Essential Resource for Restorationists: Detailed Charts Comparing Pre-’55, ’55, and ’62 Mass and Office

In the slow but steady work of restoring the Roman liturgical tradition, it seems that we are never quite fully equipped with all the resources we might wish to have at any given moment. There is work being done today, for instance, that would have been mightily helpful to have decades ago. At the moment there is a burning need for reprints of the pre-55 breviary (both Roman and Monastic) and of the pre-55 altar missal. But things get done when they get done, and all in good time.

The magnificent resources I am posting today at the end of this short article are examples of just such a precious boon, which, once one holds them in one’s hands, will prompt wonder at how it was ever possible that they did not exist before. I speak of the following detailed comparative charts, prepared by expert calendarist and rubrician Paul Cavendish (of St. Lawrence Press fame), and now made available via NLM. Spread the knowledge of them far and wide.

Archdale King has a snippet about the desired/planned changes discussed at Lugano in 1953 (see image below) which he describes as “revolutionary.” The idea that the post-Conciliar changes to the Roman rite (whose solid outline certainly comes from Lugano) just came out of thin air and were all the fault of Vatican II, or Paul VI, or both, is simply impossible to sustain from a closer look of the patterns indicated on Cavendish’s charts.

Here, in Appendix A of H.A. Reinhold’s 1960 book Bringing the Mass to the People, is a summary of the proposals coming out of Maria Laach (1951), Ste Odile (1952), and Lugano (1953). They read as a veritable blueprint of the Novus Ordo.

 

Cum nostra hac aetate and Maxima redemptionis nostrae mysteria, both of 1955, were of course the tipping point, though the 1951 and 1952 “Easter Vigil” permissions presaged something big. There was lesser tinkering too, such as the editio VI post typicam of the Missal in 1953 which anticipated some of the 1962MR changes, such as short conclusions. Bugnini wrote a very useful article in Ephemerides Liturgicae about that.

In any case, the charts should be fairly self-explanatory, and repay close study.

PDF of “Outline of Changes to the Roman Missal between 1955 and 1962”

Continue Reading this Article. . .

Notre Dame 2.0 and Missale Romanum 2.0

Notre Dame Cathedral has once again been in the news quite a bit. (I promise my readers that this article will come around to the subject on all of our minds, namely, the attack on the Roman Rite that was intensified by the CDW document released this past Saturday.) On the side of good news, Sharon Kabel at OnePeterFive takes us through the wondrous things happening in the course of Notre Dame’s painstaking structural restoration, in the categories of wood, acoustics, metal, glass, stone, structure, digital, and emotion. What a building and what a project! The artisans, art historians, and craftsmen obviously love the medieval masterpiece that they are privileged to study and repair. On the side of bad news, Auguste Meyrat at Crisis tells us that (surprise, surprise) Catholic churchmen are in cahoots with liturgical and artistic modernists to produce an interior of hair-raising horror. Jeanne Smits, the Paris correspondent of LifeSiteNews, furnishes details about the plan, which apparently has received preliminary approval, in spite of the impassioned protest of over a hundred major French cultural figures. One can only hope and pray that better counsels will prevail, as they did for the replacement of the spire and the outside renovation.

In an interesting article published last April at PrayTell, James Hadley made a brilliant case for architectural traditionalism and against artistic modernism. He quotes Jorge Otero-Pailos, Director and Professor of Historic Preservation at Columbia University Graduate School of Architecture, Planning and Preservation, who said that “heritage is a social process of making and remaking culture by interacting in and with sites and objects inherited with previous generations.” Hadley comments:

While this in part is true, it also wrongly gives the impression that both heritage and culture are things we create based upon what we value or dis-value at any given moment. It implies that heritage has no inherent force or stability by which we “should” value it. As a result, contemporary society is left unfettered to destroy or remake past monuments as we see fit. We are simply playing at making new transient meanings and values based upon our shifting priorities and allegiances at the moment.

He then turns to the Vatican’s Pontificia Commissione per i Beni Culturali della Chiesa for guidance. The commission’s body of directives on how old ecclesiastical buildings should be treated

understands ecclesiastical heritage not firstly as high artistic achievement, but as material witness to Christian belief. The object itself (be it a sculpture or building) expresses Christian belief, but more importantly, it records and projects the faith of the community which created it – it is the witness of the witnesses. Christian heritage is theologically rooted therefore in those who have seen and confessed Christ as Lord, and is theologically oriented to continuing that witness in the present. In this way, the pertinent question for church heritage is not how may we act upon it to our own ends, but how may we become present to its inner world of meaning, what in Italian is known as valorizzazione. In this paradigm there is a very real sense of communio with and between the present church, the object, and the Christian community of the past. To tamper with the material object, is to change the record of witness. A communion suggests respect, listening, and investigation. Not hubris, hegemony, and alteration. Oddly, no one would contend that in order to understand the past and make it relevant one should enter an archive and rewrite, erase or destroy documents. But this is exactly what we continuously do in the built environment (our church buildings bearing the brunt), and in so doing we falsify and destroy the underlying witness. In this process of alteration we ultimately erase ourselves since we are constantly born out of our pasts.

Hadley notes that most of the proponents of super-modern renovations to Notre Dame (thankfully all rejected) believe that moderns are inescapably stuck in modernity and cannot relate any more to past styles as if they were present languages. Citing Catholics who believe that the right approach is to “innovate for God,” to show that the community has something “new” to say, he remarks:

In a post-Christian West the necessary reflection called for by the Notre-Dame tragedy is not a question of “innovation” but of reclamation and witness. Reclaiming and fortifying our witness by understanding our past. When the fire broke out at the cathedral, the nearby monastic Fraternité de Jérusalem began signing the Litany of Saints in their church invoking the aid of French Christians of old whose faith had built Notre-Dame. They continued the litany until the flames were extinguished…. What I see at stake now is the preservation of the very possibility of religious imagination. It seems to me that what Christianity should be proposing at this time is not “innovation” but deep engagement with our past, by calling upon the people, faith, and wisdom, that created that which we postmodernists are now playing at. After all, the term innovate in its earlier Latin form meant more to “renew” than to “change.” One is hard pressed to innovate with empty hands. We need our architectural and artistic past and we need to relearn it urgently.

The end of Hadley’s article is an eloquent appeal to abandon modern hubris and to sit at the feet of our ancestors in the Faith, who have something to teach us, who have indeed much to tell us that we have forgotten, to our impoverishment. Perhaps most of all, we need to be broken out of our temporal snobbery and the hidden heresy of perpetual progress. Every age is an age of progress, regress, and stasis, in different respects; and yet the most important truths, the truths by which we live and die, remain the same.

It now must be said again explicitly; Our ancestors, histories, material cultures, and built environments, have the right to be what they are. To not be re-interpreted, or reinvented. To exist today in their integrity without our pushy or hubristic updates, additions, and re-contextualization meant to sooth, temporarily mesmerize, or aggrandize ourselves… What this demands of us is humility, recognition that we are not inherently progressive in any positive way, that modernity is not innately better, that the junk we flood the earth with today, is not more enduring and meaningful than the artistry and faith of our past. We like the Russian Orthodox reformer of the 19th century, Ivan Kireevsky, cannot insist that the way forward is to change a past because we have forgotten it (Kireevsky, Fragments, 248-43). We must instead go to that place our ancestors built and learn to see it as they did, and thus bear testimony to it as eyewitnesses. And such is the case of Notre-Dame in Paris. Its restoration lies not in our changes to it, but in our submission to its form, wisdom, and witness.

 

Could anyone read this impassioned plea for preserving the architectural integrity of Notre Dame cathedral and not think immediately of the even greater claim made on us by the greatest work of art known to the Western world—the Roman Rite of the Mass, and its panoply of attendant rites—whose integrity was so violently assaulted after the Second Vatican Council? Just go back and re-read the quotations from Hadley, but having in mind the liturgy instead of Notre Dame. There is a nearly one-for-one equivalency of concept and praxis.

This, in turn, reminds me of one of the most splendid passages in the writings of John Senior:

Whatever we do in the political or social order, the indispensable foundation is prayer, the heart of which is the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass, the perfect prayer of Christ Himself, Priest and Victim, recreating in an unbloody manner the bloody, selfsame Sacrifice of Calvary. What is Christian culture? It is essentially the Mass.
       That is not my or anyone’s opinion or theory or wish but the central fact of 2,000 years of history. Christendom, what secularists call Western Civilization, is the Mass and the paraphernalia which protect and facilitate it. All architecture, art, political and social forms, economics, the way people live and feel and think, music, literature―all these things, when they are right, are ways of fostering and protecting the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass.
       To enact a sacrifice, there must be an altar, an altar has to have a roof over it in case it rains; to reserve the Blessed Sacrament, we build a little House of Gold and over it a Tower of Ivory with a bell and a garden round it with the roses and lilies of purity, emblems of the Virgin Mary ―Rosa Mystica, Turris Davidica, Turris Eburnea, Domus Aurea, who carried His Body and His Blood in her womb, Body of her body, Blood of her blood.
       And around the church and garden, where we bury the faithful dead, the caretakers live, the priests and religious whose work is prayer, who keep the Mystery of Faith in its tabernacle of music and words in the Office of the Church; and around them, the faithful who gather to worship and divide the other work that must be done in order to make the perpetuation of the Sacrifice possible—to raise the food and make the clothes and build and keep the peace so that generations to come may live for Him, so that the Sacrifice goes on even until the consummation of the world.

The raging flames that burned up the spire and roof of the great medieval masterpiece of Notre-Dame in Paris, the fire that gutted its harmonious additions and renovations, provided us with a palpable image of what was done to that even greater masterpiece of medieval art (so to speak), the traditional Roman Rite, in the decade from about 1963 to 1973. The cathedral, after all, was created to house the Host and to provide a worthy space for the sacred liturgy. There would be no Notre Dame, no Chartres, not a single one of the great cathedrals, without the usus antiquior, as Marcel Proust recognized (see his important 1904 essay Death Comes for the Cathedrals, recently published by Wiseblood Books with commentary by John Pepino and me, tying it in to the traditionalist movement today).

It is therefore the very same instinct to wish to see Notre Dame restored to her glory and to wish to see the Roman liturgy restored to its glory; the same intuition that tells us there is something radically wrong with deconstructing and reconstructing our central act of prayer according to modernist or post-modernist proclivities.

Change for Change’s Sake? The Orations for Ss Simon and Jude in the Traditional and Reformed Roman Missals

Today’s feast of Saints Simon and Jude, inscribed in both the traditional and reformed Roman calendars on October 28th, provides more insight into the general spirit of the post-Vatican II liturgical reforms, as well as the freedom the members of the Consilium ad exsequendam felt they had when it came to changing the liturgy. In a comparative index of first lines, it would appear as though no changes were made to the prayers of this feast in the course of the reform. However, as we will see, this is far from the case.

The source for today’s Collect in the usus antiquior is as follows: [1]

Deus, qui nos per beatos apostolos tuos
ad cognitionem tui nominis venire tribuisti, 
da nobis eorum gloriam sempiternam
et proficiendo celebrare et celebrando proficere. (CO 1906)

The Mass of Ss Simon and Jude in a Missal produced in the mid-11th century, and long used at the Abbey of St Denis in Paris. This manuscript represents an intermediate stage between the more ancient sacramentaries and the later medieval missals; the Gregorian propers have been integrated into the text alongside the prayers, but the Scriptural lessons have not. Note the interesting way the neume of the Communio strays into the margin. (Bibliothèque nationale de France. Département des Manuscrits. Latin 9436, folio 110r)

This prayer, extant since at least the eighth century, has been used in Masses of the Apostles (seven manuscripts) and, more frequently, specifically for Saints Simon and Jude (thirty-eight manuscripts, twenty-six of which insert Simonem et Iudam after apostolos tuos). [2] Its textual transmission is remarkably stable, with the only recorded variations being as follows:

• two manuscripts of the seven where this prayer is used in Masses of the Apostles omit the word tuos;
• one manuscript where this prayer is used for Saints Simon and Jude reads tui sancti nominis instead of tui nominis;
• twelve manuscripts where this prayer is used for Saints Simon and Jude lack any specific mention of the two apostles.

These are all very minor variations. The text as it appears in the 1962 Missale Romanum also differs in one other very minor way from its source, reading agnitionem in place of cognitionem. This change seems to have been consolidated at the time of the first printed Missals. [3] It should be noted, however, that cognitionem is the better-attested and original reading. So, in the course of a reform of the liturgy that claimed to be a “restoration”, [4] one might have expected agnitionem to be adjusted back to cognitionem. Not only did this not happen, but the prayer was changed by the Consilium in a way unknown in liturgical history. 

As it appears in the 1970/2008 Missale Romanum, the Collect is as follows: 

Deus, qui nos per beátos Apóstolos 
ad agnitiónem tui nóminis veníre tribuísti, 
intercedéntibus sanctis Simóne et Iuda, 
concéde propítius, ut semper augeátur Ecclésia
increméntis in te credéntium populórum.

Far from restoring this particular oration, Coetus XVIII bis of the Consilium decided to completely rewrite the second half of the prayer in an entirely novel way, loosely based on Acts 5:14 (Magis autem augebatur credentium in Domino multitudo virorum ac mulierum…) and also adding the intercession of Saints Simon and Jude, who have been moved to slightly further on in the Collect. Curiously, the Consilium decided to omit tuos, following the Gelasianum Vetus (probably the earliest manuscript to contain this prayer), but did not restore agnitionem back to cognitionem. Like we see in many other places in the reformed Missal, the best textual witnesses have only been half-used.

More curious, perhaps, is the change to the second half of the prayer, where the striking (and rather lovely) chiastic phrase et proficiendo celebrare, et celebrando proficere has been replaced with what is, in my opinion, a substantially less striking paraphrase of Acts 5:14. This changes the Collect’s petition somewhat: in the traditional Missal we ask, in a symbiotic way cooperating with God’s grace, to be made more holy through our own participation as members of the Church in today's feast day. It is perfectly possible – indeed, in order to cultivate a proper balance between ‘private’ devotion and ‘public’ prayer, it is necessary – to interpret this petition in both an individual and corporate sense. In the reformed Missal, on the other hand, everything is subsumed into the wider Church: we ask “that the Church may constantly grow by increase of the peoples who believe in you” (2011 ICEL), but there is now little sense in the revised Collect that this actually requires anything of us as individual Christians. 

Suffice it to say, there is nothing in Sacrosanctum Concilium that justifies the Consilium’s novel changes to this well-attested and textually very stable prayer. In fact, the intention of Coetus XVIII bis, at least to begin with, was to keep the traditional Collect for today’s feast intact, along with its Secret and Postcommunion. [5] 

Schema 287, with the proposal for the unchanged propers
for Saints Simon and Jude highlighted 

Speaking of which, how did these other prayers fare in the reform? Well, the source for the 1962 Missal’s Secret prayer is as follows:

Gloriam, domine, sanctorum apostolorum
perpetuam praecurrentes,
quaesumus, ut eandem, sacris mysteriis expiati,
dignius celebremus. (CO 2711)

This prayer is extant in six manuscripts for Masses of the Apostles, and in forty manuscripts for the Mass of Saints Simon and Jude. [6] In the 1962 Missal, tuorum Simonis et Iudæ has been added (as variously in seventeen manuscripts [7]), praecurrentes has been changed to venerantes (as in twelve manuscripts), and eandem changed to eam (as in seven manuscripts). It should be noted that there is no extant textual variation in this prayer’s concluding clause, sacris mysteriis expiati, dignius celebremus.

In the reformed Missal, the first half of the super oblata is identical to the 1962 Missal, but the second half of the prayer has been changed to read ut vota nostra suscípias et ad sacra mystéria celebránda nos digne perdúcas. We now ask the Lord to “receive our prayers and lead us to worthily celebrate the sacred mysteries” (2011 ICEL), rather than asking to be “purified by these sacred mysteries”. This change, without precedent in the manuscript tradition, was made by the Consilium presumably as part of the general drive to get rid of any “anticipatory” sacrificial language from the offertory. [8]

The source for the Postcommunion in the usus antiquior is as follows:

Perceptis, domine, sacramentis, suppliciter rogamus, 
ut, intercedentibus beatis apostolis tuis, 
quae pro illorum veneranda gerimus passione, 
nobis proficiant ad medelam. (CO 4200 d)

The Corpus orationum records eight different variants of this prayer (CO 4200 a-h). The ultimate source (CO 4200 a) is the Leonine Sacramentary, where it is a postcommunion for the June feast of Saints Peter and Paul. From there, it is used quite widely for Masses of apostles generally and individually, especially Saints Andrew (CO 4200 cA, and 4200 h), and Saints Simon and Jude (CO 4200 dA). It is also attested as being used for St Benedict (CO 4200 g). The variant for Saints Simon and Jude is extant in thirty-three manuscripts, with fifteen of them adding Simone et Iuda after tuis, and six reading exoramus in place of rogamus, as the 1962 Missal also does. There is no attested variation in the end of this prayer (nobis proficiant ad medelam) when used for Saints Simon and Jude; in fact, across all its different variations and uses, this postcommunion ends with either nobis proficiant ad medelam or nobis proficiant ad salutem.

In the post-Vatican II Missal, this postcommunion now reads as follows:

Percéptis, Dómine, sacraméntis,
súpplices in Spíritu Sancto deprecámur,
ut, quæ pro apostolórum Simónis et Iudæ
veneránda gérimus passióne,
nos in tua dilectióne consérvent.

A completely new ending has been given to this prayer: nobis proficiant ad medelam from the 1962 Missal is changed to nos in tua dilectióne consérvent, a change without precedent in its entire manuscript history across its many and varied uses. I am at a loss as to why this particular change has been made; possibly medelam was considered to have ‘negative’ connotations, but this vocabulary is used elsewhere in the reformed Missal [9] (although nowhere near as often as in the 1962 Missal). The new ending could be seen as an exceptionally vague reference to Jude 21 (vosmetipsos in dilectione Dei servate, exspectantes misericordiam Domini nostri Jesu Christi in vitam æternam), though I think this is a bit of a stretch. Mention of the Holy Spirit has also been added, and the intercession of Saints Simon and Jude deleted, both further changes that are completely without precedent in the liturgical tradition.

All this means that today's feast is, sadly, yet another example of questionable, novel changes being made to long-standing prayers, as part of a claimed “restoration” of the Roman Rite that the evidence increasingly points towards being nothing of the sort. It is difficult to avoid the conclusion that what we have for today’s feast is change for change’s sake, something that cannot be justified in any way by the Second Vatican Council’s Constitution on the Sacred Liturgy (see especially n. 23: Innovationes, demum, ne fiant nisi vera et certa utilitas Ecclesiae id exigat…).

NOTES

[1] In what follows, the abbreviation CO refers to E. Moeller, J.M. Clément, B.C. ’t Wallant & L.-M. Couillaud (eds.), Corpus orationum (CCSL 160-160M; Brepols, 1992-2020, 15 vols.).

[2] There is an overlap of three manuscripts where this prayer is used in both of these ways.

[3] See, for example, the 1474 Missale Romanum Mediolani (ed. R. Lippe; HBS 17; London: Harrison & Sons, 1899), which reads agnitionem.

[4] For example, see Schema 186 (De Missali, 27), 19 September 1966, p. 2; English translation from M.P. Hazell, The Proper of Time in the Post-Vatican II Liturgical Reforms (Lectionary Study Press, 2018), pp. 220-227, at p. 222:

Permulti textus, decursu temporum, vitiati sunt.
Non agitur hic de aliquo archaeologismo, quo lectio antiquior, ipso facto melior aestimaretur. Sed quibusdam mutationibus textus antiqui, sub aspectu theologico vel pastorali, reapse imminuti vel corrupti sunt…
Placetne Patribus, ut, sensu quo modo de his locuti sumus, textus orationum recognoscatur, vel in casu, emendetur? 

[Many texts, over the course of time, have become corrupted.
There is no question here of any archeologism, where older readings are considered better by that fact alone. However, certain alterations of ancient texts, carried out for theological or pastoral reasons, are in truth impairments or corruptions…
Does it please the Fathers that, in the way indicated about which we have spoken, the text of orations is to be revised or, in certain cases, amended?]

[5] See Schema 287 (De Missali, 50), 11 April 1968, p. 35.

[6] There is an overlap of two manuscripts where this prayer is used in both ways.

[7] Five manuscripts add only tuorum, another five add only Simonis et Iudæ, and seven add both.

[8] For more on this, see this series from Gregory DiPippo’s series (especially part three).

[9] Namely: the Postcommunion for Ash Wednesday; the Collect for Monday in Week 2 of Lent; the super oblata for the Easter Vigil; and the super oblata for Saint Luke (18 October). It also occurs in the second option for the priest’s prayer before Communion in the Order of Mass (Percéptio Córporis et Sánguinis tui, Dómine Iesu Christe…), as well as in the hymn Crux fidelis on Good Friday.

“All the Elements of the Roman Rite”? Mythbusting, Part II

Over the last decade in particular, the figure of 17% has been quoted as the proportion of prayers that survived intact from the traditional Roman Missal into the novus ordo of Paul VI. [1] However, in the wake of Traditionis custodes, with renewed attention being given to the comparison of ‘forms’ of the Roman Rite as well as the canonical and theological controversy over what counts as its lex orandi, [2] it seemed opportune to build on my previous efforts and revisit this percentage through a careful and exhaustive analysis of all the orations. By doing this, not only can we arrive at a definitive number, but we can also now have all the relevant data freely and easily accessible in the public domain, so that everyone can see which prayers were preserved, edited or discarded. [3]

The result of this work not only vindicates the labours of those such as the late Rev Fr Anthony Cekada, but it also shows the figure to be too generous. For the actual number, unbelievably, is only 13%.

The Orations of the Traditional Roman Rite in the Reformed Roman Rite: Lists and Texts of the Identical and Edited Prayers (PDF download)

Yes, a mere 13% (165) of the 1,273 prayers of the usus antiquior [4] found their way unchanged into the reformed Missal of Paul VI. Another 24.1% (307) were edited in some way before their inclusion. A further 16.2% (206) were centonised with other prayers - effectively combining parts of multiple prayers together into a new oration. Fully 52.6% (669) of the prayers in the traditional Roman Rite have been excised from the modern liturgy, memory-holed by the Consilium ad exsequendam. [5] How has this happened? And how did so few notice at the time?

Figure 1: Orations of the 1951/1962 Missal in the 1970/2008 Missal
(duplicates excluded)

Since its promulgation, the Catholic faithful have frequently been assured by popes and scholars that the post-Vatican II Missale Romanum is an enrichment, enhancement and fulfilment of the Missal that came before it. In addition, it is often claimed that the liturgical reform has faithfully preserved almost all of the preceding tradition, revising and correcting the texts of prayers on the basis of our much-improved knowledge of the sources while only introducing new prayers for modern needs. A few examples, with my emphases:

[I]t has similarly become clear that the formulas of the Roman Missal need both to be somewhat revised and also to be enriched with additions… In this restoration of the Missale Romanum, not only have the three parts We have already mentioned been changed, namely the Eucharistic Prayer, the Order of Mass, and the Order of Readings, but the others in which it consists have been revised and notably modified, that is: the Temporal, the Sanctoral, the Common of Saints, the Ritual Masses, and the Votive Masses, as they are called. Among these, particular care has been taken with the orations, which have not only been increased in number, so that new prayers respond to the new needs of these times, but also the most ancient prayers have been revised to accord with the ancient texts. [Paul VI, Apostolic Constitution Missale Romanum, 3 April 1969]

What has always been true throughout the varied and progressive development of the Roman liturgy, from the ancient sacramentaries to the revered post-Tridentine Missal of St Pius V, is true also of the new Roman Missal. While preserving the treasure of tradition, it has been rearranged and enhanced in consequence of the directives of Vatican Council II. [Jean-Marie Cardinal Villot, Letter to Bishop Carlo Rossi on the occasion of the 22nd National Liturgical Week of Italy, 30 August 1971]

What exactly is the Missal of Paul VI, if not that of St Pius V adapted, enriched, completed? If we were to engage in a line-by-line comparison, we would find in the Missal of Paul VI three-quarters if not nine-tenths of the content of the original Missal of St Pius V. [Dom Guy Oury, La Messe de S. Pie V à Paul VI (Solesmes, 1975), p. 30]

Lest there be any misunderstanding, let me add that as far as its content is concerned (apart from a few criticisms), I am very grateful for the new Missal, for the way it has enriched the treasury of prayers and prefaces, for the new eucharistic prayers and the increased number of texts for use on weekdays, etc., quite apart from the availability of the vernacular. But I do regard it as unfortunate that we have been presented with the idea of a new book rather than with that of continuity within a single liturgical history. In my view, a new edition will need to make it quite clear that the so-called Missal of Paul VI is nothing other than a renewed form of the same Missal to which Pius X, Urban VIII, Pius V and their predecessors have contributed, right from the Church’s earliest history. [Joseph Ratzinger, The Feast of Faith: Approaches to a Theology of the Liturgy (San Francisco, CA: Ignatius Press, 1986), p. 87]

The new Missal has eighty-one prefaces and sixteen hundred prayers, or more than twice as many as in the old Missal. Almost all the texts of the old Missal have been used, revised if need be to harmonize them with the reform and the teaching of Vatican II. [Annibale Bugnini, The Reform of the Liturgy 1948-1975 (Collegeville, MN: Liturgical Press, 1990), p. 398]

While at the Council’s behest further texts were to be added in order to reflect better the riches of the Church's tradition and in response to the needs of the people, and while some existing texts were to be corrected to reflect more accurately the gains of textual scholarship, the lines and substance of the missal of 1970 remain unmistakably those of 1962. The missal of 1970 is the missal of 1962, reinvigorated, enriched, and endowed with new lustre, like a precious stone whose perennial beauty is enhanced by being ensconced in a new setting. [Cuthbert Johnson & Anthony Ward (eds.), Missale Romanum anno 1962 promulgatum (Rome: Centro Liturgico Vincenziano, 1994), p. vi]

[I]t can be noted how the two Roman Missals, although four centuries have intervened, embrace one and the same tradition. Furthermore, if the inner elements of this tradition are reflected upon, it is also understood how outstandingly and felicitously the older Roman Missal is brought to fulfilment in the later one. [General Instruction of the Roman Missal, 3rd edition, 2002, n. 6]

The desire of both the Council Fathers and Saint Paul VI was that the liturgy should be simplified in order to make it more accessible. While the Missal retains the basic structure of that of Saint Pius V, together with ninety percent of the texts of that Missal, it removes a number of repetitions and accretions and simplifies the language and the gestures of the liturgy. At the same time, it uses more sacrificial vocabulary than was the case in the 1570 Missal. Opinions to the contrary are false. [Archbishop Arthur Roche, “The Roman Missal of Saint Paul VI: A witness to unchanging faith and uninterrupted tradition”, Notitiae 597 (2020), pp. 248-258, at p. 251]

Such quotations could quite easily continue to be piled up. However, for the most part, they can be summarised as follows: even if parts of it could be improved, the reformed Missal is one of the major pastoral and scholarly triumphs of the Second Vatican Council. After all, if it is a faithful enrichment of the traditional Roman Rite, preserving almost all of it yet also carefully adapting it for modern times, how could it be anything but a triumph? Indeed, in his accompanying letter to Traditionis custodes (16 July 2021), which itself claims the novus ordo is “the unique expression of the lex orandi of the Roman Rite” (art. 1), Pope Francis describes this liturgical reform as “willed by Vatican Council II”, going as far to say that:

[T]he instrumental use of Missale Romanum of 1962 is often characterized by a rejection not only of the liturgical reform, but of the Vatican Council II itself, claiming, with unfounded and unsustainable assertions, that it betrayed the Tradition and the “true Church”… To doubt the Council is to doubt the intentions of those very Fathers who exercised their collegial power in a solemn manner cum Petro et sub Petro in an ecumenical council, and, in the final analysis, to doubt the Holy Spirit himself who guides the Church… Whoever wishes to celebrate with devotion according to earlier forms of the liturgy can find in the reformed Roman Missal according to Vatican Council II all the elements of the Roman Rite…

In a sense, these words of the Pope are the culmination of all the claims made about the reformed Missal – claims which, it should be noted, have rarely if ever been substantiated with any evidence. Dom Hugh Somerville-Knapman refers to this “elephant in the room” of the liturgical reform, asking the question:

[H]ow truly do the current liturgical books conform to Vatican II’s decrees? Rather than blindly accepting, in post hoc ergo propter hoc fashion, that simply because this is what the Consilium ended up producing they must necessarily express the lex orandi articulated by the Council, let this be demonstrated clearly and plainly. If Rome wants people to accept with willing heart the liturgical reform as delivered, let it demonstrate how it expresses the will of the Council. It is not self-evident.

Sadly, post-Traditionis custodes, the likelihood of the Holy See or the Roman Curia doing this is basically nil. Rather, it almost seems in some circles as if any critical examination of the reformed rites is now synonymous with the “rejection” of an ecumenical (and pastoral) Council. Those who have legitimate questions and concerns about the reform are dismissed out of hand as “radical traditionalists”, “quasi-schismatics”, “extremists”, and so forth.

Yet, as Dom Alcuin Reid has reminded us, legal positivism cannot change historical facts. An assertion that is not true cannot just be declared to be true by fiat, even if it is the Pope himself who attempts to do so.

The welcome pack given to each peritus of the Consilium
(artist’s impression)

So, are “all the elements of the Roman Rite” present in the reformed books? Faced with the statistics and data about the prayers in the reformed Missal as compared to its predecessor, it is exceptionally difficult to see how this assertion can possibly be accurate. It is, in truth, an oft-repeated myth about the reform, and one that the Church urgently needs to leave behind. [6] To reiterate:

• 52.6% (669) of the prayers in the Missal of the usus antiquior do not occur in the Missal of Paul VI at all;

• 24.1% (307) of them have been used somewhere in the reformed Missal, but edited in some manner - with 86 of these prayers receiving only minor edits;

• 16.2% (206) have been ‘centonised’: this was the term used by the Consilium to refer to the combining of parts of two or more orations to create what is effectively a newly-composed prayer; [7]

• only 13% (165) of the prayers of the usus antiquior made it through the process of reform intact.

It should also be stated that these figures, stark as they are, still do not give the full scale of the changes made by the Consilium ad exsequendam in the name of Vatican II. Even for those prayers that have been retained intact, there is often a change in where they are used in the reformed Missal. For example:

• Br 7: previously the collect for the 23rd Sunday after Pentecost, this prayer was moved to Friday in Week 5 of Lent, as one of two options for the collect;

• Br 154: previously the collect for the 14th Sunday after Pentecost, this prayer was also moved to a Lenten weekday - this time, Tuesday in Week 2;

• Br 183: previously the collect for the 17th Sunday after Pentecost, it has been moved to the “Masses and Prayers for Various Needs and Occasions” section of the reformed Missal, acting as one of two options for the third formulary of the Mass “In Any Need” (n. 48);

• Br 661: previously the collect for the 20th Sunday after Pentecost, this prayer does not occur in the first (1970) or second (1975) editions of the reformed Missal, only appearing in the third edition (2002/08) as the sixth option for the super populum prayers given in the appendix to the ordo Missae;

• Br 893: previously the secret for the 23rd Sunday after Pentecost, this prayer was moved to the “Masses and Prayers for Various Needs and Occasions” section, becoming the super oblata for the third Mass formulary “For the Priest Himself” (n. 7), which is the one given for use on the anniversary of ordination.

For the prayers edited before their inclusion in the reformed Missal, there are some definite patterns that can be seen, some quite concerning. For example:

• “Fasting” language is frequently removed from Lenten orations, due to the changes in discipline made by Paul VI in the wake of Vatican II: e.g. ieiunium quadragesimale (Br 143: Monday in Week 1 of Lent) becomes opus quadragesimale in the reformed prayer (used on the same day); Inchoata ieiunia (Br 643: Friday after Ash Wednesday) has been changed to Inchoata poenitentiae opera (used on the same day), etc.

• The intercession and merits of the saints are often edited out: e.g. angelico pro nobis interveniente suffragio (Br 623: St Michael, 8 May and 29 September) is changed to angelico ministerio in conspectum tuae maiestatis delatas (Ss Michael, Gabriel & Raphael, 29 September); eius intercessione from the pre-1950 postcommunion for the Assumption of the B.V.M. (Br 676) was deleted before this prayer was used on the Vigil of the Assumption in the reformed Missal; the gloriosa merita of St Mary Magdalene (Br 697: 22 July) are omitted amidst the numerous changes to this prayer in the reformed Missal (used on the same day), etc.

• The word anima is frequently deleted from the prayers used in Masses for the Dead: e.g. animabus patris et matris meae becomes only patri et matri meae in both the collect (Br 407) and postcommunion (Br 106) of the Mass for the priest’s parents; animabus is deleted from the collect for the first Mass on All Souls (Br 567), which the reformers also moved to the fourth formulary in the “Masses for the Dead: Various Commemorations (For Several Deceased)” section of the reformed Missal, etc.

• Some notable changes have been made to language that could be considered “negative”, whether to eliminate it entirely or soften it in some way: e.g. in tot adversis is deleted from the collect of Monday in Holy Week (Br 192), used on the same day in the reformed Missal; quos perpetuae mortis eripuisti casibus (Br 364: 2nd Sunday after Easter) is changed to quos eripuisti a servitute peccati (14th Sunday per annum); humanis non sinas subiacere periculis, the end of the postcommunion for the 23rd Sunday after Pentecost (Br 947) now reads a te numquam separari permittas (34th Week per annum), etc.

Many more examples are highlighted in the full document. Some edits and changes can be justified when one looks at the manuscript history of the prayer, and to facilitate this research, reference numbers for the Corpus orationum have been given where possible. For example, the change from misericordiam (Br 418: 10th Sunday after Pentecost) to gratiam (26th Sunday per annum, collect) is a restoration of the Gelasianum Vetus text and, in this instance, the majority of manuscripts. However, more often than not, the changes made by the Consilium are entirely novel, with no basis in the manuscript tradition – all of the above examples of changes, for instance, are entirely without precedent!

In an address to the Consilium on 13 October 1966, Paul VI advised its members that:

No predisposition to change everything without reason must govern this investigation [into the liturgy], nor a hastiness, typical of the iconoclast, to emend and revise everything. The guides must be a devout prudence and a reverence combined with wisdom.

Had the post-conciliar liturgical reforms stayed within these bounds, perhaps we would be having very different debates and conversations in the present day. But among themselves, the periti of the Consilium were quite candid about their intentions. For example:

It is often impossible to preserve either orations that are found in the [current] Roman Missal or to borrow suitable orations from the treasury of ancient euchology. Indeed, prayer ought to express the mind of our current age... [Coetus XIII, Schema 306 (De Missali, 52), 9 September 1968, p. 7]

Revising the pre-existing text becomes more delicate when faced with a need to update content of language, and when all this affects not only the form, but also doctrinal reality. This is called for in light of the new view of human values, considered in relation to and as a way to supernatural goods. The Council clearly proposes this, and it was kept in mind when the temporal cycle was revised. It could not have been ignored in the revision of the sanctoral cycle... An entirely new foundation of eucharistic theology has superseded devotional points of view or of a particular way of venerating and invoking the saints. Retouching the text, moreover, was deemed necessary to bring to light new values and new perspectives. [Carlo Braga, “Il ‘Proprium de Sanctis’ ”, Ephemerides Liturgicae 84 (1970), pp. 401-431, at p. 419]

Suffice it to say, this is not the language of continuity, or fulfilment, or even authentic renewal. The data and statistics for the orations in each Missal - which are now possible for any interested party to easily see and compare - do not justify the assertions that the older Missal is substantially contained in the newer one; in fact, if anything, the situation is closer to the opposite.

In conclusion, if only 13% of the orations in the Missal of the traditional Roman Rite have been kept intact with more than half of them completely discarded, it does not seem possible to say in anything approaching a meaningful way that “all the elements of the Roman Rite” are present in the reformed liturgical books, let alone that the lex orandi of this rite has been properly preserved. There are a number of serious issues present and questions that need to be answered about the supposedly “irreversible” liturgical reform, and they cannot continue to be ignored. In the final analysis, as Dom Alcuin Reid reminds us:

Questioning the continuity of the modern liturgical books with liturgical tradition, and with the sound principles laid down by the Council is not denying the Council or its authority. It is, rather, to seek to defend the Council from those who distorted its stated intentions.

NOTES

[1] Rev Fr Anthony Cekada, whose 17% figure has been cited numerous times over the years, was the pioneer in this regard: see The Problems with the Prayers of the Modern Mass (Rockford, IL: TAN Books, 1991) and Work of Human Hands: A Theological Critique of the Mass of Paul VI (West Chester, OH: Philothea Press, 2010), pp. 219-245.

[2] Lists of the many and varied reactions to the motu proprio can be found here and here on NLM.

[3] It should be noted that much of the underlying work, such as compiling lists of sources, examining the prayers of each Missal side-by-side, etc., was done in the 1970s and 1980s, before the Internet, before most people had access to personal computers, and also before vital tools such as the Corpus orationum existed. We are fortunate enough to live in an age where, thanks to the work of many diligent scholars as well as huge improvements in technology, this kind of research is easier than it has ever been before!

[4] The figure of 1,273 orations has been slightly revised and corrected from my previous article. It is made up of all the prayers in the Missale Romanum as it was in 1951 (1,191), plus those orations added between 1951 and 1962 (82). Due to the Holy Week and calendar reforms of 1955 onwards, this number is not exactly representative of the 1962 Missal, but as prayers from some suppressed celebrations were repurposed in the post-Vatican II Missal, it seemed fairer to include them in the overall total. I am also defining “orations” as the collects, secrets/super oblata, postcommunions and super populum, as well as other orationes contained in the Missal (e.g. the solemn intercessions on Good Friday, those that follow the readings at the Easter and Pentecost Vigils, blessings on particular days such as Palm Sunday, Candlemas, etc.). All the prefaces, as well as hymns and sequences, are excluded from this analysis.

[5] These percentages total more than 100% because some orations are duplicated in each category. For example, Br 120 (9th Sunday after Pentecost, Secret) is preserved intact but is also used in a centonisation; Br 235 (Wednesday in Week 2 of Lent, super populum) is preserved intact and also edited for use elsewhere.

[6] In what follows, the abbreviation “Br” refers to the “Bruylants number” of a given prayer. As part of the reference system for his workLes oraisons du Missel Romain: texte et histoire (Louvain: Centre de Documentation et d’Information Liturgiques, 1952, 2 vols.), Dom Placide Bruylants arranged all the prayers of the Missale Romanum in alphabetical order, then progressively numbered them starting from 1. This reference system is still often used by scholars and liturgists. A useful online list and concordance, minus Dom Bruylants’ text-critical and source information, can be found here.

[7] For the purposes of this analysis, I have kept edited and centonised prayers in separate categories, and have made no attempt to examine centonised orations. Though centonisation would count as “using” an oration, the way in which parts of different prayers were stitched together by the reformers can be quite complicated, and deserves its own dedicated analysis in the future.

The Prayers at the Foot of the Altar and the Last Gospel: A Case-Study in Pius V’s Conservatism

I remember hearing years ago a double claim: first, that Psalm 42 was recited en route from the sacristy to the altar as a private act of preparation and that the Last Gospel was recited on the way back to the sacristy as a private act of thanksgiving; and second, that it was Pope Pius V who first put them into the Roman missal in the place they now occupy. I dutifully repeated this opinion in the Q&A after a lecture in St. Louis. A religious brother who happened to be there wrote to me afterwards with a polite correction, and I thought it would be beneficial to share with readers what he shared with me—especially in these days, when people who should know better often attribute fantastical acts of originality to Pius V.

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You said that the Last Gospel and Prayers at the Foot were devotional prior to Pius V’s reform, and that they were recited while walking to and from the sacristy. I thought you might be interested to see some images from pre-Trent Roman Missals that in fact prescribe the current practice in their rubrics.

1474 is thought to be the year of the first printed edition of the Missale Romanum. The Henry Bradshaw Society published in 1899 a critical edition of a 1474 Missale Romanum from Milan. While the Last Gospel is not mentioned in the Ordinary, here are the prayers at the foot of the altar:

Missale Romanum 1474 (1899 critical edition)

A Missale Romanum printed in Venice in 1501, three years before Pius V was born, contains two rubrical sections: an introduction at the front and an Ordinarium Misse in the middle of the tome. This Missal includes both the Prayers at the Foot of the altar and the Last Gospel described in precisely the format we are accustomed to for those ceremonies in the TLM today. Since it doesn’t have internal page numbers, I have included text searches that will lead to the right pages online (the scan may also be downloaded for free). There are:

- Front section includes Prayers at the Foot: “stans ante infimum gradum altaris” (search: letificat iyuentutem)
- Ordinarium includes Prayers at the Foot “cum intrat ad altare” (search: facerdos cũ itrat)
- Front section describes Last Gospel “ad cornu evangelii” (search: Initium fancti euangely)
- Ordinarium does not mention a Last Gospel after the Placeat (search: tibi laf qua fancta)

1501 Missale Romanum (Venice)

One can find many Missals from this time period that omit the Last Gospel. I have not found any yet that omit the Prayers at the Foot, which are very consistent across the board, at least for the Roman rite. I also haven’t found any that direct that either of those be said while in transit. So, in the Roman usage, by the printed age, if ever that was the practice, walking and talking was no longer a thing.

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