New Study Closely Compares Aquinas, Innocent III, and Albert on the Roman Canon

I am pleased to inform NLM readers about an important new publication from the EOS (Editions Sankt Ottilien): The Sacramental Signification in the Rite of the Holy Mass: The Synthesis of St. Thomas Aquinas in Comparison with Pope Innocent III and St. Albert the Great by Rev. Dominik Pascal Witkowski.

Dominik Pascal Witkowski (b. 1986) is a Roman Catholic priest of the Diocese of Chur, Switzerland. He studied History and Theology at the Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich and pursued further studies in Humanities and Social Science at the University of Edinburgh. He completed his theological formation with a Baccalaureate, Licentiate, and Doctorate in Sacred Theology (STB, STL, STD) at the Pontifical University of Saint Thomas Aquinas (Angelicum) in Rome.

This study offers a systematic and comparative account of three major medieval commentaries on the rite of the Holy Mass: St. Thomas Aquinas’ exposition in the Summa theologiæ, Pope Innocent III’s De sacro altaris mysterio, and the De mysterio missæ attributed to St. Albert the Great. At its centre stands the Roman Canon—the core of the Latin Mass tradition—whose enduring liturgical use prompted centuries of theological reflection.

Bridging perspectives of doctrine, sacraments, and liturgical exegesis, the dissertation addresses the long-standing tension between the spiritual and philological schools of interpretation. By retrieving the Thomistic doctrine of spiritual signification—grounded in sacred doctrine and operative in Scripture, sacraments, and liturgy—it proposes a theological resolution. This Thomistic ressourcement demonstrates that the spiritual sense is not a subjective imposition, but an objective content of the rites themselves—signifying the passion of Christ, the sanctification of the Church, and the final consummation of the mystical body. In doing so, it contributes to the renewal of liturgical theology and highlights Aquinas’s synthesis as a vital key for understanding the Holy Mass in the Western tradition.

Fr. Witkowski explained to me that his book develops and presents, in an objective and scholarly way, the theological relevance and the deep significance of three major medieval commentaries; it touches only remotely on the major controversies of the twentieth century. Yet, by demonstrating the antiquity and richness of the older rites (one cannot help but be struck by the remarkable identity between the 13th-century curial rite and the pre-1955 Roman Rite), Fr. Witkowski contributes something still more fundamental: a case for the intelligibility, coherence, and perfection of the tradition, based on uncontested primary sources. This is a work that strongly presents the authority, integrity, and spiritual wealth of the Roman Rite.

This classic, extensive, detailed, and systematic study of the Holy Mass is sure to be appreciated by all serious scholars and students of liturgy, for its numerous insights into the Church’s liturgical heritage, particularly the mighty anaphora that stands at the heart of nearly all Western rites and uses.

A PDF of the Table of Contents may be downloaded here.

The “T” in Te Igitur

Lost in Translation #133

The De defectibus Missae, which was issued by Pope St. Pius V and is included in every Tridentine altar Missal, lists not only defects that render a Mass invalid (such as the wrong matter, form, or intention) but defects that render a Mass less than ideal, such as celebrating Mass: in an unconsecrated place; without at least one altar server; without a gold or silver chalice; or without a “Missal present, even though the priest may know by heart the Mass he intends to say.” (X.31)

Indirectly, the latter proscription indicates that, in the mind of the Church, the Missal is not an oversized cheat sheet or a primitive teleprompter that helps the celebrant “remember his lines” but a part of the performance itself, so to speak. Rubrics govern its placement and movement within the action of the liturgy; and what is more, when the priest must bow his head at the mention of a holy name, he sometimes does so in the direction of the Missal as the nearest symbol of Christ. He even shows a similar reverence to this object as he does the altar. In the 1962 Missal, “at the end of the Gospel, the priest lifts the Missal with both hands, and bows to kiss it where he signed the cross, saying the Per evangélica dicta.” An almost identical rubric exists in the 1970 Missal: “He then venerates the book with a kiss, saying privately, Per evangelica dicta.” (GIRM, no. 175)

The beginning of the Roman Canon in the Gellone Sacramentary, ca. 780 AD (Folio 143v; Bibliothèque National de France; Département des Manuscrits, Latin 12048)

The Roman Missal--that is, the physical book itself--can therefore be studied as a sacred artifact. And one of the most distinctive features of this sacred artifact (besides, in my opinion, the margin tabs that help a priest turn pages without the use of his canonical digits) is the transformation of the first letter of the Roman Canon into a work of art. As we will see in an upcoming article, the Te in Te igitur is an address to the Father, but that did not stop the pious imagination from seeing that the first letter of the word resembles the cross of the Son and from depicting it as such. The earliest witness to this artistic tradition is from the Gellone Sacramentary, ca 780 A.D., but by the tenth century it was common and by the twelfth it had earned its own separate page. This separate page, which came to be known as the canon page, usually contained the finest illumination in the entire Missal and was often the object of the priest’s osculatory affection. We can tell from the wear-and-tear of several medieval manuscripts that some priests treated the Missal at the beginning of the Canon the same way they did at the end of the Gospel: moisture damage from thumbs and lips indicates that they lifted the book up and kissed the image of Christ’s crucified feet on the canon page.[1]

Opening of a missal at the Canon, Use of Utrecht, ca. 1400–1410 with added sections, Northern Netherlands. The Hague, Koninklijke Bibliotheek, Ms. 128 D 29, fols 128v-129r.

As for the rest of the text of the Canon, since the “T” had now taken on a life of its own and moved to another page, a new initial “T” was generated to replace it,[2] much like the eyes of St. Lucy or the breasts of St. Agatha. This new “T” was in a larger font than the rest of the text: to this day in typography, a “Canon” is “the largest size of type that has a name of its own.”[3]

In addition to its similarity in shape to the cross on Calvary, a “T” or “t” in the Roman alphabet resembles a Tau, the last letter of the Hebrew alphabet. Tau plays an important role in the Book of Ezekiel:

And the Lord said to him: “Go through the midst of the city, through the midst of Jerusalem: and mark Tau [in blood] upon the foreheads of the men that sigh, and mourn for all the abominations that are committed in the midst thereof….Utterly destroy old and young, maidens, children and women, but upon whomsoever you shall see Tau, kill him not, and begin ye at My sanctuary.” (Ezek. 9. 4, 6)

It is not difficult to see how Church Fathers like Jerome saw this chilling passage as a Passover-like type prefiguring the Elect whose foreheads are signed in the Book of Revelation. (see Rev. 7,3) In a homily at the Fourth Lateran Council in 1215, Pope Innocent III challenged all Catholics to make the Tau their own Passover, ending his exhortation with the stirring words: “Be champions of the Tau!”

One Catholic who took that challenge to heart was St. Francis of Assisi, who often signed his letters with a Tau. Today, it is a part of the Franciscan Coat of Arms.

The Franciscan Coat or Arms consists of a Tau with two crossed arms. The one with nail wounds represents Christ and the other St. Francis of Assisi, who bore the Stigmata.

One may therefore ruminate on the “T” that invokes the Father in the Te igitur as an emblem of the Tau that is the sign of His crucified Son, He who is also the last letter of the Greek alphabet, the Omega. (see Rev. 22,13)[4]

Official translations, of course, make this tradition difficult to maintain, not to mention the Novus Ordo’s plurality of Eucharistic Prayers (none of the new ones in Latin begin with the letter “T” except Eucharistic Prayer “On Reconciliation” II, which is as rare as hen's teeth).[5] ICEL’s original translation of Eucharistic Prayer I begins with us rather than God and with a “W” rather than a “T”: “We come to you, Father, with praise and thanksgiving…”[6] The 2011 ICEL translation is a marked improvement in both regards: “To you, therefore, most merciful Father, we make humble petition and prayer…”—even if the “T” is now only indirectly theocentric.[7] The problem could be solved with archaic English, such as “Thee, o most clement Father, do we humbly beseech and implore…” provided one does not mind the somewhat awkward syntax and the use of “thou.” Or, one can keep the artistic convention (as some well-made new Missals do) despite the disconnect between the image and the letter that follows it.

The Roman Missal: Deluxe Edition, 3rd ed. (Catholic Book Publishing, 2011)

Notes

[1] See Kissing: From Relics to Manuscripts.

[2] Josef Jungmann, S.J., The Mass of the Roman Rite: Its Origins and Development, vol. 2 (Benzinger Brothers, 1951), pp. 105-106. The development of this convention affected the world of printing

[3] American Dictionary of Printing and Bookmaking (New York: H. Lockwood, 1894), p. 79. The size varies according to nationality and system. In the United Kingdom, for example, a Canon is font size 48, while the same size in French is a Gros-Canon and in Germany a Kleine Missal.

[4] “Even the first letter of the Canon, in the Te igitur, recalls the mystical tau, which in the Old Testament was written with sacrificial blood upon the foreheads of those whom God wished to be preserved.” Michael Fiedrowicz, The Traditional Mass, trans. Rose Pfeifer (Angelico Press, 2020), 272.

[5] 2002 Missale Romanum, p. 681.

[6] 1985 Roman Missal, p. 542.

[7] 2011 Roman Missal, p. 635.

Defending So-Called Doublets by Understanding Parallelism

Symmetry like that of these towers in Paris is common to all works of art, musical, poetic, rhetorical, dance, etc. What is strange is not to have parallelism. Photo by Priscilla Fraire (source)

One of the pet peeves of the modern liturgists was what they liked to call “doublets,” namely, elements that seemed to them to be redundant or uselessly repetitious. Adhering to the odd belief of Romano Guardini that devotion is characterized by repetition but liturgy by linear singularity (see this lecture of mine for the relevant texts), they claimed after the Council that the Offertory rite needlessly and confusingly anticipated the Canon and therefore needed to be radically modified. As we all know, their solution was to jettison nearly all of the existing Offertory and replace it with a faux-Jewish workerist blessing of bread and wine.

It is hard to evade the impression that such reformers were like the Enlightenment and Victorian critics who complained of obscurities, infelicities, and improprieties in Shakespeare’s plays, and therefore felt themselves justified in diligently “correcting” them for modern readers. Looking back today, we can only marvel that otherwise literate and competent people should be so blind to the extraordinary perfection of the Bard’s works, as he achieved his goals with full mastery of materials.

In his superb book Forest of Symbols, Fr. Claude Barthe guides us to see the hardly accidental or incidental parallelism that exists between the Offertory of the Roman Rite and the Roman Canon. So far from this being an example of useless repetition or incoherent anticipation, it is a glowing example of how the liturgy proceeds by way of preparation, reinforcement, parallelism, building a system of cross-references that allow the fullest meaning to be grasped—much as men have two eyes and two ears in order to see and to hear a single reality better, or as a train rides on two parallel tracks in order to remain stable and not veer to the left or right. Indeed, just about every cognitive process involves multiple sources that are compared with and complete one another. What would be strange is reducing the approach to truth to a single line, unaccompanied and unrelational. Nor is it at all surprising that no divino-apostolic liturgical rite exhibits this rationalist flaw.

Let us consider the parallels in detail, quoting from Barthe, pp. 84–88.

Parallel #1

The Suscipe, sancte Pater,
hanc immaculatam hostiam…

(Receive, O holy Father, almighty, eternal God, this spotless host, which I, thine unworthy servant, do offer unto thee, my living and true God, for mine own countless sins, offences, and negligences, and for all here present; as also for all faithful Christians, living and dead, that it may avail for my own and for their salvation unto life eternal)

…corresponds to the Hanc igitur

(We therefore beseech thee, O Lord, to be appeased, and to receive this offering of our bounden duty, as also of thy whole household; order our days in thy peace; grant that we may be rescued from eternal damnation, and counted within the fold of thine elect) of the Canon and to the consecration of the Host (This is my Body). This Suscipe is particularly important for the development of the ultimate propitiatory purpose of the Mass: an oblation for the sins of the living and the dead with a view to their salvation.

Parallel #2

The Deus qui humanae and
the Offerimus, tibi, Domine, calicem salutaris…

(O God, who in creating human nature didst marvelously ennoble it, and hast still more marvelously reformed it; grant that, by the mystery of this water and wine, we may be made partakers of his divinity who vouchsafed to become partaker of our humanity, Jesus Christ, thy Son, our Lord… We offer unto thee, O Lord, the chalice of salvation, beseeching thy clemency, that it may rise up in the sight of thy divine majesty, as a savor of sweetness, for our salvation, and for that of the whole world)

…correspond to the consecration of the wine
(This is the chalice of my blood).

Deus, qui Humanae substantiae…is, as we have seen, an ancient prayer assigned by the sacramentaries to the feast of Christmas. It refers to the representation, by the admixture of the water to the wine, of the union of the faithful with Christ. It does no more than take up an allegory of the patristic period to which reference has already been made (“When the wine in the chalice is mixed with the water, the people is being united with Christ,” says St Cyprian), which in its turn depends for its authority at least on scriptural symbolism: “The waters that you saw. . . are peoples, and nations, and tongues” (Apoc. 17, 15). Attention is thus focused on the humanity of Christ and of the faithful united with him.

The text has not given an a posteriori allegorical explanation to the action, the admixture: on the contrary, it is a clear example of the allegorical meaning of the action explaining the choice of accompanying texts. In fact, the admixture is of immense theological importance. The decree of the Council of Florence (1438–1445) relating to the Armenians, who only acknowledged the one divine nature in Christ and who consecrated only wine, without the water that symbolizes Christ’s humanity, refers to the extreme appropriateness of the admixture, citing Apoc.17, 15.

To tell the truth, the allegory is double: in the Milanese and Carthusian rites the prayer also alludes to the water that issued from Christ’s side. In fact it is a triple allegory, if we take account of St Thomas Aquinas, who in addition to a historical reason gives three mystical reasons for the mixing of wine and water in the chalice, of which the first two have just been mentioned: as a representation of the Passion, with the water and the Blood flowing from Christ’s open side (in the Carthusian Offertory, the priest says, “From the side of Our Lord Jesus Christ flowed Blood and water for the redemption of the world”); as a symbol of the union of the people with Christ; but also, as a demonstration of the effect of the sacrament, namely entry into eternal life, represented by the water that quenches every thirst (John 4, 13-14).

Parallel #3

The prayer using the royal “we,” and the invocation, which derive from Gallican missals:

In spiritu humilitatis…
Veni, sanctificator…

(In a humble spirit, and a contrite heart, may we be received by thee, O Lord; and may our sacrifice so be offered up in thy sight this day that it may be pleasing to thee, O Lord God… Come, O thou who makest holy, almighty, eternal God and bless this sacrifice, prepared for thy holy name)

correspond to the epiklesis,
Supplices te rogamus…

(We most humbly beseech thee, Almighty God, to command that these things be borne by the hands of thy holy angel to thine altar on high, in the sight of thy divine majesty, that as many of us as, at this altar, shall partake of and receive the most holy Body and Blood of thy Son, may be filled with every heavenly blessing and grace)

For all that, it does not seem that the sanctificator invoked here is specifically intended as the Person of the Holy Spirit. Moreover, contrary to the usual opinion, the notion of an epiklesis (a request, accompanied by a deep bow, that the power of God may descend or that the sacrifice may be raised up to him) does not necessarily imply an entreaty to the Holy Spirit.

Parallel #4

Psalm 25, 6-12,

Lavabo inter innocentes manus meas…

(I wash my hands among the innocent . . . Destroy not my soul with the wicked, O God: nor my life with men of blood. In whose hands are iniquities: their right hand is filled with gifts. But I have walked in mine innocence . . . My foot hath stood in the straight way: in the churches I will bless thee, O Lord), which accompanies the washing of his hands by the celebrant, and has given its name to the action,

prepares us for the
Nobis quoque peccatoribus…

(To us sinners, also, thy servants, hoping in the multitude of thy mercies, vouchsafe to grant some part and fellowship with the holy apostles and martyrs…into whose company we pray thee admit us, not considering our merit, but of thine own free pardon).

“Wash yourselves, be clean,” says Isaiah (1, 16). According to liturgical historians, this washing of hands may have been mystical from the very beginning. If not, it could be more plausibly linked to the solemn censing than to the ancient oblation of the people: St Cyril of Jerusalem (c. 315–386) had already noted that those who had to wash their hands did not have a share in the receiving of the oblations.

This washing of the hands, it seems, was already present in the pontifical Mass of the fifth and sixth centuries, and was at the same point in the Mass as it is today. The priest who is going to offer the sacrifice washes his hands, symbolizing his deeds, to indicate that he must wash and purify his conscience of evil deeds with the tears of penitence and compunction, according to the verse, “Every night I will wash my bed: I will water my couch with my tears” (Ps. 6, 7).

Parallel #5

The last great prayer of the Offertory,

Suscipe, sancta Trinitas,…
ob memoriam passionis, resurrectionis, et ascensionis…

(Receive, O Holy Trinity, this offering, which we make to thee, in remembrance of the Passion, Resurrection, and Ascension of our Lord Jesus Christ, and in honor of blessed Mary ever virgin, of blessed John the Baptist, of the holy apostles Peter and Paul, of these and of all the saints: that it may avail to their honor and our salvation: and may they vouchsafe to intercede for us in heaven, whose memory we celebrate on earth)

highlights the finality of the sacrifice. It is an anamnesis (remembrance, recollection), like that in the Canon,

Unde et memores…

(Wherefore, O Lord, we thy servants, as also thy holy people, calling to mind the blessed passion of the same Christ thy Son our Lord, and also his rising up from hell, and his glorious ascension into heaven, do offer unto thy most excellent majesty, of thine own gifts bestowed upon us…).

But the prayer also recalls the

Communicantes
with its roll call of the saints

(Communicating, and reverencing the memory, first, of the glorious Mary, ever a Virgin, Mother of our Lord Jesus Christ; likewise of thy blessed apostles and martyrs, Peter and Paul, Andrew, James…and of all thy saints; by whose merits and prayers grant that in all things we may be guarded by thy protecting help).

It is a prayer addressed to the Holy Trinity, even though the Canon, like every Eucharistic prayer, is addressed to the Father. Latinists will note that in the oldest missals the more classical form in honore with the ablative was used (beatae Mariae semper Virginis et…) rather than in honorem with the accusative, an effect heightened by the fact that an ad honorem (ut illis proficiat ad honorem) follows. In honore is equivalent to in veneratione, in honore sanctorum, and makes us think of the “in honore deorum,” the feast day of the gods in old Latin. We may also note that the progression illis ad honorem…nobis ad salutem…; intercedere in caelis…quorum memoriam agimus in terris is an interesting imitation in the Latin of the High Middle Ages of the measured parallelisms of the Latin of Late Antiquity.

Parallel #6

Orate, fratres…

(Brethren, pray that my sacrifice and yours may be acceptable to God the Father Almighty. May the Lord receive the sacrifice at thy hands, to the praise and glory of his name, to our benefit, and to that of all his holy church)

…recalls the prayer
Quam oblationem of the Canon

(Which offering do thou, O God, vouchsafe in all things, to bless, consecrate, approve, make reasonable and acceptable)

Fiat acceptabile— facere acceptabilem, that the sacrifice that is offered may be judged acceptable by God himself so that he can receive it. The theology is admirable, and again reveals the rigorous precision of Rome’s lex orandi.

But this Orate, fratres is above all a greeting, like Dominus vobiscum: the priest kisses the altar and extends his hands as a sign of peace. It can thus be a sort of blessing by the priest who is going to offer the sacrifice: we will note, in fact, that the double idea of an acceptable sacrifice and of an offering by the celebrant on behalf of those in whose name he is making the offering reappears in Placeat tibi, sancta Trinitas… (May the homage of my service be pleasing to thee, O holy Trinity; and grant that the sacrifice which I, though unworthy, have offered in the sight of thy majesty, may be acceptable to thee: and through thy mercy win forgiveness for me and for all those for whom I have offered it), the other apologia that precedes the final blessing.

Now, for the Orate, fratres the celebrant turns round in a complete circle, in a movement that is identical to that of the final blessing. Finally, we must remember that at the end of the silent prayer of the Offertory (representing the silent prayer of Christ in the Garden of Gethsemane), the priest’s invitation to the ministers to pray before entering on the sacrifice echoes that of Christ to his disciples at Gethsemane: “Pray, lest ye enter into temptation” (Luke 22, 40).

*   *   *

Fr. Barthe proceeds to show that the many other “doublets” of the Roman Rite are equally carefully contrived to bring out the fullest depth of theological meaning, even as the equivalent doublets in the Byzantine rite are. Barthe helps us to see, from new perspectives, the profound analogies between East and West that the liturgical reform almost obliterated and that the Roman Rite in its classical integrity preserves as a witness to catholicity.

Did not all these rites take their cue from the very Word of God, in which repetition and parallelism are key features? Hebrew poetry cannot be understood at all unless one grasps its use of parallel phrases that echo one another in a sort of conceptual rhyme. And who could forget the thunderous verse of the prophet Jeremiah: “Trust not in lying words, saying: The temple of the Lord, the temple of the Lord, it is the temple of the Lord” (Jer. 7, 4). It’s not enough to have a consecrated building; one must live as a consecrated people, receiving humbly and gratefully all that the Lord wishes to give. It’s not enough to have a “valid rite”; one must have the fullness of tradition, which is the fullness of validity: valid from and for a people the Lord has made His own, in a love announced, anticipated, achieved, fulfilled, and renewed.

Photo by Jan Canty (source)

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On the Christ-Angel of the Roman Mass

The Ascension of Christ, Mirozhsky Monastery, Pskov

In Fr. Claude Barthe’s remarkable book A Forest of Symbols: The Traditional Mass and Its Meaning (Angelico Press, 2023, reviewed here), we are introduced early on to the allegorical understanding of Christ as an “Angel,” that is, a messenger and mediator, in keeping with the Septuagint’s use of the phrase “Angel of the Great Counsel” in Isaiah 9:6. Speaking of the Asperges, Fr Barthe says:

The aspersion itself, which follows when the ministers have entered the church, is really a combination of blessing and exorcism, almost a domestic rite. It resembles the aspersions seen in monasteries when a tour was made of the cloister, or the individual cells were visited. The final prayer of this ceremony, Exaudi nos, Domine . . . (Hear us, O holy Lord, almighty Father, eternal God: and vouchsafe to send thy holy angel from heaven, to guard, cherish, protect, visit, and defend all that dwell in this house), which is that of the blessing prescribed by the Ritual when the priest blesses a house as he enters it to carry out a ceremony, refers to the habitaculum, the house where one lives, for which one requests a visit from the Angel of God. This is also a first reference to “the Angel of God,” that is, to Christ himself, who is asked to come down to this place… There is a link between this water and the Blood of Christ, since immersion in the waters of baptism represents in reality immersion in the cistern of Christ’s propitiatory Blood. (36)

Later, speaking of the rite of incensation, Fr. Barthe comments:

The humanity of Jesus Christ, consumed (or consummated, as the classical writers used to say) in the sacrifice, lifts his prayer up to the Father, the only prayer that the Father finds acceptable, to which are joined the prayers of the saints, thrown like grains of incense into the burning furnace of love of Christ’s holy soul…. [T]he Angel of the Apocalypse (Rev 8:3–4)…draws near to the altar and offers the incense with the prayers of the saints… This Angel is, of course, Christ himself, and his golden censer (or scoop) is his precious humanity: “Let my prayer be directed as incense in thy sight; the lifting up of my hands, as evening sacrifice” (Ps 140:2). (41)

Concerning the incensation at the offertory, he develops the point further:

Of course, the offering of incense at the altar also symbolizes the Angel who stood beside the altar of the Temple, holding in his hand the censer from which the smoke of the incense rose in the presence of the Lord (Rev 8:3–4). This angel is compared to St Michael, but above all reflects Christ, the Angel of Great Counsel, offering his own immaculate flesh, full of the fire of the Holy Spirit, to the Lord on our behalf on the altar of the Cross, in the odor of sweetness. The smoke of the incense gives material expression, in some way, along with the prayer of Christ, to the prayers of his saints. (91–92)

Then comes the most mysterious angel of all, the one mentioned in the “communion epiklesis” of the Roman Canon, the Supplices te rogamus:

We most humbly beseech thee, almighty God, to command that these things be borne by the hands of thy holy angel to thine altar on high, in the sight of thy divine majesty, that as many of us as, at this altar, shall partake of and receive the most holy Body ✠ and ✠ Blood of thy Son may be filled with every heavenly blessing and grace, through the same Christ our Lord. Amen.

On which Fr. Barthe observes:

There have been many discussions of the identity of the “Angel.” Durandus wrote, “He is the Angel of Great Counsel, the Counsellor on whose advice the Father created and recreated the world,” otherwise known as Christ-Wisdom, the Word incarnate. But he adds that the altar on high in the presence of God is also the crucified Christ sitting in glory at the right hand of the Father. The Angel brings these “sacraments” to this altar, revealing his wounds, and interceding for us who bring the sacraments to fulfilment on earth. Olier and Pierre Lebrun take a similar view. It is worth noting that the De Sacramentis refers to angels in the plural (per manus angelorum tuorum) rather than the singular, which would not contradict the idea of a “communion epiklesis,” but would prevent identification of the angels with Christ. St Thomas Aquinas, who thinks that the Angel can be compared to Christ, derives the following mystical etymology: the Mass, missa, takes its name from the fact that, through the Angel, the priest sends (mittit) his prayers to God, or again because Christ is the approved victim sent (missa) to us. All of which underlines that the meaning of the prayer Supplices te rogamus is at the heart of this oblation of the holy victim, which we know as the Canon, and is therefore also at the heart of the whole celebration. (117–18)

The Christological interpretation is classic and theologically attractive.

However, if we take the other interpretation, namely, that the angel who is tasked with bringing our offering before God is a reference to the created angel depicted in the book of Revelation as bringing the prayers of the saints before God, we can see some neat things about the Canon.

Note, first, how differently the Canon handles angels and saints. We ask to be admitted to the saints’ company, and we offer the Mass to their honor and remembrance, and we ask that they pray for us, but we never explicitly ask them to do the one thing the angel does: offer the Mass to God. In fact, the saints are never described as worshipping God (of course they do worship God—I’m just talking about what the text explicitly says). But the one other time angels are mentioned in the Canon lines up perfectly with the task of this angel of Revelation: the Preface describes the angels—above all, the cherubim and the seraphim—as ceaselessly worshipping God.

All of this suggests to me that, as the angels are by their very nature the mediators between God and men, so are they by their very nature the ones who would mediate even our prayers to God. The saints have joined the angels by grace, to be sure, but grace has not simply abolished the difference in nature between human souls and angelic choirs. The Mass seems to nod to this difference by a selectivity of description: saints do worship God ceaselessly, but that is not the role assigned them in the text of the Canon; angels do pray for us, but that is not the role assigned to them in the Canon. Rather, the angels are the primordial divine attendants; the saints are those who have joined the angels; and we hope to join the saints.

Because we are speaking of the Canon, allow me to mention one last beautiful subtlety: the sudden shift in prayer after the consecration. Up to that point, all prayer is directed to the Father through the Son in the Holy Spirit; but after that point, prayer is consistently directed to the Son directly—and naturally enough, because THERE HE IS. Before the consecration, all prayer is shaped by the mystery of the Trinity; after the consecration, prayer is shaped by the Incarnation. In this way, the form of the prayer reflects the great mystery of God’s inner life piercing into our world of space and time through the Son taking on flesh.

Leaf from a Beatus manuscript: the Opening of the Fifth Seal (1180), Spanish, from the Met collections

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What They Requested, What They Expected, and What Happened: An Addendum, from Pope Paul VI

Cardinal Montini, in favour of keeping
the Roman Canon in Latin

As an addendum to Dr Kwasniewski's excellent translations a couple of days ago of what the Fathers of the Second Vatican Council requested and expected would happen with regards to the use of vernacular languages in the Mass, I thought I would add something else from the conciliar Acta that NLM readers (and others) may find of interest.

This particular extract comes from the meetings of the Central Preparatory Commission (CPC) of Vatican II, which met over seven sessions held between June 1961 and June 1962. The CPC was the body that was responsible for discussing and refining the schemata drafted by the various preparatory commissions, and which were due to be put before the Council at its first session. The draft Constitution on the Liturgy was discussed by the CPC at its fifth session (26 March to 3 April 1962). Among its members was the Archbishop of Milan, one Giovanni Battista Cardinal Montini, who would be elected Pope Paul VI in 1963, and had the following to say about the use of the vernacular in the Mass (my translation: Montini's own emphases are in italics; my emphasis is in bold):

The Latin language, proper to the Roman Rite, must be preserved, for multiple and serious reasons, frequently confirmed by the Church.

But this statement does not invalidate the other, expressed several times, even publicly from the first speakers in this group or heard from the Commission of the Ecumenical Council, that is, “language is not to be attributed as among the first elements of religion (it is not ‘of the essence of religion’, as the philosophers say), even if one and the same language is a clear sign of unity and an effective instrument for the accurate transmission of truth.”

Do we not see the grave and ultimate loss that is imminent? If the common language is excluded from the sacred Liturgy, we will certainly miss the best opportunity to instruct the faithful, to restore divine worship… indeed, this [missed opportunity] happens because of reasons that are not pertinent to ‘the substance of religion’!

The proper or common language of each nation must be used:

In the first part of the Mass (the Liturgy of the word, as it is called): whether in the oration (Collect), because according to the thinking of Saint Paul, the word “Amen” demands the understanding of the people; or in the Introit, since this announces the mystery to be celebrated; or in the Epistle and Gospel, as is clear; or in the Profession of Faith (Creed), which best concludes the teaching of either the Prophet or Apostle or Christ or the Church; or in the oration at the Offertory [i.e. the secret/super oblata], as this is the most excellent invocation of the whole community, already used since the second century of the Christian era, and which provides an opportunity to declare the “intention of the sacrifice”.

In the rest of the Mass, the Latin language will be kept, except perhaps for the Lord’s Prayer (Our Father), which is, as it were, the summit of public prayer, and is the best preparation of souls for Communion.

Even in hymns (cf. Saint Paul), the common language should be used, so that the people can understand their poetry and beauty, and may be easily lifted up to God.

And the Latin text of his intervention at the CPC meeting:

[Lingua latina servanda est ut romani ritus propria, ob multiplices gravesque causas, saepius ab Ecclesia confirmatas.

Sed hoc enuntiatum alterum non infirmat enuntiatum quad saepius, etiam coram Consilio primario seu hac Commissione Oecumenici Concilii audivimus, nempe « linguam non esse inter prima religionis elementa adscribendam (non esse “de essentia religionis”, ut philosophi aiunt), etiamsi una eademque lingua clarum sit signum unitatis atque efficax instrumentum ad veritates accurate tradendas ».

An grave extremumque damnum quad imminet non videmus? Si lingua vulgaris a sacra Liturgia excluditur, optima certe omittitur occasio populum recte instituendi, divinum cultum restaurandi… et hoc quidem fit ob causas quae « ad substantiam religionis » non pertinent!

Lingua uniuscuiusque gentis propria seu vulgaris est adhibenda: In priore Missae parte (Liturgia, ut dicitur, verbi): sive in Oratione (Collecta), quia ex sententia Sancti Pauli, verbum « Amen » exigit ut populus intellegat; sive in Introitu, quippe qui mysterium celebrandum nuntiat; sive in Epistola et in Evangelio, ut patet; sive in Fidei Professione (Credo), quae doctrinam vel Prophetae vel Apostoli vel Christi vel Ecclesiae optime concludit; sive in Oratione ad Offertorium, utpote quae excellentissima totius communitatis sit deprecatio, iam inde a saeculo secundo aevi christiani adhibita, atque occasionem praebeat « intentionem sacrificii » declarandi.

In reliqua Missae parte sermo latinus servetur, excepta fortasse Oratione Dominica (Pater Noster), quae veluti culmen publicae deprecationis est animasque ad Communionem optime parat.

Etiam in canticis (cf. Sanctus Paulus) usurpetur sermo vulgaris ut populus, eorum poësin ac venustatem intellegendo, ad Deum facile elevetur.] (ADP II.3, pp. 86-87)

Pope Paul VI, after he had changed his mind and
decided to "sacrifice" the Latin language 

Readers may also find Cardinal Montini's intervention at the Council itself of interest (AS I.1, pp. 313-316), as it strikes very similar notes to what he had said at the CPC (and, incidentally, in his pre-conciliar votum: ADA II.3, pp. 374-381):

[E]specially when it comes to the language to be used in worship, the use of the ancient language handed down by our forefathers, namely, the Latin language, should for the Latin Church be firm and stable in those parts of the rite which are sacramental and properly and truly priestly. This must be done so that the unity of the Mystical Body at prayer, as well as the accuracy of the sacred formulas, is religiously observed. However, as far as the people are concerned, any difficulty in understanding can be removed in the didactic parts of the sacred Liturgy, and the faithful also given the opportunity to express in comprehensible words their prayers, in which they call upon God. (General Congregation IV, 22 October 1962; my emphasis)

[Latin: [M]axime cum agitur de lingua in cultu adhibenda, usus linguae antiquae et a maioribus traditae, videlicet linguae latinae pro Ecclesia latina, firmus sit ac stabilis in iis partibus ritus quae sunt sacramentales ac proprie vereque sacerdotales. Hoc ideo fieri debet, ut unitas Corporis Mystici orantis accuratio sacrarum formularum religiose serventur. Tamen ad populum quod attinet, quaevis difficultas intelligendi auferatur in partibus didacticis sacrae Liturgiae, ac detur fidelibus quoque facultas exprimendi verbis comprehensibilibus preces suas, quas Deo adhibent.]

That the man who would become Paul VI later allowed the entire Mass, even the Canon, to be celebrated in the vernacular, jettisoning Latin as antithetical to the "understanding" and "participation" of the faithful (see his General Audience of 26 November 1969) – contrary to the intentions of the Council Fathers and contrary to his own thoughts just a few years prior – is a tragedy from which the Church is, sadly, still reaping the so-called 'rewards'.

For those who wish to read the Acta of Vatican II for themselves to see what the intentions of the Council Fathers actually were, as opposed to what the partisan defenders of the post-conciliar liturgical reforms frequently tell us they were, 54 of the 62 volumes (along with 2 of the 4 supplementary volumes) at the time of writing are freely available online here.

What They Requested, What They Expected, and What Happened: Council Fathers on the Latin Roman Canon

I’ve heard it said many times that in the mid-1960s, the Vatican was telling people that the Roman Canon would remain fixed, in Latin — and, only a short while later, brand new Eucharistic Prayers were rolled off the assembly line and the vernacular was allowed, if not virtually required. I was reminded of the subject by a post in which Fr. Hunwicke writes about Fr. Bryan Houghton’s Unwanted Priest:

Fr Houghton thought of retiring in 1964, when people started tampering with the Mass. “But I decided against [it]: the 1964 Mass had not touched the Canon — which in theory remained silent and in Latin. It was still possible to say the 1964 Mass with a certain amount of devotion. However, I wrote to the bishop handing in my resignation the day on which the Canon of the Mass was touched. He wrote back a charming letter in which he says: ‘Nobody intends to reform the Canon,’ and that ‘the bishops are there precisely to preserve it.’ Poor, dear Bishop! Little did he know what was going to happen.” Yet Bishop Leo Parker had attended all four sessions of the Council; if even he failed to realise the plots that were being hatched...

Re-reading this anecdote reminded me that I have always wanted to find out more about the bait-and-switch that occurred at and shortly after the Second Vatican Council. So I asked our resident expert on all things conciliar, Matthew Hazell, and he supplied me with the raw data that has been turned into this post (so, thank you Matthew!). You can blame any errors in the translations from Latin on me, as I quickly translated all of them for this post.

Although Matthew and I have not been able to source an official Vatican text that says, in the mid-1960s, that the Canon would remain fixed and in Latin, a substantial body of evidence exists in the Acta of Vatican II that certainly seems to indicate that such a guarantee was understood to be in place. Moreover, in the pre-conciliar vota (that is, the lists of desiderata sent in by bishops from all over the world, talking about what they’d like to see considered at the council), it is striking that even bishops who were happy for the entire Mass to be in the vernacular expressly exclude the Roman Canon. Mentions of the use of the vernacular in the Mass are either in connection with only the Mass of the Catechumens (referred to numerous times as the “teaching part of the Mass” or similar), or come with an “except the Canon” clause, as the following abundant examples demonstrate.

This evidence, taken together with my earlier article “The Council Fathers in Support of Latin: Correcting a Narrative Bias,” is more than sufficient to show that certain figures at the Vatican today are… how shall we say this politely?... telling fibs about Vatican II and the modest liturgical reform that was desired and agreed to.

ADA II.1

+ Leo Pietsch (aux. Seckau, Austria)

[100] De liturgia divina celebranda facultative in lingua vernacula, Sanctae Missae Canone excepto.

[That a faculty should be given for celebrating the divine liturgy in the vernacular, with the exception of the holy Canon of the Mass.]

+ Jean-François Cuvelier, C.Ss.R. (tit. Circesium) [Vicar Apostolic of Matadi, Belgian Congo (independent since 1960, known as Democratic Republic of the Congo since 1997)

[134] Petitur ut ordinariis concedatur facultas permittendi usum linguae vernaculae in missa, saltem pro prima parte i. e. usque ad Canonem, deinde etiam a « Pater noster » usque ad ultimum evangelium inclusive.

[A request is made that a faculty be conceded to ordinaries for permitting the use of the vernacular language in the Mass, at least for the first part, that is, up to the Canon, and then from the Lord’s Prayer up to the last Gospel inclusive.]

+ Félix-Marie-Honoré Verdet (aux. Nice, France)

[496] Optabile est, mea quidem sententia, ut in priore parte Missae sermo patrius amplitudine maiore fruatur, secluso omnino Canone. Epistula et Evangelium praecipue voce magna atque solemniter pronuntientur ea lingua quam fideles multo facilius intelligunt (translatio enim lectionum, ut opinor, tantam vim non habet ut loco usus patrii sermonis esse valeat).

[It would be choiceworthy, in my opinion, that in the first part of the Mass the local language enjoy a greater amplitude, altogether excluding the Canon. The Epistle and Gospel especially should be pronounced solemnly with a loud voice in that language that the faithful can most understand (for a {printed} translation of the reading, in my view, doesn’t have so much force that it prevails over the use of the local language {proclaimed}).]

ADA II.2

+ Patrick Collier (Ossory, Ireland)

[93] Ad fructuosiorem participationem fidelium in sacrificio Missae, nobis videtur esse necessarium habere usum pleniorem linguae vernaculae: id est omnia ante et post Canonem Missae in lingua vernacula, Canon Missae semper in lingua Latina.

[For a more fruitful participation of the faithful in the sacrifice of the Mass, it seems to us necessary to have a fuller use of the vernacular language: that is, everything before and after the Canon of the Mass in the vernacular language, but the Canon of the Mass always in Latin.]

+ Francisco Maria da Silva (aux. Braga, Portugal)

[625] [I]n administratione sacramentorum ac sacramentalium imo in Sancti Sacrificii Missae celebratione, excepto Canone, lingua vulgari uti possit.

[In the administration of sacraments and sacramentals as well as in the celebration of the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass — with the exception of the Canon — the common language can be used.]

+ Jacques Mangers, S.M. (Oslo, Norway)

[637] Etiam aliae quaestiones vere actuales examinandae sunt, v. g. usus linguae vernaculae in functionibus liturgicis, etiam, in celebratione Missae, Canone excepto…

[Other current questions, too, should be truly examined, e.g., the use of the vernacular language in liturgical functions, even in the celebration of the Mass, except for the Canon.]

Stefan Cardinal Wyszynski

++ Stefan Cardinal Wyszynski (Warsaw, Poland)

[677] Inter primaria media ad protegendam participationem fidelium in sacrificio Missae adhiberi potest introductio linguae vernaculae ad stabiles partes Missae ante Offertorium scilicet ad Gloriam, Lectionem, Evangelium et Credo. Reliquae partes Missae, praesertim in Canone, latine recitandae sunt.

[Among the foremost means for promoting the participation of the faithful in the sacrifice of the Mass may be advanced the introduction of the vernacular language to the stable parts of Mass prior to the Offertory, namely, the Gloria, the Lesson, the Gospel, and the Creed. The remaining parts of the Mass, especially the Canon, should be recited in Latin.]

+ Wacław Majewski (aux. Warsaw, Poland)

[706] Ad augendam activam participationem fidelium in Missae Sacrificio videtur mihi Gloria, Credo, Lectio et Evangelium in lingua [707] vernacula inducendum esse, lingua latina tantum in Canone necnon in mutabilibus Missae partibus esse servanda.

[For increasing the active participation of the faithful in the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass it seems to me that the Gloria, Creed, Lesson, and Gospel should be done in the vernacular language, while the Latin language ought to be preserved only in the Canon as well as in the changeable parts of the Mass.]

ADA II.3

+ Guido Maria Mazzocco (Adria, Italy)

[22] Pars Missae quae elata voce a Sacerdote legitur, praesertim illa quae didactica dicitur, lingua vulgari, legenda, meo iudicio, videtur, ita ut omnes dare intelligant, sicut antiquo tempore intelligebant. Unica lingua latina, ubique terrarum, servari poterit [23] in Canone. Tali modo populus in divinis rebus, maxime animae necessariis, extraneus non teneretur.

[The part of the Mass that is read by the priest in an elevated voice, especially those that are called instructional, should be read in the vulgar tongue, in my judgment, so that all may understand, just as they understood in ancient times. One single Latin language, everywhere in the world, ought to be retained in the Canon. In such a way the people may not be bound by what is extraneous in divine things that are most necessary for the soul.] 

+ Giuseppe Bonacini (Bertinoro, Italy)

[105] De S. Missae Sacrificio: S. Missae Sacrificium ad pristinam simplicitatem reddatur, quo populus id altius intelligere et scienter participari possit. Quam ob rem lingua latina in Missa tantum quae dicitur «fidelium», vel potius in solo Canone servetur.

[The Holy Sacrifice of the Mass should be brought back to its pristine simplicity, by which the people may be able more deeply to understand it and knowingly participate. Nevertheless the Latin language should be kept in the Mass only for the part called “the Mass of the faithful,” or rather, for the Canon alone.] 

+ Danio Bolognini (Cremona, Italy)

[241] In Rituali et Pontificali linguae vernaculae usum augere, eo tamen modo ut lingua latina in formulis Sacramentorum et in S. Missae Canone retineatur.

[Increase the use of the vernacular in the Ritual and the Pontifical, yet in such a way that the Latin language is retained in the formulas of the sacraments and in the Canon of Holy Mass.] 

+ Felicissimo Stefano Tinivella, O.F.M. (Diano-Teggiano, Italy)

[247] Lingua vulgaris in Sacramentorum administratione et functionibus sacris, in Missa extra Canonem, imponatur ut christifideles vitaliter intersint.

[The vulgar tongue should be imposed in the administration of the sacraments and sacred functions, and in the Mass apart from the Canon, so that the faithful may be more vitally involved.] 

++ Angelo Paino (Messina, Italy)

[373] Servata lingua latina in canone Missae et in essentialibus relate ad sacramentorum collationem, optandum videtur ut partes quae ad fidelium instructionem sunt, lingua patria legantur eo fine ut populus attente et digne participet. Pari ratione revisenda videntur caeremoniae et ornamenta ecclesiastica quae non cohaerent nostrae aetatis exigentiis spiritualibus.

[The Latin language being preserved in the Canon of the Mass and in the essentials relating to the conferral of the sacraments, it seems better that the parts that are for the instruction of the faithful should be read in the local language so that the people may participate more attentively and worthily. For the same reason, it seems that the ecclesiastical ceremonies and ornaments ought to be revised which no longer conform to the spiritual needs of our times.]

+Paul Yoshiyuki Furuya

ADA II.4

+ Paul Yoshiyuki Furuya (Kyoto, Japan)

[78] Exoptatur ut permittatur litare Sacrum in lingua vernacula, excepto Canone.

[It is greatly to be desired that the liturgy be offered in the vernacular language, except for the Canon.]

+ Lucas Katsusaburo Arai (Yokohama, Japan)

[90] De usu linguae vernaculae in tota Missa, canone excepto.

[On the use of the vernacular language in the whole Mass, except for the Canon.]

+ Ignatius Mummadi (Guntur, India)

[132] Nonne expedit uti lingua vulgari cuiuslibet regionis in Missa, exceptione facta evidenter de Canone?

[Would it not be profitable to use the vulgar tongue of whatever region in the Mass, with an obvious exception being made for the Canon?]

++ Joseph Mark Gopu (Hyderabad, India)

[134] Usus linguae regionalis in prima parte S. Missae augeri potest, praesertim quoad epistolam et evangelium sed non in Canone Missae.

[The use of the regional language in the first part of the Holy Mass can be increased, especially as to the epistle and Gospel, but not in the Canon of the Mass.]

+ Antony Padiyara (Ootacamund, India)

[184] Valde suadendum est omnes partes Missae excepto tamen Canone, lingua vulgari recitari, eo fine ut fideles active participent.

[It is exceedingly recommended that every part of the Mass except the Canon be in the vulgar tongue, to the end that the faithful may actively participate.]

+ Jean-Rosière-Eugène Arnaud, M.E.P. (vic. ap. Thakhek, Laos)

[379] Pour le bien des fidèles on souhaiterait d’avoir la permission d’user de la langue qu’ils comprennent, en dehors du Canon ou au moins jusqu’à l’Offertoire.

[For the sake of the faithful it would be desirable to be allowed to use the language they understand, outside the Canon or at least until the Offertory.]

Pietro Maleddu, O.F.M. Conv. (ap. pref. Ankang, China)

[594] Lingua latina in Officio Divina et in toto Canone Missae, excepto «Paternoster», retineatur.

[The Latin language should be retained in the Divine Office and in the whole Canon of the Mass, with the exception of the Lord’s Prayer.]

+ Manuel António Pires

ADA II.5

+ Manuel António Pires (Silva Porto, Angola)

[126] 3. Usus linguae vernaculae in sacramentorum administratione, formula excepto. 4. Idem in celebratione sancti sacrificii Missae, Canone integro excepto. (Excepta tantum duplici consecratione?)

[3. The use of the vernacular language in the administration of the sacraments, except for the forms. 4. The same in the celebration of the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass, the entire Canon excepted.]

Continue Reading this Article. . .

Praying in the Same Words with which the Saints Prayed

A few of the many altar missals I had the chance to peruse in a monastery library...

The first level in being converted to taking Catholic liturgy seriously is what might be called the “smells and bells.” As rational animals who learn through our senses, we notice and appreciate beautiful vestments, furnishings, bells, incense, and music. These things are important: not only do their subtly instruct us as to what is going on and how we should respond to it, they also inoculate us against the errors of minimalism and spiritualism. We might call this “extrinsic maximalism.” It is sad to think that many, perhaps most, Catholics have never experienced it.

But, at times, the smells and bells can be largely absent without fatal results, as in a devout Low Mass. This helps us to see the second level of being converted to Catholic liturgy, namely, the integral, substantive, expressively adequate or even superabundant prayers and ceremonies contained in the traditional missal and required to be used. We might call this an “intrinsic maximalism” that should never be absent from the liturgy, no matter what the circumstances of its celebration — whether pontifical, solemn, sung, or low. This level bespeaks adherence to living tradition, belonging to a community stretching back 2,000 years (or even 3,000 if we take the Jewish roots into account: a truth of which the commemoration of the Holy Maccabees today reminds us), but extending also to the Church triumphant in heaven.

It is no small matter that we have the privilege of praying in the very same words as our predecessors. St. Mechtilde of Hackeborn (1240/41–1298), whose Liber specialis gratiae (Book of Spiritual Grace, which came into medieval England as Booke of Gostlye Grace) contains frequent and detailed visions springing forth from the Latin texts of the liturgy. The liturgy came alive before her as Christ enacted the meaning of the texts. At one point, describing a liturgy she beheld (“After this our Lord sang the Mass, dressed in a red chasuble and bishop’s trappings” [1]), Mectilde hears the Lord telling her:

You shall understand that when you say any psalm or prayer which any saints prayed when they were alive on earth, then all of those saints pray to me for you. Additionally, when you are in your devotions and speak with me, then all of the saints are joyful and worship and thank me. [2]

Dom Edouard Guillou, in his 1975 work Le livre de la messe: Mysterium fidei — Le texte de la messe de saint Pie V, with a foreword by Msgr. Marcel Lefebvre (repr. Paris: Éditions Fideliter, 1992), writes concerning the Roman Canon:

This main prayer of the Canon has been meditated by so many saints, murmured by so many priests, that it can not be compared to any other prayer. Keeping its original Latin form is the dazzling testimony of the necessary unity of the Roman Church in time and space. Its abandonment in practice would be an act of impiety. [3]

Fr. Joseph Kreuter, O.S.B., in the journal Orate Fratres of October 7, 1933, wrote:

Is it not a prolific source of devotion, of spiritual joy and consolation, to know that you are privileged to call holy Mass your own Sacrifice, to share in it with Christ and His ordained priest? Happy those who say those ancient and divinely inspired words together with the priest, for they thus become intimately united with the generations of Christians who have preceded them. For centuries the faithful have prayed those words. What emotions, what joys, what sentiments of praise, adoration, thanksgiving and expiation have found their expression in these prayers of the Missal! What torrents of grace and blessings, temporal and spiritual, have they drawn down from on High upon the faithful worshipers! [4]

Since we all know now, thanks to the groundbreaking work of Fr. Anthony Cekada and the even better scholarship of Matthew Hazell, that only 13% of the orations of the old missal made their way intact into the new missal — and therefore 87% of the verbatim prayer of the Roman Church prior to 1969 has been effectively canceled out — it is worth asking what are the cosmic, heavenly, eschatological, and ecclesiological implications of such memoricide, or, to use Guillou’s word, impiety. [5]

Msgr. James Byrnes, formerly of the archdiocese of New York, whose gradual discovery of tradition obliged him to grapple with the “Novus Ordo question,” resulting in his ultimately deciding to no longer celebrate the new rite, said in a talk he gave in 2014:

It was during the Prayers at the Foot of the Altar that the thought struck me. This was the Mass offered by those priest-saints I had read biographies of when I was young, particularly St. Isaac Jogues. I could and did imagine him standing before a crude altar in the wilds of Northern New York State, uttering these very same words. It was this overwhelming sense of continuity that stayed with me, this sense that I had never experienced during my twenty-one years of offering the Novus Ordo, and made me realize what had been stolen from myself and others of my generation. We had been the victims of spiritual identity theft and we hadn’t even realized it. That was the worst part. So much was taken from us and we didn’t know it. I can say definitively that that is the reaction of most folks my age (53, almost 54) and younger who still attend the Novus Ordo but sense something isn’t quite right. After experiencing the traditional Mass and beginning to fill in all the gaps of their spiritual life with tradition, all they can do is proclaim loudly, “We. Were. Robbed.” [6]

Prodigal Son (Rembrandt), Rijksmuseum

We can probe more deeply into the moral dimensions of this problem by reflecting on the fourth commandment: “Honor thy father and thy mother, that thou mayest have long life in the land that the Lord thy God will show thee.” Robert Spaemann once remarked: When we abandon the Roman Canon and the piety of our forefathers, how are we being obedient to this commandment in its ecclesial reality? We have not only biological fathers and mothers, but spiritual ones as well. In the words of the prophet Isaiah: “Our holy and our beautiful house, where our fathers praised thee, is burned up with fire: and all our pleasant things are laid waste” (Is 64:11).

By rejecting centuries of Catholic liturgy and devotion, the clergy involved in the liturgical reform of the 1960s and 1970s were, in essence, trash-talking their Mother. They were outrageously violating the fourth commandment: “Honor thy father [God in His Providence] and thy mother [the Church in her order of worship and her customs].” It was a sin of, and against, the spiritual paternity of the priest, who is supposed to pass on the family inheritance, the social and cultural life of the people — a transmission far more imporant than that of mere biological life.

What we do to, or with, our family inheritance shows what we think of our father and of our entire family. Whatever one might say about rococo churches or fiddleback chasubles, no one can deny that such things as Latin, Gregorian chant, and the eastward orientation are central, constitutive, and characteristic treasures of our patrimony. Therefore the proponents and adherents of the liturgical reform cannot escape culpability for the grave sins of patricide, matricide, pride, ingratitude, and contempt. These are the very same sins as those of the Prodigal Son — and they can be expiated, and their bitter fruits overcome, only in the same way: “Father, I have sinned against heaven [Providence] and against you [the Latin tradition]; I no longer deserve to be called your son. Take me on as one of your hired hands.” Take me on as a servant who will punctiliously serve the family once again and devote himself to its well-being.

In its spirit, certainly, the commandment to honor our father and mother carries implications in how we treat the ways of tradition and the teachings of our parents — not only our parents individually but also our forefathers collectively. The reward of faithfulness to the commandment is obvious: a clear sense of identity, a community life that is coherent and creative and reasonable. In treating respectfully the traditions (and hence the teachings!) of our ancestors, we take our place in the continuing dialogue that God started with mankind in our first parents. Even if the central portion of it was recorded in the Sacred Scriptures, the dialogue of love within the family of faith continues past the final page of Revelation and into the history of the Church, the Body of Christ. Faithfulness to the ecclesial fourth commandment lets God continue to develop the discussion, with all of its former exchanges presupposed; whereas lack of faithfulness causes a rupture and in some sense the discussion has to be started from scratch, in random bits and pieces, like rough and difficult side paths apart from the main highway. The fruits of rejecting the commandment are visible in the unraveling of a society, the waywardness and untetheredness and confusion of the younger generations.

There is no question that this is a difficult time for Catholics who love their faith and are concerned to serve a worthy liturgy, a Eucharistic liturgy faithful to the purpose and significance of the Mass. To achieve this we must follow the commandments of God in their individual, social, and ecclesial dimensions. We must abandon the impiety of rupture from the common voice of tradition and embrace anew the status of descendents, heirs, servants, and pupils.

NOTES

[1] Christian Gregory Savage, in his dissertation “Music and the Writings of the Helfta Mystics,” thesis for the Master of Music, Florida State University, 2012, p. 47.

[2] Cum autem psalmos aut aliquam orationem tuam Sancti in terris oraverunt legis, omnes Sancti pro te orant. Cum vero meditaris, vel mecum loqueris, omnes Sanct gaudentes me benedicunt. Liber 3:11, 210; in Savage, 53.

[3] Cette prière capitale du Canon a été méditée par tant de saints, murmurée par tant de prêtres, qu’elle ne peut être équiparée à aucune autre. Son maintien dans sa forme originale latine est le témoignage éclatant de l’unité nécessaire de l’Église romaine dans le temps et dans l’espace. Son abandon pratique serait une impiété.

[4] Text here.

[5] See “‘All the Elements of the Roman Rite’? Mythbusting, Part II.”

[6] Audio here.

How Do You Solve A Problem Like The Canon? (Part 2)

This is the second part of an article by a guest contributor on the attitudes of liturgists to the Roman Canon in the pre-Conciliar period; read the first part here. The fundamental question which he poses is one that requires an answer: if it was licit before the most recent ecumenical council to claim that the whole of the Roman Rite, including the very heart of it, the Canon, contained any number of grave defects, why is it not licit to make the same claim about the post-Conciliar rite?

Pre-Conciliar critiques

It is here important to note that critical evaluation of the Roman Canon specifically (and the entire Mass more generally) was not limited to the years following the conclusion of the Second Vatican Council. Indeed, in the decade before the council, scholars published numerous articles and books discussing the “problems of the missal”, the defects of the Mass and Canon, and proposing changes.

Article by Joseph A. Jungmann, SJ., published in Worship 28, No. 3 (February 1954). The article was a summary of a paper read by Jungmann at the “restricted” meeting of specialists at the Liturgical Movement congress in Lugano, Switzerland on September 14, 1953.

Additionally, hundreds of liturgical experts, clerics, and church officials from around the world regularly met at high profile conferences to make formal recommendations for liturgical changes that were then formally presented to the Holy See for consideration. The most famous of these international congresses were held at Maria Laach Abbey (1951), the Monastery of Mont Sainte-Odile (1952), Lugano, Switzerland (1953), Mont Cesar Abbey (1954), and Assisi, Italy (1956).

These conferences published extensive reports of their discussions and lists of resolutions for changes to the entire Mass, not just the Canon, and eventually almost all of these suggestions were realized. Some were acted upon by the Holy See before the Second Vatican Council (the reforms of Holy Week, the simplification of the rubrics and breviary, etc), and the rest were granted and exceeded in the creation of the new liturgy.

The list of proposed changes to the liturgy were widely discussed Catholic periodicals and newspapers. They also were used as the basis for book-length treatments which offered examples of what a future reformed liturgy could and should be. One example of such a work is Rev. H. A. Reinhold’s Bringing the Mass to the People of 1960.

Reinhold, whom McManus called one of the “prophets who have been proved right”, included the resolutions of Maria Laach, Sainte-Odile, and Lugano in the text of his book in an attempt to reassure his audience: “these resolutions were proposed to the Sacred Congregation of Rites, and are the basis of most of the suggestions in this book. We ask the readers to keep in mind, especially when this book seems bold or radical, that the company we are keeping consists of the cream of liturgical scholars.”

The importance and influence of these liturgical congresses cannot be overstated. Long before the Second Vatican Council, these clerics, laymen, and scholars engaged in systematic critical evaluation of the rituals of the Mass and the sacraments. They spoke and published openly, with imprimatur. They took pains to reiterate their fidelity to the Church and highlight how their suggestions and actions conformed to the current law of the church and the magisterium of each Pope of the preceding 50 years. Even without the urging of authoritative decrees of an ecumenical council, they were convinced that reform was needed and confidently petitioned the Pope to consider their requests.

Questions and challenges

We can see that the sentiments expressed by McManus, Vagaggini, and Ruff are essentially identical: the official decrees of the Second Vatican Council’s liturgical constitution gave the church a new set of principles for understanding the nature of the liturgy and the Church, which definitively revealed the defects of the Roman Canon and old form of the Mass.

This new teaching is not merely a deepening and forward-moving development, like a branch which sends forth new shoots as it matures and flourishes. Rather, it is literally superlative, standing above and outside of the preceding history of the liturgy and theology of the Church, and able to adjudicate retroactively in light of the new understanding.

All of this pre- and post-conciliar context helps to better illuminate Father Ruff’s theological assessment of the old Mass and similar discussions now taking place in the wake of Traditionis Custodes and subsequent decrees.

Returning to the commentary offered by Patrick Smith at the beginning, it does seem that these assertions raise certain basic questions that should be more fully explored:

1) How can the central and most sacral part of the western Church’s corporate worship, specifically attested to by the Fathers, unchanged and nearly universally used since 600 AD, now be said to have contained serious defects and limitations? How can an official text of the Roman liturgy which has existed in verifiable form since the late 4th century now be said to “sin in a number of ways” against guidelines which were promulgated nine days after the burial of John F. Kennedy?

2) It is the assessment of Father Ruff and others that the decrees of the Council legitimately developed the Church’s theological understanding of the liturgy in a way which allows this ex post facto judgment about the quality and nature of the previous rites. Does this mean it is possible that a future ecumenical council may do likewise and similarly result in revised sentiment concerning the rites published after 1964? If not, why not?

3) In the decades before the Council, it was officially permitted by the Church for laity and clerics alike to examine the historical development of the liturgy, the state of contemporary praxis, and the unique circumstances of the current year, and to formulate public proposals and petitions for alterations.

Given that this was permissible, and that it occurred without any new teaching drawn from conciliar decrees, does this mean that it is likewise licit in principle for similar groups (either now or in the future) to evaluate and propose corrections to a legitimately promulgated liturgical rite of the church even without the explicit prompting of a recent council or synod? If not, why not?

In his interview with America, Father Ruff emphasized his “concern for the good people who are affected by” the recent motu proprio, because he “sensed immediately that there would be a lot of hurt and anger and sadness and desperation” to follow.

I suggest that questions like these deserve a rigorous and honest discussion. We need earnest engagement about the theological underpinnings of these assessments (and their implications for understanding the past, present, and future of the liturgy) in the hopes of resolving confusion and avoiding worsening division about these most fundamental mysteries of the faith.