There have been many laws, decrees, constitutions and such in the Church’s long history which, without ever being formally revoked, simply faded into disuse and obscurity. Very often, it is impossible to say when such laws became dead letters. But in the case of Sacrosanctum Concilium, the Second Vatican Council’s constitution on the liturgy, we know the exact day on which it became a dead letter. That day was September 26, 1964, when the Sacred Congregation for Rites published the decree Inter Oecumenici, billed, falsely, as a step towards its implementation, but in reality, a guarantee that it would not be implemented, but rejected.
I say this because it was the decree that enshrined the celebration of the Mass versus populum. “The main altar should preferably be freestanding, to permit walking around it and celebration facing the people.” (parag. 91) The problem with this was not principally that it was based on an egregious scholarly error, one of many that marred the process of liturgical reform well before Vatican II was even thought of. It is rather that there is not one word of Sacrosanctum Concilium that hints in any way that this should be done, and yet it was done in the name of implementing said constitution. The document was signed by Giacomo Cardinal Lercaro (archbishop of Bologna, and an avowed liturgical revolutionary), the first president of the “Consilium ad exsequendam – the committee for implementing” SC. Its 2nd paragraph contains the statement that “(t)he Consilium … has promptly taken up its two appointed tasks: to carry out the directives of the constitution,” and yet it declared as “preferable” a novelty which the constitution in no way envisioned.
I have no doubt that this part of the post-Conciliar litany of failure is well-known to our readers. I repeat it nonetheless as a reminder of something essential, which I also stated in my recent assessment of the oddly forgetful liturgical memorandum shared by Cardinal Roche with his fellow Eminences during the recent consistory. The liturgical reform was not born out of Sacrosanctum Concilium, as was stated incorrectly in Pope Francis’ apostolic letter Desiderio desideravi (quoted by His Eminence). It was born out of the rejection of Sacrosanctum Concilium.
Enter Gianmarco Busca, who was appointed bishop of the northern Italian city of Mantua on June 3, 2016. By an interesting coincidence, this date is the anniversary of the death of Pope John XXIII, initiator of the Second Vatican Council, and one of the patron Saints of unintended consequences. After nearly ten years of his episcopate, His Grace has decided to involve his beautiful cathedral, which is dedicated to St Peter the Apostle, in a year-long pastoral “experiment”, to update the building to the “Conciliar (sic) liturgical reform.” These pictures were taken by a friend during a recent visit.
Here is the official explanation of it, posted on a placard in the cathedral.
Diocese of Mantua - Cathedral of St Peter the Apostle
Experimental interventions for updating to the conciliar liturgical reform.
“Dear pilgrim, tourist, or whoever you are. (This is just as weird and rude in Italian as it would be in any other language.)
As you enter this cathedral, you will find yourself a little disoriented compared with the traditional arrangement. In fact, you find yourself in a space that is hosting a process of liturgical updating, inspired by the criteria of Vatican II. ...
This important council in the 1960s dedicated one of its principal documents to the theme of the liturgy, as an expression of the Church’s highest prayer. This is the Constitution called Sacrosanctum Concilium.
In light of the criteria of the liturgical reform, a team of men and women, specialists, liturgists, and pastoral operators have worked together for months, with the goal of thinking up an effective way to re-order the liturgical space of the cathedral. The objective of their work has been to translate into the cathedral (n.b. here) the indications of the Council, the intent of which, we must not forget, is to favor the rediscovery of the deep sense of the liturgy, and the people of God’s participation in it.”
It goes on to explain that this is only an experiment, and the faithful will be invited to express their opinions of it, with a view to a more definitive project in the future. It also explained that these graceless wooden lumps squatting in the nave are “temporary models”, and that they were not expensive. But sadly, if past experience with these kinds of projects has taught us anything, we can guess that A. the project will be done as we see it here with some minor adjustment; B. the completely negative assessment which the ordinary faithful give of it will be ignored, and C., the permanent furnishing which are finally commissioned and installed will be just as ugly, and shockingly expensive.
On the rare occasions when I write about these kinds of things, I have been wont to use rhetorical phrases that begin with something like, “It hardly needs to be said…” or “It hardly bears repeating…” But in this case, it does need to be said, and it does bear repeating: this is a betrayal of what Sacrosanctum Concilium asked for, and has nothing to do with what the bishops at Vatican II asked for, or expected to come out of a reform of the liturgy.
I ended my previous commentary by stating that sooner or later, the Church is simply going to have to start asking itself a lot of hard questions about the failure of the post-Conciliar reforms. Since Pope Leo has determined that there will be now consistories on a regular basis, and since consistories are exactly the forum in which such questions are meant to be asked and answered, I make bold to formula one as follows:
More than six decades have passed since Sacrosanctum Concilium was issued, and bishops are still claiming to “implement Sacrosanctum Concilium” by doing something that it in no way envisioned, or even mentioned. Is there any realistic possibility left of untangling what that council actually said from these ubiquitous, willful falsehoods?
The answer, Your Eminences, is No. We pray that you will find the courage to recognize this, and act accordingly.
Some more pictures of the hitherto beautiful cathedral of Mantua, to cleanse your palate...
I am sure that by now, most of our readers have heard about the document circulated by His Eminence Arthur Cardinal Roche, prefect of the Dicastery for Divine Worship, during the recent consistory of all the cardinals called by Pope Leo. It was published yesterday on the Substack of Diane Montagna, who is also, I am sure, well-known to our readers as one of the best reporters on Church-related matters in Rome. Within a few hours of its publication, I had a message from Peter saying that it needs a thorough fisking; this was done immediately, and very ably, as always, by Fr Zuhlsdorf, and likewise, by Dr Gavin Ashenden and Dr Joseph Shaw. I thank them all for sparing me the necessity of doing it myself, and strongly recommend their commentary to all our readers.
But there are a few things about the text which I found striking, and on which I make bold to offer some commentary of my own.
The document begins with the general premise that “the history of the Liturgy ... is the history of its continuous ‘reforming’ in a process of organic development.” This is the kind of statement for which the legal term “suppressio veri” (suppression, i.e. omission or concealment, of something which is true) was invented. Because while it is true that there have been many reforms in the history of the liturgy, it is also true that the history of the liturgy is a history of strong continuity, as His Holiness Benedict XVI reminded us time and time again. And it was precisely the savage rupture in this continuity within the Roman Rite, brought about by the post-Conciliar reform, that moved him to issue Summorum Pontificum as a necessary step towards healing that rupture.
This, in turn, makes it very difficult to see how His Eminence can be correct when he states that “the use of the liturgical books that the Council sought to reform was, from St John Paul II to Francis, a concession that in no way envisaged their promotion.” Is it possible that His Eminence has wholly forgotten the reign of Pope Benedict XVI? (Prima facie, this seems unlikely, since it was the latter who appointed him to the Congregation, as it was then called, for Divine Worship.) Can he have wholly forgotten statements such as this one made by His Eminence Dario Cardinal Castrillon-Hoyos? who, as President of the Ecclesia Dei Commission, said in an address to the Latin Mass Society of England and Wales:
“(Summorum Pontificum) gives rights to the ordinary faithful and to priests which must be respected by those in authority. The Holy Father is aware that in different places around the world many requests from priests and lay faithful who desired to celebrate according to the ancient rites were often not acted upon. That is why he has now authoritatively established that to celebrate according to the more ancient form of the liturgy – the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass as well the sacraments and other liturgical rites – is a juridical right, and not just a privilege, accorded to all.
Certainly this must be done in harmony with both ecclesiastical law and ecclesiastical superiors, but superiors also must recognise that these rights are now firmly established in the law of the Church by the Vicar of Christ himself. It is a treasure that belongs to the whole Catholic Church and which should be widely available to all of Christ’s faithful. (my emphasis) This means that parish priests and bishops must accept the petitions and the requests of the faithful who ask for it and that priests and bishops must do all that they can to provide this great liturgical treasure of the Church’s tradition for the faithful.”
Cardinal Hoyos preaching during a Mass celebrated in the Sacrament chapel of St Peter’s Basilica in November of 2011.
Can His Eminence also have forgotten his predecessor-but-one in his current job, Antonio Cardinal Cañizares? who said, “Summorum Pontificum is of great value which we should all appreciate; it has not only to do with the liturgy, but with the whole of the Church’s being and what it means to tradition, without which the Church is converted into a changing human institution, and of course, also has an application to the reading and interpretation that is made of Vatican II.”
Can he have forgotten statements from Pope Benedict himself such as this one, that he issued Summorum Pontificum to favor “... the unity of the Church with itself, in its interior, with its past; that that which was holy for Her before should not be in any way an evil now”? How could this possibly be, if it were not his intention to promote the continued use of the traditional liturgy? Can he have forgotten that St John Paul II urged the bishops to a “wide and generous application” of the permission to celebrate the traditional liturgy under the Ecclesia Dei indult?
Perhaps he can, and far be it from me, of course, to suggest that His Eminence, in writing and circulating this document during a consistory, was trying to persuade his fellow Eminences of things he himself knows to be untrue. At the same time, as we pray that His Eminence recover from whatever injury or illness has compromised his memories of the previous pontificate but one, we may trust that such specific lapses of memory are rare, and it is unlikely that any other Eminences suffer from them.
This Ratzinger-specific lapse of memory would also explain how His Eminence has managed to forget the interview which he himself gave last year in which he repudiated TC, and admitted that Pope Benedict had been right all along. For example, he said (this is a direct quote), “There is nothing wrong with attending the Mass celebrated with the 1962 missal.” This was, of course, the very point which Pope Benedict himself made in his letter to the bishops of the world accompanying Summorum Pontificum, one of his most famous quotes, because one of his wisest: “What earlier generations held as sacred, remains sacred and great for us too.”
This repudiation of TC was, of course, hardly surprising, and not only because by March of last year, it was obvious that there would soon be a new sheriff in town. As His Eminence has cause to know better than most, from the day it came out, its apologists have struggled to explain why it was in any way necessary or beneficial to the Church. At the time of last year’s interview, he made no mention whatsoever of the original and unapologetically specious justification of it, the threat of a looming schism. In his telling, “(w)hat Pope Francis said in Traditionis Custodes is that (the traditional rite) is not the norm.” Again, this was the very same point that Pope Benedict himself had made by calling the traditional Roman Rite, “the Extraordinary Form.” And indeed, His Eminence downplayed the problem of the supposedly looming schism by stating that “The numbers devoted to the Traditional Latin Mass are, in reality, quite small, ...”
And yet, he is clearly back to being very, very worried about them. The post-Conciliar Rite holds a near total sway in the Roman part of the Catholic Church, the part which outnumbers all the other parts combined by well over 1¼ billion members. But as long as there are any faithful left who cling to the traditional rite, the unity of the Faith and of the Church are in mortal danger. And therefore, His Eminence reminds his fellow Eminences that “Pope Francis ... pointed the way to unity in the use of the liturgical books promulgated by the holy Popes Paul VI and John Paul II, in accordance (sic) with the decrees of the Second Vatican Council, the sole expression of the lex orandi of the Roman Rite.”
Dangerous counter-revolutionaries threatening the unity of the Faith!
His Eminence ends by quoting Pope Francis again, from the apostolic letter Desiderio desideravi: “I do not see how it is possible to say that one recognizes the validity of the Council ... and at the same time not accept the liturgical reform born out of Sacrosanctum Concilium.” And here lies the crux of the matter. It is in point of fact perfectly easy to see how this is possible, for those who have eyes to see. One simply has to be willing to recognize the obvious truth, that the liturgical reform was not born out of Sacrosanctum Concilium. It was born out of the rejection of Sacrosanctum Concilium.
The Church has paid an appallingly steep price for this rejection. Earlier in his document, His Eminence quotes Pope Francis quoting the opening paragraph of SC, and calling them “words which do not cease to enthuse.” Paraphrasing slightly, the late Pope stated, “They are objectives that describe a precise desire to reform the Church in her fundamental dimensions: to make the Christian life of the faithful grow more and more every day; to adapt more suitably to the needs of our own times those institutions which are subject to change; to foster whatever can promote union among all who believe in Christ; to reinvigorate that which serves to call all to the bosom of the Church (cf. SC I).”
None of this has happened. The post-Conciliar revolution has not made the Christian life of the faithful grow more and more every day. It has not made the Church’s institutions more suitable to the needs of our times. It has not fostered whatever can promote union among all who believe in Christ. It has not reinvigorated that which serves to call all to the bosom of the Church.
When does this start?
At the consistory, the cardinals were given four topics for discussion, and asked to choose two. Liturgy was one of the four, and was not chosen, but Pope Leo has determined not only that there will be another consistory in June, but that they will be, for the time at least, annual events. Presumably, it will be brought up at the next one.
And sooner or later, some very hard questions will have to be asked at these events. There are now only four bishops alive who were at Vatican II; the youngest of them, Francis Cardinal Arinze (another of His Eminence’s predecessors at Divine Worship) is 93. So one of those questions might well be, “Whomdoes the opening paragraph of Sacrosanctum Concilium ‘still enthuse’?” Another might well be, “Whom does the statement ‘there must be no innovations (in the liturgy) unless the good of the Church genuinely and certainly requires them’ ‘still enthuse’?”, or, harder still, “Did it ever really enthuse anyone?”
The asking of such questions is a necessary first step to getting over the enthusiasms of the post-Conciliar revolution, and redressing its many failures. Let us pray unceasingly that the Holy Father and the cardinals have the courage to take it.
I have been enjoying Peter Kwasniewski’s new book Close the Workshop, which argues that the old rite did not need to be fixed and that the new rite cannot be fixed. To support his argument, Kwasniewski begins with an analysis of the Second Vatican Council’s Constitution on the Liturgy, Sacrosanctum Concilium (SC), arguing that the document was not kidnapped later on but contains within itself timebombs that were then detonated by Archbishop Bugnini and his colleagues.
One of the fruitful ways that Kwasniewski proceeds in his task is by assembling several statements from SC that, when stripped of their reassuring context and laid bare, can be seen in a new and rather startling light. In the same spirit, and on this solemn day of Good Friday, I would like to call our attention to Article 110 of this document:
Paenitentia temporis quadragesimalis non tantum sit interna et individualis, sed quoque externa et socialis. Praxis vero paenitentialis, juxta nostrae aetatis et diversarum regionum possibilitates necnon fidelium condiciones, foveatur, et ab auctoritatibus, de quibus in art. 22, commendetur.
Sacrum tamen esto jejunium paschale, feria VI in Passione et Morte Domini ubique celebrandum et, juxta opportunitatem, etiam Sabbato sancto producendum, ut ita, elato et aperto animo, ad gaudia dominicae Resurrectionis perveniatur.
The English translation for which is:
During Lent penance should not be only internal and individual, but also external and social. The practice of penance should be fostered in ways that are possible in our own times and in different regions, and according to the circumstances of the faithful; it should be encouraged by the authorities mentioned in Art. 22.
Nevertheless, let the paschal fast be kept sacred. Let it be celebrated everywhere on Good Friday and, where possible, prolonged throughout Holy Saturday, so that the joys of the Sunday of the resurrection may be attained with uplifted and clear mind.
The first paragraph affirms the traditional teaching that corporate Lenten penances are good and that the Church has the capacity to make prudential adjustments to these penances according to place and time. But it stops short of declaring that the Church has the right to mandate fasts, using the language of encouragement (foveatur and commendetur) rather than prescription. One of the controversies of the Protestant Reformation was whether the Church has the authority to tell the faithful that they must fast on pain of sin, with figures like Zwingli vehemently maintaining that she does not. The first paragraph of SC 110 seems hesitant to condemn Zwingli’s error. It also omits any reference to the guidance of the Holy Spirit in shaping the Church’s penitential practices, which could give the impression that such practices are purely manmade or positivist.
If the first paragraph shies away from declaring all of the Church’s authority, the second paragraph swings in the opposite direction by implying that the Church, or more specifically, the Council Fathers, have the power to desecrate or de-sacralize Lent. The sentence, “Nevertheless, let the paschal fast be kept sacred,” is filled with implications. “Nevertheless” (tamen) is a disjunction that separates the “paschal fast” of Good Friday from the forty-day Lenten fast. The paschal fast alone is here deemed sacred, thereby insinuating that the Lenten fast is no longer sacred. The original Latin is even more voluntaristic than the official English translation: whereas the English “let the paschal fast be kept sacred” presumes that the paschal fast is already sacred and that the Council Fathers have graciously decided to keep it that way, the Latin original “let the paschal fast be sacred” depicts a world in which nothing is sacred unless so deemed by recognition of the Council.
The logic undergirding “Nevertheless, let the paschal fast be kept sacred” is the following. The sacred is what is set apart and generally not subject to human tinkering. But the first paragraph of SC 110, which affirms the Church’s ability to change Lenten penances, is apparently going to be used to make radical changes to the Lenten fast; instead of approaching the fast with awe and respect, the liturgical reformers plan to be aggressive and gut it. The fast’s protected status as sacred must therefore be removed before such a gutting can take place. A sacred custom that defined the season of Lent for 1,6000 years old shall be sacred no more.
That the Lenten fast was universally considered sacred prior to SC 110 there is no doubt. Every Roman-rite bishop at the Council was obliged to recite or sing during the Lenten Office of Vespers the hymn Audi Benigne Conditor, the opening verse of which is:
Audi, benigne Conditor,
Nostras preces cum fletibus,
In hoc sacro jejunio
Fusas quadragenario.
Which I translate as:
Hearken, O kind Creator,
To our prayers with our tears,
During this sacred fast,
Spread out over forty days.
Unless a High-ranking feast day intervened, every member of the Roman Rite clergy had to read these words every day from the first Saturday of Lent until the Friday of the Fourth Week of Lent, approximately twenty-eight times. Multiply this by the number of years that a man has been obliged to recite the Divine Office (since his days in the seminary), and it is not a stretch to imagine that the majority of the voting bishops knew this hymn by heart.
And if they did not, the daily orations of Lent were there to reinforce the doctrine that the fast is sacred or (which amounts to the same thing) that God and not man instituted the Lenten fast. Of the several I could have chosen, here are four:
Be mindful, O Lord, of our supplications: and grant that we may keep with devout service this solemn fast, which Thou hast wholesomely ordained for the healing of our souls and bodies. Through. –Collect, Saturday after Ash Wednesday
Of Thy goodness, we beseech Thee, O Lord, continue to help us in the observance of this holy fast, that having learned our duties from Thee, we may carry them out by the help of Thy grace. Through. –Collect, Tuesday of the Second Week in Lent
Grant, we beseech Thee, almighty God, that cleansed by this sacred fast, we may be brought by Thee with pure hearts to the holy season which is to come. Through. –Collect, Friday of the Second Week of Lent
Grant, we beseech Thee, almighty God, as year by year we keep this sacred fast with devotion, we may please Thee both in body and soul. Through. –Collect, Monday of the Fourth Week of Lent
I draw attention to this liturgical evidence not in order to condemn the 2,158 bishops who approved Sacrosanctum Concilium, but to marvel at the ingenuity of the document’s drafters, who were able to convince an overwhelming majority to turn their backs on a tradition they knew without knowing for the most part that they were doing so.
SC 110 is also important as part of the broader debate about the plight of the sacred in the wake of Vatican II. Does the new liturgy renew the sacred or undermine it? Paul VI himself seems to have been of two minds. On one hand, in a remarkable speech in 1966, he finger-wagged the Consilium in charge of the changes about reverencing the sacred, respecting tradition and a sense of history, and searching for what is best rather than what is new. And a friend of the Pope, Cardinal Antonelli, wrote in 1967 that Paul VI was “pained by a certain tendency to de-sacralize the liturgy.” On the other hand, when introducing liturgy in the vernacular, the Pope defended the innovation even though, he admitted, it means that we have become “profane intruders in the literary preserve of sacred utterance” and have sacrificed “the beauty, the power, and the expressive sacrality of Latin” (General Audience, November 26, 1969).
The liturgical reformers, incidentally, were true to the inuendoes of SC 110. In his 1966 Paenitemini, Paul VI eliminated the mandatory Lenten fast but kept the Good Friday fast “sacred.” The reformers’ new edition of the Missal reflects the new Lent that they invented. The 1962 Missal mentions, explains, and prays for the practice of fasting on every day of Lent prior to Holy Week: the traditional rite’s Preface for Lent, which is used daily from Ash Wednesday until Passiontide, is supplemented almost daily with additional references to fasting in the proper prayers. The 1969 Missal, on the other hand, retains several references to fasting on Ash Wednesday (the other mandatory fast day), but there are only two required references to the fasts of the faithful for the rest of the season. Consequently, with the exception of Ash Wednesday, the new Missal offers very little guidance on fasting and almost no prayers for its success.
“The practice of penance,” Sacrosanctum Concilium states, “should be fostered.” But if one wants regular instruction on the nature and meaning of fasting, and if, moreover, one wants priests and congregations daily praying and offering up the Holy Sacrifice for the efficacy of one’s fasts, one is better off turning to the Missal used during Vatican II rather than the one that followed it.
As the title and subtitle suggest, the book replies to the cancer-phase Liturgical Movement arguments in favor of massively overhauling the old rite, explaining why it did not need the Consilium’s extreme makeover; and then refutes the idea that the new rite can be “reformed” or “done well” so that it might someday be the right thing. Instead, the old rite is fine the way it is, as long as it is well celebrated; and the new rite, regardless of good intentions, is irreparable.
The argument of this book is particularly important at a time when a lot of clergy and laity, feeling discouraged by various and sundry restrictions, are tempted to take the line that “As long as we do the new rite well, that will suffice.” The dangers of this approach are enormous, though seldom highlighted. I shine a giant floodlight on them.
What is more, it’s very possible we’ll see an attempt made in the coming years to impose “reforms” on the old rite: if you can’t beat ’em, beat ’em up in some other way. The enemies of tradition see that the TLM is not going to disappear entirely, so they will launch a campaign of “death by a thousand cuts”: “You can keep the TLM as long as you adopt the new lectionary, the new calendar, the new prefaces,” etc. etc.—basically, an attempt to force Sacrosanctum Concilium on recalcitrant trads 60+ years later. (And we mustn’t be naive: a “conservative” pope might throw his weight behind this campaign just as much as a progressive one would do, under the mistaken impression that it would offer “the best of both worlds.”)
My book explains why all of this is a non-starter, a dead end, a ruse, and a means of destroying the perfections of the old rite, which I describe and defend. What we love, we fight for; and to love it better, we must understand it deeply. That is the purpose of this book: to equip the reader with the deepest understand of why the old Mass isn’t broken and doesn’t need fixing, and why the new Mass is a mess that cannot be fixed but must be set aside for good.
A Foreword by Fr. Thomas M. Kocik, world expert on the reform of the reform, graces the volume.
Publisher’s Description
The Mass of Paul VI is so deeply flawed that it cannot be repaired from within, whether by copious helpings of smells and bells, by arbitrary attempts at traditionalizing, or by an official “reform of the reform”; and the Roman Mass inherited from the Age of Faith did not (and does not) need to be “reformed” along antiquarian or pastoral-utilitarian lines, as it fulfills the highest act of religion in a fitting manner perfected over many centuries of prayerful practice. The liturgical revolution, driven by ideology, culminated in balkanization, banality, and boredom; its fabrications must be retired from use, and the traditional rite must be restored to its rightful place of honor in the Church of the Latin rite.
Such are the bold claims defended in Close the Workshop: Why the Old Mass Isn’t Broken and the New Mass Can’t Be Fixed, in which Peter Kwasniewski refutes the reformers’ own case for reforming the old rite and illustrates the subtle dangers to which clergy and laity are exposed by attempts at “doing the new rite reverently.” Simultaneously he reminds traditionalists that they should aspire to the noblest possible celebration of the Mass, always faithfully observing the rubrics and resisting bad habits that interfere with the rite’s full splendor and efficacy: unseemly haste, minimalism, ineptitude, and the itch for pastoral experimentation.
If the Catholic Church in the West is ever to recover her internal soundness and external cultural influence, her shepherds and her flocks must let the ill-advised Council of the 1960s and the Bauhaus liturgy fabricated in its name lapse into obsolescence, so that the perennially fresh theology of the Council of Trent and the immortally beautiful liturgy of the Roman Church may once again flourish unfettered.
What Readers Are Saying
“We are
grateful to Dr. Kwasniewski for showing to the readers of our day the
inestimable treasure of the Catholic liturgical tradition, which, in its
prayers and rites, most perfectly reflects the integrity and the ineffable
mystery of the Faith, and at the same time for exposing patiently and no less
thoroughly the severe flaws of its attempted replacement.” —Most Rev.
Athanasius Schneider
“David
slaying Goliath is the only apt metaphor for Dr. Kwasniewski. At the Goliath of
systematic lies perpetuated about the traditional Mass, he has aimed the five
shiny stones of his prodigious scholarship. He has mortally wounded the giant
of liturgical mendacity; it is hard to see how any thinking Catholic could ever
grant it credibility again.” —Fr. John A. Perricone
“Dr. Kwasniewski has produced a volume that demands a
verdict. Agree or disagree with this work as you see fit—but it cannot with
integrity be dismissed or ignored.” —Fr. Robert McTeigue, S.J.
“Most of
Kwasniewski’s conclusions in this volume are diametrically opposed to those of
the Vatican, which is all the more reason they should be read—not as a proud
act of dissent but in order to gain a different perspective, one that raises
serious questions about a matter vital to the Church.” —Michael P. Foley
“An
impassioned, uncompromising defense of the traditional Latin Mass…. An
encyclopedic review of the current issues in the Catholic traditionalist
movement, both clarifying fundamental theological principles and offering
practical advice on celebrating the TLM today.” —Stuart Chessman
“The author makes
an important contribution to a question that has become only more urgent over
time: Did we certainly and genuinely need a substantial reconfiguration of
liturgical rites that exchanged a venerable patrimony for a manufactured
product that was (or was at least intended to be) adapted to ourselves and to
the zeitgeist—or do we actually need to reform ourselves and our culture,
adopting as our own a tradition passed down from time immemorial?” —Shawn Tribe
Just over two weeks ago, on the anniversary of Sacrosanctum Concilium, the YouTube channel of Catholic Productions published a video by Dr Brant Pitre, who is the Distinguished Research Professor of Scripture at the Augustine Institute Graduate School. The video is part of a series called “The Mass Explained”, which was published a bit over a year ago through the Catholic Productions website. This specific video is now being offered on YouTube as an encouragement to explore the full series; its subject is the much-debated concept of active participation in the liturgy.
Dr Pitre is a Biblical scholar, and by far the most successful part of this video is his attempt to give a solid Scriptural foundation to the concept; a useful endeavor, given the hopeless ambiguity of so much of Sacrosanctum Concilium. Unfortunately, his presentation is marred by a considerable number of really drastic historical errors, including one on which the whole narrative arc, so to speak, of his presentation rests. The errors are in fact too many to describe in a single post, and this response will have to be presented in more than one part.
I wish to be clear that I certainly do not ascribe to Dr Pitre any conscious dishonesty. There are plenty of liturgists and people who have written about the liturgy who can be excused of the charge of deliberate lying only if one grants that before attempting to deceive others, they have first gone to enormous pains to deceive themselves. (I wish I could take credit for this bon mot, but it comes from Sir Peter Medawar’s brilliantly savage review of Teilhard de Chardin’s The Phenomenon of Man.) I see no reason to think that Dr Pitre is among them; indeed, I think it very likely that he himself is among those whom others have deceived.
Nor does he fall into the fatuous excesses that so many others have fallen into when writing or speaking about this topic specifically, and claim that “active participation”, however defined, is incompatible with the historical Roman Rite. Indeed, he acknowledges that active participation of the lay faithful has been a part of it in the past. His gigantic historical error lies in his would-be description of when, how, why and to what degree this changed, leading the Second Vatican Council to call for its restoration. (I will cover most of what he says about this in part 2 of this article.)
He begins (2:55) with the first occurrence of the term “actuosa participatio – active participation” in Sacrosanctum Concilium, paragraph 14, saying that it is “arguably the most important topic of the Second Vatican Council.” Unfortunately, the translation of Sacrosanctum Concilium which he cites contains a very significant mistake, which is no less of a mistake for being repeated on the Vatican’s own website. The English version which he gives is as follows: “In the restoration and promotion of the sacred liturgy, this full and active participation by all the people is the aim to be considered before all else.” (His emphasis.)
But the Latin original does not say that active participation “is to be considered before all else,” which would be a license for doing anything and everything in the liturgy, provided the claim were made that it fostered active participation. And of course, in the so-called “spirit” of Vatican II, many people, including the very men who invented the post-Conciliar Rite, have taken it as just such a license, in order to excuse their ignoring significant parts of Sacrosanctum Concilium itself, and all of the Church’s earlier magisterial teaching on the liturgy, to say nothing of others justifying the most appalling abuses in the actual celebration of the liturgy.
Much active. Very participation.
The Latin words of the Constitution are “actuosa participatio … summopere attendenda est”, which would be properly rendered “active participation … is to be given the greatest attention.” And it is in fact so rendered in the Italian, French, Spanish and German translations also available via the Vatican’s website. (I cannot vouch for the Arabic, Chinese, Swahili or various Slavic versions.)
This would have also been the perfect place to add that there is a solid case to be made that “actual participation” is a better translation of the words “actuosa participatio” than “active participation.” This case was laid out very thoroughly by Fr Peter Stravinskas in a paper which he delivered to the CIEL conference in Paris in 2003, and graciously allowed NLM to reprint in 2016. (Part 1; Part 2) For of course, as we all know, the word “active” has deceived many within the Church into confusing activity with achievement, and thus taking it for granted that as long as the laity are doing something, they are actively participating, and it doesn’t much matter what exactly they are doing or how they are doing it.
In regard to the Council’s statement that the people’s participation in the liturgy should be “full”, Dr Pitre very rightly points out (6:45) that this means fully participating in the parts which properly belong to them, “and only those parts which belong to them, and the people shouldn’t be doing what is exclusive to the priest, and vice versa.” For of course, it was the furthest thing from the Council Fathers’ minds to foster the participation of the laity by blurring this necessary distinction. This would have been a good place, therefore, to point out that “active” participation in the modern liturgy has been brought about in no small part by redefining “what is exclusive to the priest”, and giving to the laity liturgical roles that the tradition of the Church has always given to the clergy: the reading of the Scriptures, and the distribution of Communion. Perhaps this comes up elsewhere in the series.
At 7:50, Dr Pitre very rightly notes that the phrase “actuosa participatio” goes back to St Pius X’s famous motu proprio Tra le sollicitudini on sacred music in the liturgy, and that singing the parts proper to them is above all the most important way in which the faithful actively participate in the liturgy. Perhaps some other part of the series points out that in practical terms, Tra le sollicitudini has been completely overthrown by the post-Conciliar reform, since the confusion between activity and achievement, a confusion which the word “active” positively invites, often leads to the replacement of good music with bad music or no music, because it is easier for the congregation to sing bad music than good, and easier still to recite than to sing.
It would also be worth mentioning somewhere along the line that Sacrosanctum Concilium itself does not cite Tra le sollecitudini, because in the last phase of its redaction, the numerous citations of the Church’s prior magisterial teaching on the liturgy qua liturgy, and particularly those related to sacred music, were expunged. This includes not only multiple references to Tra le sollecitudini, but also to Pius XI’s 1928 Apostolic Constitution Divini cultus, Pius XII’s encyclicals Mediator Dei (1947) and Musicae sacrae disciplina (1955) as well as the instruction issued by the Sacred Congregation for Rites in 1958, De musica sacra et sacra liturgia. (This removal was documented by Susan J. Benofy in an article entitled “Footnotes for a Hermeneutic of Continuity: Sacrosanctum Concilium’s Vanishing Citations”, published in the Adoremus Bulletin in 2015.)
At 9:30, Dr Pitre introduces a few key Biblical texts that refer to active participation in the liturgy, and as I stated earlier, this really is the strongest part of the video. The first of these is a description of the assembly in Nehemiah 8, which he describes as “actively listening” to the word of God read to them by the priests. This passage occupies a prominent and very ancient place in the historical Roman Rite, as the second reading of the Ember Wednesday of September. With the suppression of the Ember days in the post-Conciliar Rite, it has been assigned to a Sunday of Ordinary time in year C, and a Thursday in year 1. (This might have been the place to mention that the books of Ezra and Nehemiah refer much more often to the organization of trained cantors among the ministerial orders of the Temple, since the use of professional choirs will later be noted as one of the developments within the Church which putatively detracted from the participation of the laity.)
The second quotation is a foundational passage for the priesthood of all the baptized, 1 Peter 2, 9, which is cited in the aforementioned paragraph 14, and this is followed by the passages which describe the heavenly liturgy in the Apocalypse, and the various ways in which all of the different orders of the Church participate, including silent participation. And since the “heavenly model provide(s) the template for what worship should look like on earth, if all of the members of the mystical body of Christ are actively engaged (in the liturgy) in heaven, then the same thing should be true of the liturgy on earth.”
At 18:00, Dr Pitre begins to adduce examples from the history of the Church which show that “for the first thousand years or so of Christian worship, this is precisely what we’re going to find.” Unfortunately, this is precisely the point where he begins to run his ship aground. For his reference to the “first thousand years or so” implies that a change took place after that point, a change which he will later explicate very wrongly; wrongly enough that, as I said earlier, I will need a second part of this article to explain it all. (The words “or so” are also being made to do far too much work here.)
There follow six examples of things in which the people fully participated in the liturgy during those first thousand years: in his order, the Sanctus, the giving of the peace, the responsorial psalm (sic), the Amen at the end of the prayers, including the Canon, the Creed and the Our Father. Regarding the last of these, he correctly acknowledges that it has always been the Roman custom for the priest to sing it alone (except, of course, for the final words), and just as correctly notes that in some other Western liturgies, it was sung by everyone, as it still is in the Byzantine Rite.
First of all, I note that with four of these, the Sanctus, the Amens, the Creed and Our Father (i.e. the end of it), it has always been possible for the faithful to sing them. It has always been possible for the faithful to pray the Our Father silently along with the priest. There are of course ways of singing them in which not all the faithful can participate, such as the very rich polyphonic settings of the Lord’s Prayer composed for the Byzantine Divine Liturgy. There have been specific sociocultural and historical circumstances in which the faithful did not sing them, although apologists for the post-Conciliar reform have habitually exaggerated the degree to which this is true, and regrettably, Dr Pitre falls into this trap. Nevertheless, the faithful have never been excluded from singing them in principle.
A polyphonic setting of The Lord’s Prayer in Church Slavonic, by the Ukrainian composer Maxim Berezovsky (1745 ca. - 1777).
Concerning the Sanctus, he cites the statement of the Liber Pontificalis that it was instituted by the eighth Pope, St Sixtus I, who reigned from roughly 115-125. But the liturgical notices in the Liber Pontificalis, the statements that “Pope so-and-so instituted such-and-such a custom”, are notoriously anachronistic, the more so the earlier they go. For example, the very next entry attributes the institution of Christmas to Sixtus’ successor St Telesphorus (125-36 ca.); all scholars recognize that the feast dates to about two centuries later. It is not per se impossible that St Sixtus instituted the Sanctus, but we have no real evidence that he did in fact do so.
Secondly, the Liber Pontificalis has come down to us in very rough condition, and is full of textual problems. The relevant part of the entry for St Sixtus says, “Hic constituit ut intra actionem, sacerdos incipiens populo hymnum decantare, ‘Sanctus, sanctus, sanctus, Dominus Deus Sabahot’, et cetera.” As written, the infinitive “decantare” (to sing) is a grammatical error, and the passage is marked in modern editions as corrupt; an easy emendation has been proposed, “decantaret.” If this is correct, the passage would mean, “This one (viz. Pope Sixtus) established that within the action (i.e. the saying of the canon, as is written above the Hanc igitur in the Missal) the priest as he begins should sing to the people (‘populo’ in the dative case; my emphasis) the hymn ‘Sanctus…’ ” etc.
One might object that it makes no sense to say that the priest sang the Sanctus and the people did not. But there is some evidence that this was in fact a custom of the Ambrosian Rite on certain penitential days, on which the priest alone sang the Sanctus as part of the preface. But even if this custom was never observed in the Roman Rite, this text does not say that the people sang the Sanctus; quite the opposite.
After references to the giving of the peace, Dr Pitre goes on to say that “in the fifth century, St Augustine tells us that the people would sing the responsorial psalm,” and the video cites The Confessions, book 9, 8.15, as given in Lawrence Johnson’s Worship in the Early Church: An Anthology of Historical Sources (3:12). But this passage does not refer to the people’s participation in the Mass. It refers to an event of St Ambrose’s episcopacy for which Augustine and his mother were present, when the Empress Justina planned to turn one of the basilicas in Milan over to the Arians. The Catholic faithful occupied the church, and the custom was therefore established that the people should hymns and psalms “after the manner of the eastern regions, lest the people pine away in the tediousness of sorrow…”
Augustine does go on to say that this custom, “retained from then till now, is now imitated by many, and nearly all of (the Lord’s) flocks throughout the rest of the world.” But nothing about it suggests that it was a specifically liturgical custom, much less that it involved anything like what we now call a responsorial psalm.
After a mention of what St Isidore of Seville says about the readings being for the instruction of the people, i.e., that they are meant to be actively listened to by the faithful, Dr Pitre now turns (at 20:50) to a text known as the Ordo Romanus Primus, the “First Roman Order”, an ancient description of a Roman stational liturgy. This text is presented to set up a supposed contrast with the later medieval manner of celebrating the liturgy in the papal chapel which gave us the so-called Tridentine Missal. This contrast, however, is so thoroughly and so badly misconstrued that it must be described in another part of this article.
Today we publish the second and concluding part of Dr. Paweł Milcarek’s study of the history of the psalter in the Roman divine office. Part 1 may be found here. —PAK
A commemorative medallion for the second session of Vatican II (source), at the end of which, the document on the liturgy was promulgated.
The Psalter according to the Second Vatican Council: less is better
On the eve of the Second Vatican Council, the planned reform of the breviary – and hence also the introduction of a new arrangement of the Psalter – was one of the most widely discussed issues. In 1957, Pius XII had appointed a commission that surveyed a number of bishops on this matter. The Roman liturgical congregation had already had some concrete projects in its closets, waiting to make use of them.
The Council’s constitution Sacrosanctum concilium, promulgated on 4th December 1963, in its fourth chapter, devoted to the Roman Breviary, states that the restoration of this liturgical book, “so happily begun by the Apostolic See”, is introduced “in order that the Divine Office may be better and more perfectly prayed in existing circumstances, whether by priests or by other members of the Church”, which – in turn – is meant “to sanctify the day”. The Council Fathers were clearly motivated by the wish formulated by the commission appointed by Pius XII: “the traditional sequence of the hours is to be restored so that once again they may be genuinely related to the time of the day when they are prayed”, taking the pastoral conditions into account.
As far as the above mentioned “traditional sequence of the hours” is concerned, the Council decided to accept a compromise: the emphasis was put on Lauds and Vespers, while Compline and Matins were preserved, the latter losing its nocturnal character, with the exception of cases when celebrated in choir. In the case of daytime prayers, double standards were accepted - one for for celebration in choir, and another for celebration outside choir - and the hour of Prime was suppressed.
Having defined the Hours, the constitution moves on to the directives meant to enable the faithful to celebrate the Office “better and more perfectly”, though afterwards it happened out that the Council described this celebration also with two other adjectives: “more extensively and easily”.
Here we come to the regulation that is directly related to the issue analyzed in this lecture. Article 91 of Sacrosanctum concilium says:
Ut cursus Horarum, in art. 89 propositus, reapse observari possit, psalmi non amplius per unam hebdomadam, sed per longius temporis spatium distribuantur. Opus recognitionis Psalterii, feliciter inchoatum, quamprimum perducatur ad finem, respectu habito latinitatis christianae, usus liturgici etiam in cantu, necnon totius traditionis latinae Ecclesiae. [So that it may really be possible in practice to observe the course of the hours proposed in Art. 89, the psalms are no longer to be distributed throughout one week, but through some longer period of time. The work of revising the psalter, already happily begun, is to be finished as soon as possible, and is to take into account the style of Christian Latin, the liturgical use of psalms, also when sung, and the entire tradition of the Latin Church.]
Those two statements – concerning the change of distribution of Psalms and the revision of the text – further defined the frame of reference for the reform of the breviary Psalter.
Ordo ex machina: the Psalter of the Liturgy of the Hours of 1971
Although during the 20th century, the reform of the breviary had been the engine for the reform of other liturgical books, the post-Vatican reform of this very book took rather long, and was completed only after the reform of the Missal and many rites from the Pontifical and Ritual. The decree of the Congregation for Divine Worship, promulgating the typical edition of the Liturgy of the Hours according to the Roman Rite [1], was issued on 11th April 1971. Together with Liturgy of the Hours, which was the new book of the Office, also newly arranged Psalter was introduced.
It is worth noting that already before, in 1969, the Pontifical Commission for the New Vulgate, headed by Card. Augustin Bea S.J., had published a revised Latin translation of the Book of Psalms, destined for the new Office book. Without here going into the comparative analysis of the three Latin versions of Psalms (that of Vulgate, that of the Pian Commission, and that of Neo-Vulgate), we can simply say that the Neo-Vulgate translation turned out to be in a way conciliatory toward the ancient tradition – much more so than the translation issued by the Pian Commission.
Let us now move on to discuss the new order of the Psalter.
Due to changes in the arrangement of the Hours [2], it was a specific wish of the Council to distribute Psalms not “throughout one week, but through some longer period of time” [3]. Behind this statement there was a recurring thought of the Psalter distributed over two weeks, as, for example, in the Ambrosian rite. But in the end the Psalter, was arranged into a four-week cycle, [4] on the model of the Anglican Book of Common Prayer [5], which means that in practice, that the majority of the Psalms is used in prayer once a month – while previously, each of them had recurred once a week.
The Liturgy of the Hours retained the custom of dividing some of the longer Psalms introduced by the Roman Breviary of 1911, and to a similar extent, but in many cases the Psalms have been divided differently.
The New Psalter, however, not complete. A few Psalms were eliminated entirely (57, 82 and 108), along with parts of nineteen other Psalms that due to their “imprecatory nature” could have created a “certain psychological difficulty” [6]. Such a move had had no precedent in the history of the Roman Breviary, though it is known among the reformed communities.
Each Psalm in the Liturgy of the Hours has been given a caption, explaining “its meaning and its import for the personal life of the believer”, accompanied also by a quotation from the New Testament or the Fathers of the Church, “to foster prayer in the light of Christ’s new revelation” [7]. Though the latter addition was some novelty, it had been deeply rooted in Christian tradition of understanding the Psalms [8].
The number of the canticles from the Old Testament has been significantly increased, from 17 to 26. Many of those already used at Lauds have been modified – their texts have been shortened or elaborately cut up. As a novelty, canticles from the New Testament have been introduced to Vespers.
Of course, the fundamentally new arrangement of the Psalter has caused new distribution of Psalms among particular offices.
As in case of the Roman Breviary of 1911, Matins – renamed now to the Office of Readings – underwent the biggest changes. The number of Psalms within each celebration has been reduced from 9 to 3. The arrangement of Psalms has been completely changed. The same may be said of Lauds, that from now have comprised not 5, but 3 Psalms, selected on a completely different basis.
The structure of the Minor Hours has remained the same, consisting of three Psalms. But the selection of Psalms is brand new.
While the reform of 1911 changed an earlier arrangement of the Vespers Psalms only to a very limited extent, in the Liturgy of the Hours of 1971, a true revolution has been made. The number of Psalms in each Vespers has been diminished from 5 to 2 (or to 3, if we count also the canticle from the New Testament). They have been distributed among the days of the week in a way that was unfamiliar both to the earlier tradition, and to the reform of 1911.
In short, the Psalter of the Liturgy of the Hours has little in common with earlier tradition of the prayer of the Church, both in terms of distribution of Psalms over the time, in relation to the number of Psalms within particular offices, and in regards to its completeness.
Attempted summary: Modifications of psalmody throughout the centuries
Let us now attempt to summarize briefly the historical evolution of the Psalter used in the Office of the Roman rite[9].
From the earliest times, the Roman rite preserved the principle of reciting the entire Psalter within one week – meaning that each Psalm was to be recited principally once a week, with many exceptiond for those recited more often, even daily (4, 50, 53, 62, 66, 90, 94, 118, 133, 148, 149, 150). A one-week cycle of the Psalter was retained in the RB 1911, though in such a way that actually excluded the possibility of saying some Psalms more often than once a week. Meanwhile, in case of the LH 1971, due to the distribution of the Psalter over the course of four weeks, the majority of the Psalms is recited once a month, with the exception of a few that recur weekly in Compline.
From the earliest times there were 8 Canonical Hours within the Psalter of the Office of the Roman rite: Matin, Lauds, Prime, Terce, Sext, None, Vespers and Compline. This was changed only in LH 1971, when Prime has been suppressed and the rest of the Minor Hours can be – if recited outside choir – substituted with one prayer, so called Middle Hour. Hence, in practice, the Office may be narrowed down to five Canonical Hours.
From the earliest times each and every Psalm had had its place within the Office, including those texts that had been the most likely to raise some reluctance or evoke questions.
From the earliest times there was no practice of dividing the Psalms in the Roman rite, with the exception of Psalm 118 – in all other cases they were recited in their entirety. Meanwhile, since RB 1911 division of Psalms has become a frequent solution, leading to situations where one Psalm, divided into three parts, may fill out the whole Hour.
Psalmody of Matins
From the earliest times, the number of Psalms on weekdays was never lower than 12, while on Sundays it was even higher: in the beginning it was twice as much (24), while from the 6th century to 1911 there were 18 Psalms in this office. Only RB 1911 equalized the number of Psalms on Sundays and ferias, , diminishing it to 9. Such an equality has been sustained in LH 1971, however the number of Psalms in Matins was further lowered to 3 Psalms (or to 3 units).
From the earliest times, up to RB 1911, nothing had changed in selection of Psalms assigned to particular days of the week. But in the 20th century this selection was changed practically completely twice (in RB 1911 and LH 1971). (Click on any image to enlarge.)
Psalmody of Lauds
From the earliest times the psalmody of Lauds always comprised 5 Psalms, but in practice there were 7 Psalms and canticles, divided into five groups: 1, 1, 2, C, 3). BR 1911 lowers this number to the actual 5, while LH 1971 to .
From the earliest times the psalmody of Lauds was daily concluded with the three last Psalms from the Book of Psalms – but this custom was abolished in BR 1911. It was also then that the earlier way of distributing the Psalms among particular days of the week was severely changed – though it was not until LH 1971 when it was completely shattered.
One can note that the exceptional significance of Psalm 50 (acquired by it in the 6th century) has been preserved also in the 20th century, though the frequency of its use is constantly changing.
Psalmody of Prime
The long tradition standing behind Prime does not change the fact that its psalmody was subjected to numerous modifications throughout the centuries. Nevertheless, some of its characteristic features (concerning the selection of Psalms) had been generally preserved either until BR 1911, or even until the reform of 1971. But elimination of Prime, ordered by the Second Vatican Council, has ended its career within Liturgia Horarum.
Psalmody of the Minor Hours Up until 1911, Terce, Sext and None consisted in daily recitation of subsequent parts of Psalm 118. In BR 1911 this particular Psalm was preserved only in case of Sunday office, while on weekdays other Psalms (previously used in Matins) were introduced. Meanwhile, in LH 1971 both so called “additional psalmody” and the current psalmody for particular hora media are based on such a selection of Psalms that was utterly unfamiliar to the tradition of the Roman rite[10].
Psalmody of Vespers Throughout the centuries – from the oldest sources to BR 1568 – there was some kind of admirable changelessness in the structure and selection of the psalmody of Vespers. Also BR 1911 to a larger extent preserved this tradition. But LH 1971 has introduced a sudden and multidimensional change: number of the elements of the psalmody has been lowered down from 5 to 3; one of Psalms has been substituted with a canticle from the New Testament; selection of Psalms has ceased to show any continuity with previous, outstandingly long tradition – exceptional is the case of Sunday, where – among others – the primacy of Messianic Psalm 109 has been preserved.
Psalmody of Compline The structure and selection of psalmody of Compline remained the same for a good many centuries and was interrupted only in the 20th century; but while in BR 1911 traditional selection of Psalms was preserved at least for Sunday, it has been finally disintegrated in LH 1971, and only traces of it can be traced in the offices after the First and Second Vespers of Sundays and Feasts.
NOTES
[1]Officium divinum ex decreto Ss. Oecumenici Concilii Vatricani II instauratum auctoritate Pauli Pp. VI promulgatum: Liturgia horarum iuxta ritum romanum
[6] Cf. IGLH, 131: „Tres vero psalmi 57, 82 et 108, in quibus præponderat indoles imprecatoria, omittuntur in Psalterio currente. Item aliqui versus nonnullorum psalmorum prætermissi sunt… Quorum textuum omissio fit ob quandam difficultatem psychologicam, etsi psalmi ipsi imprecatorii in pietate Novi Testamenti occurrunt, exempli gratia Ap 6, 10, nulloque modo intendunt ad maledicendum inducere”.
[9] In relation to the Psalmody of the Roman rite of the 5th and the 6th centuries, I refer here to the works by Joseph Pascher, as cited in: Robert F. Taft SJ, Liturgy of the hours in East and West, Collegeville 1993, p. 136.
[10] However, so called additional psalmody is almost completely consistent with so called Gradual Psalms.
The following guest essay was written by Garrett Meyer. For many years, defenders of Gregorian chant have leaned heavily into Sacrosanctum Concilium, and there can be no doubt that the drafters of its chapter on sacred music were indeed committed to the primacy of chant. However, Meyer challenges us to rethink the implications of the phrase “ceteris paribus” and to ask whether this was not, in fact, a gentle kiss of death.—PAK
While discussing the liturgical reform with me in the Letters of New Polity Winter 2022 Issue, Dr. Marc Barnes held a mirror in front of traditional Catholics to reveal the liberals. They seem “to stomach the Holy Church insofar as it can be baked into the basic hero of North American liberalism: a hidden authenticity smothered by an oppressive, institutional body.” [1] This might be a fair critique of the cranky Catholics who just want to be left alone to their liturgical preferences, but it misses a contingent of traditionalists (likely overlapping with New Polity readers) who grumble against the hierarchs for not restricting their “authenticity” enough.
Rebels Because They Are Without a Cause
Catholics have become liberals, as it were, all the way up. We have all been “oppressed” with freedom (of the liberal sort) since at least Vatican II, if not the Fall. Religious freedom gets all the headlines, but sacred music suffers as well from what we might call inverted smothering. While a superficial reading of Sacrosanctum Concilium §116 [2] suggests otherwise, Catholics are indeed forced to refuse Gregorian chant true pride of place [3] in liturgical services. Let us carefully read every word of this disputed article:
The Church acknowledges Gregorian chant as specially suited to the Roman liturgy: therefore, other things being equal, it should be given pride of place in liturgical services.
When deploying Vatican II to boost Gregorian chant, conservative Catholics almost always omit the phrase, “other things being equal.” Barnes, to his credit, defends this clause with full-throated gravitas. For him, it belongs to “the nature of the Church, the people of God at liberty, by Grace, to determine whether or not other things are, indeed, equal.” [4] This is not the only instance of Barnes identifying the Church’s mission as something unusual—I’m looking at you, “Hats Off” [5]—but at least the act of hatting admits of many metaphorical meanings. The same cannot be said for determining-the-equality-of-other-things. Try finding a single synonym.
This phrase, ceteris paribus in Latin, is neither scholastic nor patristic nor biblical, but comes from liberal economic theory. [6] It is strange for Vatican II to slip in the expression, and stranger still for Barnes to double down on it. From John Stuart Mill [7] to Investopedia.com [8] to even the farmers Beth and Shawn Dougherty [9], it is applied to an economic law as a qualifier. It means that the pertinent rule only perfectly holds in a model, for it requires conditions to be so static that it would be unusual if the rule simply held true in relentlessly-dynamic reality. Even if “other things are equal” now, they never stay that way. The use of ceteris paribus thus reveals not just a simplification, but an oversimplification.
To show this, suppose that you are on a field trip for your economics class. You go out to a local farmer’s market, or car dealership, or megacorp boardroom. You see friends disregarding the sticker price and enemies insisting upon it. You return to your instructor and shout, “The law of supply and demand is no law at all!” He condescends to comfort you, saying, “My dear, dear child. The principle only applies ‘other things being equal’—and they were not.”
When it comes to Vatican II and SC §116, some Catholic commentators inflect the phrase differently, saying that the liturgical law holds even if other things are equal, not only if. In their minds, ceteris paribus is an insufficient disqualification, not a necessary precondition. Gregorian chant should thus always (or at least normally) hold pride of place.[10] Barnes’s co-authored “Manifesto of the New Traditionalism” seems to interpret things just this way: “According to the very constitution initiating these reforms, the Sacred Liturgy should emphasize … Gregorian chant.” [11] The Manifesto then laments, “How rarely this is accomplished!” and calls the liturgical reform “betrayed” (by whom it does not say). [12]
But in his New Polity letter, Barnes changes tack. He stresses that one should not be offended if “the people of God at liberty” determine that Gregorian chant deserves demotion, precisely because of ceteris paribus. The reason that he appears a conservative in one instance, and a progressive the next, is not that he is flip-flopping. Indeed, he is one of the most radically consistent men which I have had the pleasure to meet. His honesty is indeed why I do not quite believe his gracious excuse for my own rash misreading—namely, that he co-wrote a document which misrepresented his own views, a slipup made possible because he “is not, say, a bishop in council.” [13] He would not sign something he did not believe, and he would retract it if he did. With great trepidation, therefore, I accuse Barnes of dancing around on the stage of liberalism, instead of his happier pastime (and greatly needed service) of ripping it up plank-by-plank.
Here is my evidence: If you grant that ceteris paribus in SC §116 means anything at all, then you are already a liberal. For you have made the deserved place of Gregorian chant not a consequence of its inner nature, but an imposition (however benevolent) from without. Progressives maintain that the environments which afford Gregorian chant pride of place are rare, conservatives complain that they are common, and Barnes is content so long as the Church determines them. But no group questions that ontologically violent presupposition which says that the honor due to a thing flows not from what it is, but only from what the context makes it. Should Gregorian chant be given pride of place in liturgical services of the Roman Rite? The postliberal says, “yes,” while the liberal says, “it depends.”
From Sensus Fidelium to Magisterium
This is the more believable interpretation of SC §116, not just because of the aforementioned etymology and my testimony (as well as my once-corrected-but-still-surely-incomplete interpretation of Barnes). [14] It just makes more sense of the historical data. What did Catholics by-and-large do from 1969 to this day? A few one-off parishes continue to plainchant [15], but the rest promptly and completely forgot all of it—that is to say, a liberal prescription was applied liberally in a liberal world. I was delighted that a simple tone Salve Regina broke out one night of the inaugural New Polity conference. Barnes and I seem to agree that this was an oddity among collections of Catholic men because of SC §116, not despite it. [16]
Our common ground, however, quickly gives way to questions which neither Barnes nor I can answer. What are these “other things” which must be equal for Gregorian chant to deserve pride of place? “Equal” to what? How close is close enough to constitute equality? How frequently must we check? Who decides? Thankfully, we lay Catholics are not on our own in interpreting the passage. The most extensive exegesis from the Magisterium comes the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops in 2007:
73. The “pride of place” given to Gregorian chant by the Second Vatican Council is modified by the important phrase “other things being equal.” These “other things” are the important liturgical and pastoral concerns facing every bishop, pastor, and liturgical musician. In considering the use of the treasures of chant, pastors and liturgical musicians should take care that the congregation is able to participate in the Liturgy with song. They should be sensitive to the cultural and spiritual milieu of their communities, in order to build up the Church in unity and peace. [17]
This may feel more solid, but, intentionally or not, the ambiguity remains. The bishops could be implying that only Gregorian chant allows a congregation to participate with song in the Roman Rite; that it alone responds sensitively to the depraved cultural and parched spiritual milieu of our communities; and that it is uniquely capable of building up Church unity. However “based” the kids might find this interpretation, it is a strained one. If it were true, the “pride of place” given to Gregorian chant would not need to be “modified” in the first place. [18] Rather, our bishops most likely anticipated Gregorian chant as an obstacle to the full participation of the faithful, an insensitivity to modern needs, and a disturbance of the peace, and so duly qualified it to impotence.
We cannot blame the USCCB if, in their equivocal statements, they allow Gregorian chant to be considered a stumbling block. Certainly, they needed to accommodate the unequivocal statements of Pope Saint Paul VI. In 1969, six years after Sacrosanctum Concilium and just prior to the promulgation of the Novus Ordo, Paul VI gave a frank address to the pious people disturbed most by the impending changes:
8. It is here that the greatest newness is going to be noticed, the newness of language. No longer Latin, but the spoken language will be the principal language of the Mass. The introduction of the vernacular will certainly be a great sacrifice for those who know the beauty, the power and the expressive sacrality of Latin. We are parting with the speech of the Christian centuries; we are becoming like profane intruders in the literary preserve of sacred utterance. We will lose a great part of that stupendous and incomparable artistic and spiritual thing, the Gregorian chant.
9. We have reason indeed for regret, reason almost for bewilderment. What can we put in the place of that language of the angels? We are giving up something of priceless worth. But why? What is more precious than these loftiest of our Church's values?
10. The answer will seem banal, prosaic. Yet it is a good answer, because it is human, because it is apostolic.
11. Understanding of prayer is worth more than the silken garments in which it is royally dressed. Participation by the people is worth more—particularly participation by modern people, so fond of plain language which is easily understood and converted into everyday speech. [19]
Notice what Paul VI is and is not asserting here. He did not want Gregorian chant to simply stop being sung. Indeed, in 1974, he sent a booklet with some of the easiest chants to every bishop in the world for the edification of the faithful. [20] His sacrifice was much more subtle. Paul VI redefined Gregorian chant to be an impediment to modern man, in lieu of precisely what modern man, once converted, was to sing. The ancient custom was no longer a tradition, to be faithfully received and passed down, but a left-handed tool that no longer suited the understanding or participation of a right-handed world. Gregorian chant could still be sung within the Roman Rite, but no longer as the Roman Rite.
Paul VI rhetorically asked, “If the divine Latin language kept us apart from the children, from youth, from the world of labor and of affairs, if it were a dark screen, not a clear window, would it be right for us fishers of souls to maintain it as the exclusive language of prayer and religious intercourse?” [21] This question assumes the worldview of the world, wherein “divine” things can bar bishops from helping the rest of men. In granting this anti-Incarnational premise, Paul VI trusted not in the philosophy of Aristotelian-Thomism, but of Coca-Cola.
Seeing Our Nakedness
Within fourteen months of Paul VI’s self-professed “grave change” [22], Coca-Cola and ad agency executives hatched one of the most famous television advertisements of all time. [23] They wrote: “On a hilltop in Italy, we assembled young people from all over the world…” to sing these lilting words:
I’d like to buy the world a home And furnish it with love Grow apple trees and honey bees And snow white turtle doves I’d like to teach the world to sing In perfect harmony I'd like to buy the world a Coke And keep it company.
It’s the real thing. Coke is…what the world wants today. [24]
The advertisement presents attractive youth of all sexes, races, and dress united in Italy (of all places!) by one creed, actively participating in a perfectly intelligible English song about a soft drink. This is the diabolical inversion of the vision of Isaiah:
And in the last days the mountain of the house of the Lord shall be prepared on the top of mountains, and it shall be exalted above the hills, and all nations shall flow unto it. (Isaiah 2, 2)
From its fleeting molehill of monetary profit, the world mercilessly mocked the Church as failing to accompany the young, failing to unite the common man, and failing to understand “the real thing.” And Paul VI in some sense agreed.
With the blame squarely cast upon Latin, Paul VI’s solution was not to replace Gregorian chant with any one genre. The sacrificial victim becomes holy by the very law of God, and no other goat can be substituted for the scapegoat. [25] Rather, he presumed that dethroning Gregorian chant as the chief musical expression of Roman Catholicism would clear the way for a democratic invigoration of the entire religion. In the same 1974 booklet advocating for a “minimum repertoire of plain chant,” the Vatican encouraged bishops to encourage the musically-inclined to pick up the slack:
When vernacular singing is concerned, the liturgical reform offers “a challenge to the creativity and the pastoral zeal of every local church.” Poets and musicians are therefore to be encouraged to put their talents at the service of such a cause, so that a popular chant may emerge which is truly artistic, is worthy of the praise of God, of the liturgical action of which it forms part and of the faith which it expresses. [26]
After 50 years, I compare the glory of Gregorian chant, just now being rediscovered, with the “popular chant” that Paul VI attempted to summon into existence, and wonder if a mistake was made. Paul VI sacrificed a real thing to first allow, then “challenge,” then require his flock to invent a new thing. Thus, he could not praise the tradition as such, but only insofar as it historically served the private goals of understanding and participation—goals which, in his mind, were far better served today by the chosen genres of “every local parish.”
The immediate successor to Paul VI, Pope John Paul II, came tantalizingly close in 2003 to reinstating Gregorian chant as the template for sacred music. He said:
12. With regard to compositions of liturgical music, I make my own the “general rule” that St Pius X formulated in these words: “The more closely a composition for church approaches in its movement, inspiration and savour the Gregorian melodic form, the more sacred and liturgical it becomes; and the more out of harmony it is with that supreme model, the less worthy it is of the temple”. [27]
Though this rule is made “general” (scare quotes per the Vatican website), it remains shockingly illiberal. Gregorian chant itself—down to its simple, monophonic, free-rhythm “melodic form”—is held up as the exemplary cause of all sacred music. If John Paul II had extended his quotation of Pope Saint Pius X, he would have effectively abrogated SC §116: “The ancient traditional Gregorian Chant must, therefore, in a large measure be restored to the functions of public worship.” [28]
But John Paul II did not say this. Instead, he continued:
It is not, of course, a question of imitating Gregorian chant but rather of ensuring that new compositions are imbued with the same spirit that inspired and little by little came to shape it. [29]
Anyone seeking a return to Gregorian chant as such is thus rebuffed by a fiery sword. We can even imagine John Paul II as lamenting this exile, but he admits no power to end it. In this new world, “of course” the plain meaning of Pius X’s rule cannot hold. The “spirit” of Gregorian chant remains to be imitated, but its sharply distinguished letter has been relegated to out of the question.
Lament for paradise lost can easily give way to anger at the intransigence of “restorers.” How dare someone today compose a new free rhythm Gradual? Who lacks the pastoral heart or musical skill to go beyond merely “imitating Gregorian chant”? A man can press on and still sing a plain old Sanctus XVIII, but no longer is he doing so in humble obedience to Rome. Instead, it is borderline selfishness, filling the air with a dead language that few—perhaps not even he!—understands. If Gregorian chant itself is opposed to modern man’s active participation, then how much more so a lofted Latin schola which includes only the diligent or the talented?
The Fate of Tradition After 1776
The victory of liberalism over Roman sacred music comes into view. Gregorian chant appears no longer good for the whole body of Christ. Instead, it is of varying degrees of usefulness to individual Christians in each’s musical quest to understand and participate. It is hard for me, American that I am, not to see this as the outworkings of the American Revolution.
In The Politics of the Real, D.C. Schindler proposes that the Declaration of Independence installed “ ‘Nature’s God’ as the sovereign principle of the new political order. This is a God defined specifically abstracted from any particular, i.e., actual, tradition so as to be potentially available to any and all of them.” [30] What Schindler says of the American Revolution and traditions broadly construed seems to apply, with only slight tailoring, to Vatican II and sacred music:
It represents the liberation of all possibilities, the inclusiveness of all possible traditions and cultures—within certain minimal constraints (the tradition one chooses for oneself cannot disrupt the public order, it cannot threaten public safety, it cannot harm others or exclude their own cultural expressions.) The point is that all of the contents of tradition can be affirmed, but now only in a new form, as not traditional, no longer representing something that precedes me as an authority and entails a claim on me prior to any choice I might make. All traditions are welcome—indeed, the greater diversity of traditions the better, since a single tradition would inexorably tend to take on a traditional form. But they are welcome only as “neutralized,” as various species of “tradition” in general that present themselves now as objects of choice, submitted to the only actual authority in play—reason as exercised by the private individual. [31]
It may be the case that Schindler’s argument can only hold because Roman Catholicism and liberalism are each totalizing forms, while Gregorian chant is not. Pope Boniface VIII declared, stated, and defined that “it is absolutely necessary for salvation that every human creature be subject to the Roman Pontiff,” [32] not “that every human creature sing Tantum Ergo.” But we should expect that if liberalism is, in fact, a societal form, it is re-presented fractally within every subdomain of human activity, and analogies from subworld to world can hold water.
In the analogy, the SC §116 places Gregorian chant in the same liberal domain as the Declaration places the true God. A pastor cannot settle the liturgy wars—as a true authority could—because he himself is recast as just one more private individual taking a side. These wars have resulted in statistically less Gregorian chant, instead of more, because Gregorian chant fails to meet Paul VI’s new “minimal constraints”: music cannot disrupt public participation (analogous to order) nor threaten public understanding (analogous to safety).
Each citizen within a parish’s boundaries (not just the fraction that attend Mass) has similar veto power over traditional music in the sanctuary as he does over religious direction in the neutral public square. In both cases, this veto is made stronger by his absence, since a music minister or state representative can more easily indict custom by pointing to an empty chair than to a man. Once living, breathing people are involved, piety sometimes wins.
Coming to the present day, it seems that Pope Francis has reaffirmed the private ability to negate tradition and neglected the corporate strength required to live it. In revoking Summorum Pontificum, Francis indicated that bishops should “discontinue the erection of new personal parishes tied more to the desire and wishes of individual priests than to the real need of the ‘holy People of God.’ ” [33] Francis frames the Traditional Latin Mass, so intimately bound to Gregorian chant, as nothing more than a hobby of individual priests that today competes with the unity of the Church. Anyone who maintains love for it is thereby suspected of schism. Barnes himself makes no excuses for the “dissent, disobedience, and sedevacantist playacting that characterizes the traditionalist movement today” (emphasis mine). [34] In his letter, Barnes does not praise Gregorian chant above the liberty to refuse it. Within liberalism, no one can.
Clinging to “the One Blessing Not Forfeited by Original Sin”
In the place of allegiance to actual traditions, liberalism ushers in all traditions in potentia. Likewise, after SC §116 supposedly elevates Gregorian chant, it states the following:
But other kinds of sacred music, especially polyphony, are by no means excluded from liturgical celebrations, so long as they accord with the spirit of the liturgical action, as laid down in Art. 30.
This neutralizes the (already hopelessly hypothetical) “pride of place” due to Gregorian chant should it somehow spill over from potency to actuality, from bridesmaid to bride, and root itself in that highest of liturgical celebrations, the Mass. [35] Just how married are you to a particular woman if you “by no means” forsake any other? When you appear to compliment your lawfully-wedded wife, do you take pains to reassure other women of your continued favor? Even the holiest saint on Earth cannot sing both the Introit and the St. Louis Jesuit’s “Let us build the City of God” [36] at the same time. One genre must be excluded, and only one option (by its membership in the set of “kinds of sacred music” other than Gregorian chant) merits Vatican II’s protection from exclusion.
To clarify the marriage metaphor, it is not every soul on earth that should be wed to Gregorian chant. Rather, it is the Roman Rite which was historically, culturally, and theologically wedded to Gregorian chant till death. And who has checked in on the widower since his house fell silent? Liturgists of both conservative and progressive persuasions concur that the traditional Roman Rite was “destroyed” in the making of the new, [37] but this will nonetheless seem exaggerated to those unfamiliar with all that changed in 1969. I include Dr. Barnes in this category because of the attempt in his letter to backhandedly compliment traditionalists. He wrote that traditionalists’ local parish “could probably use their knowledge of the propers,” [38] but I can assure him that devotees of the 20th-century Tridentine Mass do not know the Novus Ordo propers in the first place. Only 13% of the 1,273 rotating orations of the traditional Roman Missal were preserved intact in the “flood,” [39] and precious few readings were left in their original place in the impossible-to-memorize triennial lectionary.
I know that reform-of-the-reformers such as Barnes earnestly wish to hear Gregorian chant again fill the sanctuaries of the Roman Church. But the Council Fathers gave and Paul VI confirmed an infinitely wide cop-out which we laity cannot rescind. What is worse is that we liberals, more than anything, love “keeping our options option.” We felt privileged rather than slighted to honor Gregorian chant with our fingers crossed behind our back. Where before there was a gold standard of sacred music, now there is a free market, with every individual as the arbiter of value.
It takes considerable virtue to deny such license. Suppose that a father of a bride makes a solemn request to his soon-to-be son-in-law: “Take care of my baby girl.” The groom starts to promise, “I will”, but the father continues, “other things being equal, of course.” Would not the righteous man, in a fit of offended chivalry, reject this interposed condition, saying “no, sir, other things being damned!”
It is with this degree of fervor that I wish for the Roman Catholic Church to un-sacrifice Gregorian chant, relinquishing in totality the potential to conjure up something better. Restoring Gregorian chant to true pride of place would in fact exclude other worthy genres such as polyphony, motets, and hymns from occupying the exact same honor. However, I grant D.C. Schindler’s point that “there is no going back” to simply reproducing the old pre-liberal forms. [40] Recommending that every smartphone-wielding Catholic download the free app Chant Tools [41] will not fix things to God’s satisfaction, but I suspect that seeing again the good of Gregorian chant might do the trick.
I myself cannot teach the depths of this good, but I can defend chant as not evil. Gregorian chant is a wonderful gift of “priceless worth” [42] (as Paul VI affirmed) because by its nature it fosters actual participation and understanding of prayer (as Paul VI denied). If it did not so augment the faith of all, it would not have “priceless worth” in the first place, nor would Pope St. Pius X have described active participation by the laity as preciselycontingent upon it in his 1903 command: “Special efforts are to be made to restore the use of the Gregorian Chant by the people, so that the faithful may again take a more active part in the ecclesiastical offices, as was the case in ancient times.” [43]
A mere sixty years later, Vatican II required the Church to forever look this gift horse in the mouth, rather than ride it roughshod over Her spiritual enemies. SC §116 may at first seem to level the sacred music playing field for the benefit of all men, but it only succeeds in erecting the prison of human opinion. Within it, Satan holds our musical dowry from the ancient fathers, our patrimony from St. Gregory the Great, the crown of the crown of all sacred art, behind illusory gates constructed of our own pride. No one should prize the “freedom” to respect the liberal mirage.
[3] I believe that “chief place” is a better rendering of the original Latin, principem locum, but the translation on the Vatican website, when read charitably, conveys the same sentiment.
[6] I am sure that there is a better story here than I can tell. Can it be a coincidence that, per the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, the words ceteris paribus were scarcely used between Cicero and Luis de Molina, those two bookends of Christendom?
[7] “John Stuart Mill used the explicit phrase ‘ceteris paribus’ only occasionally but it had an important impact because he characterized economy by its way of coping with disturbing factors: ‘Political economy considers mankind as solely occupied in acquiring and consuming wealth […] not that any political economist was ever so absurd as to suppose that mankind is really thus constituted […] when a concurrence of causes produces an effect, these causes have to be studied one at a time, and their laws separately investigated […] since the law of the effect is compounded of the laws of all the causes which determine it.’” https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/ceteris-paribus/index.html#ref-7
[8] “The difficulty with ceteris paribus is the challenge of holding all other variables constant in an effort to isolate what is driving change. In reality, one can never assume ‘all other things being equal.’” https://www.investopedia.com/terms/c/ceterisparibus.asp
[9] “Now, food independence is a great goal, and all things being equal we’d love to reach for it, but given all the demands already made on our time, is it realistic to imagine that we can keep a dairy cow?” Considering the Family Cow: Why you want one and what it takes, page 8, Beth and Shawn Dougherty, 2021.
[12] Nor does the Manifesto say why, in its words, “the liturgy was unable to develop organically in this [the modern] era, all while Christian culture endured centuries of militant secularism and industrialization.” This sounds much like the liturgy was “smothered by an oppressive, institutional body,” since it would be hard to argue that the Church was not in control of Her own liturgy for hundreds of years. The New Traditionalists may be as guilty of liberalism as the Old.
[14] We are joined by other interpreters of various philosophical stances:
Summing up Joseph Gelineau’s position, Anthony Ruff states that “in effect chant has priority only when other factors do not overweigh, such as ‘functional value, or pastoral concern regarding the language employed, and also regarding the adaptation of the melodies to the capabilities of the assembly, etc’.” Ruff, Anthony. Sacred Music and Liturgical Reform: Treasures and Transformations (Chicago, IL: Liturgy Training Publications, 2007), 321-332
Joseph Swain states “The famous qualifier ceteris paribus (other things being equal) makes its appearance here to accommodate local conditions that might obstruct the use of plainchant or warrant its replacement by something more suitable for the sacred liturgy. In the light of both the theoretical nature of plainchant and the experience since the council, it is difficult to imagine what these conditions might be in any general case. The American Gospel Mass, sung where the local people have grown up with an alternative musical language owning a true sacred semantic, might be judged a situation where ‘other things’ outweigh the Gregorian advantages of biblical Mass propers specific for each Sunday: a universal and neutral language and a musical means to connect with the rest of the world.” Swain, Joseph P. Sacred Treasure: Understanding Catholic Liturgical Music (Collegeville, MN: Liturgical Press, 2012), 321.
[15] “A few” is very likely less than 1 in 20, based on a straw poll of ReverentCatholicMass.com and some back-of-the-envelope calculations on the number of parishes listed versus the total parishes in the United States..
[16] Conservatives may be right when they assert that Msgr. Johannes Overath and the Council Fathers did not intend this outcome. I, however, cannot read the hearts of the Council Fathers, but only their words. Nor can I change what those words mean. If their words misrepresent their will, I require another word from them (or their successors) to know this.
[18] The bishops’ intent to qualify any deference to be paid to chant, rather than boldly promote it, is also seen in their footnote citing the Vatican’s 1967 Instruction on Music in the Liturgy Musicam Sacram, which they write “further specifies that chant has pride of place ‘in sung liturgical services celebrated in Latin.’”
[23] The executives were quite explicit in their desire to fill the “niche” of uniting the world: “So that was the basic idea: to see Coke not as it was originally designed to be — a liquid refresher — but as a tiny bit of commonality between all peoples, a universally liked formula that would help to keep them company for a few minutes… Davis slowly revealed his problem. ‘Well, if I could do something for everybody in the world, it would not be to buy them a Coke.’ Backer responded, ‘What would you do?’ ‘I’d buy everyone a home first and share with them in peace and love,’ Davis said. Backer said, ‘Okay, that sounds good. Let’s write that and I’ll show you how Coke fits right into the concept.’” “Creating ‘I’d Like to Buy the World a Coke.’”
[25] To this day, Catholics are associated only with Gregorian chant despite its disuse and disfavor among them. Steve Martin, a comedian and agnostic, sings in a 2019 song “Atheists Don’t Have No Songs”: “Catholics dress up for Mass and listen to Gregorian chants. Atheists just take a pass, watch football in their underpants.” Steve Martin and The Steep Canyon Rangers, Rare Bird Alert, 2019, Universal Music Group,
[28] Nov 22, 1903 Motu Proprio Tra le Sollecitudini, Pope Pius X, n. 3. Pius X’s word choice of “restored” dispels any false history of a pre-Vatican II “golden age” for Gregorian chant. We can grant Mike Lewis’s point in his article “Gregorian chant and the post-Vatican II liturgy” that chanters today may be more competent, or even more in love with chant, than before. However, consistent with my argument, Pius X also said the word “must” without qualification, insisting on a moral obligation which was turned inside out post-Vatican II.
[29] Chirograph of the Supreme Pontiff John Paul II For the Centenary of the Motu Proprio “Tra Le Sollecitudini” on Sacred Music.
[30] Page xvii, The Politics of the Real: The Church Between Liberalism and Integralism. D.C. Schindler, New Polity Press, Steubenville, OH, 2021
[32] Bull Unam Sanctamof Pope Boniface VIII promulgated November 18, 1302.
[33]Letter of the Holy Father Francis to the Bishops of the whole world, that accompanies the Apostolic Letter Motu Proprio Data “Traditionis Custodes” 16 July 2021
[37] “At this critical juncture, the traditional Roman rite, more than one thousand years old, has been destroyed.”
Gamber, The Reform of the Roman Liturgy, K. Gamber ( Harrison, N.Y.,1993), p. 99. “Let those who like myself have known and sung a Latin-Gregorian High Mass remember it if they can. Let them compare it with the Mass that we now have. Not only the words, the melodies, and some of the gestures are different. To tell the truth, it is a different liturgy of the Mass. This needs to be said without ambiguity: the Roman Rite as we knew it no longer exists. It has been destroyed.” [Gelineau, Demain la liturgie: essai sur l’évolution des assemblées chrétiennes, Éditions du Cerf , Paris, 1976 pp. 9-10.]
[39] Rotating orations defined as “collects, secrets/super oblata, postcommunions and super populum,” excluding prefaces, hymns, and sequences. (October 01, 2021, “All the Elements of the Roman Rite”? Mythbusting, Part II, Matthew Hazell, New Liturgical Movement)
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