How Do You Solve A Problem Like The Canon? (Part 1)

In the last several days, some of the less healthy parts of the Catholic internet have been subjected to a great deal of pearl-clutching over purported statements that the post-Conciliar reform of the liturgy was in one way or another, or even in toto, a mistake. These statements, it is claimed, call into question the belief of those who make them in the doctrine of the Church’s indefectibility. Conveniently forgotten, of course, is that the inventors of the post-Conciliar rite themselves believed and openly stated that for centuries, the Church had been in many ways, or indeed in all ways, gravely mistaken about how the liturgy ought to be celebrated. We are grateful, therefore, to a guest contributor for sharing with us this article, which demonstrates that they did not scruple to hold and state this opinion even about the very heart of the Roman Rite, the Canon.

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

Much has been written on the motu proprio Traditionis Custodes and the subsequent press releases, document leaks, interviews, and dubia communiques. The reader will no doubt be relieved to learn that it is not my intention to contribute yet another piece on the meaning and import of, or reactions to, any of the above. Rather, I wish to explore a more fundamental question that has been raised in the aftermath of the motu proprio, regarding the nature of the Roman Canon and liturgical progress in general.

In early August, Rev. Anthony Ruff was interviewed by Gloria Purvis of America Magazine about his reactions to Traditionis Custodes and his thoughts on the pre- and post-conciliar liturgy in general. Ruff began by saying that one of his first reactions to TC was heartfelt concern for those who desire the traditional Mass, because until now they had been “misled” by the hierarchy and would therefore be all the more confused and hurt by this motu proprio. “The authorities of the church let them believe that there was something O.K. and something good about the pre-Vatican II rites," he explained.

According to Ruff, “the Second Vatican Council said, the form of this [pre-Vatican II] Mass, where it’s really more clerical than congregational, that form is not adequate. We’re not saying that the people were inadequate or un-Christian, but we’re saying that that form does not reflect the nature of the true church, which is how they worded it.” It is for this reason that “the church understands the 1970 missal after Vatican II, in a sense to be superior, more faithful to the will of the Lord as understood by the Second Vatican Council”.

Patrick Smith, contributor to a variety of outlets including The Lamp, the Josias, and Ius & Iustitium, offered brief commentary on Ruff’s interview via Twitter. “As I think about this,” reflected Smith, “it’s an extraordinary claim that, from about 500 to Nov. 30, 1969, the Roman Rite was afflicted with an unsatisfactory liturgy that did not reflect the Lord’s will or even a correct understanding of the Church.” He continued, “it is interesting to compare the post-Conciliar project of ressourcement, of returning to the Fathers and stripping off the decadent Baroque neo-Thomism, with the post-Conciliar project of revising/rejecting the Roman Canon, which was attested in detail by Father after Father.”

Smith’s comments, and his pinpointing of the Canon as a locus for post-conciliar revision, serve as a useful framework for examining the theological assessment given by Father Ruff and its wider implications for the history (and future) of the liturgy.

The Canon and the Liturgical Movement

The Roman Canon, the extraordinarily ancient central text of the Roman Rite of the Mass, stretching from the Te igitur to the Per ipsum, was viewed by many mid-century reformers as a priority for modernization efforts. Its structure and phrasing of the Roman Canon often was viewed as odd, difficult, and obviously in need of improvement by liturgical scholars of the conciliar period.

The beginning of the Roman Canon, in the Stowe Missal (AD 792). Dublin, Royal Irish Academy, MS. D ii 3, fol. 24 r. (Source)

A priest convert-and-liturgist writing in the diocesan newspaper of the Archdiocese of Hartford in the years immediately following the council provides a representative example of this sentiment: “the Roman (the ancient ‘Gregorian’) Canon was once called by an Anglican writer of the last century ‘the most venerable prayer in Christendom.’ Venerable it may be and is, and incomparable because certainly unlike any other, it is yet far from being the classic or ideal eucharistic prayer. Our scholars have long been pointing this out […] How my fingers itch for the blue pencil!”

This subject was not limited to private debate about mere stylistic preferences or obscure scholarly minutiae. Rather, it was the public and strenuous opinion of the leading figures in the Liturgical Movement that the Roman Canon was in fact theologically and liturgically ‘defective’ and guilty of ‘sins’ that stood in need of correction. Although running afoul of the strictures of the 22nd session of the Council of Trent, these scholars stood convinced that these claims were imperative to the project of officially renewing the liturgical life of the church.

The writings of two such figures demand particular attention: Rev. Frederick McManus and Rev. Cipriano Vagaggini. These were two of the most prominent and influential players in the story of liturgical reform, and it is difficult to summarize even the highlights of their careers.

Rev. Frederick McManus (Source)

McManus was the most respected canonist of his generation, first teaching at and then leading the school of canon law at CUA. He served on the Vatican’s pre-conciliar, conciliar, and post-conciliar liturgical commissions which drafted, edited, and then implemented the Sacrosanctum Concilium. He was part of the US bishop’s press panel at the council, giving briefings on the closed sessions, and he wrote countless feature articles for the US bishop’s official news service. He also served from 1965-1975 as the first executive director of the US Bishops’ Committee on the Liturgy, the official body responsible for guiding the liturgical reform in the United States.

Rev. Cipriano Vagaggini OSB (Source)

Vagaggini likewise served on the pre-conciliar, conciliar, and post-conciliar liturgical commissions, and was responsible for drafting many of the most prominent portions of the liturgical reform. He helped draft Sacram Liturgiam and almost exclusively drafted Inter Oecumenici, the two major documents which implemented the council’s liturgical constitution in 1964. Vagaggini also drafted, among other things, the new rite of concelebration, the new rite of confirmation, the new multi-year lectionary, several of the new eucharistic prayers, the new instruction on communion under both species, the new instruction for seminaries, and the instruction Eucharisticum Mysterium.

1966: ‘Radical Revision’ underway

Their opinions regarding the Canon and the need for reform were summarized in Vagaggini’s book The Canon of the Mass and Liturgical Reform, originally published in Italian in 1966 and released in English in May of 1967. Rather than merely positioning itself as an academic exercise, the book instead is designed to broadcast a clear message: changes to the Canon are necessary and unavoidable, already underway, and will arrive much sooner than anyone expects.

The book’s description opens with a rather stark line: “Liturgical reform was decreed by Vatican II and in the end is bound to be radical.” McManus begins his preface in much the same way: “One of these days the eucharistic prayer of the Roman Mass will change. Whether this comes about by way of radical revision of the Roman canon or by the addition of several alternative anaphoras, the change will come.”

McManus explained that “the eucharistic prayer in the vernacular, however desirable, will make public something that has been overlooked except by liturgical and pastoral experts, namely, the defects of the Roman canon” and that “the limitations and defects will call for the evolution of new forms.” The solution to these problems, according to McManus, was “the serious construction of new eucharistic prayers which reflect the progress of theological and liturgical science and which are meaningful – or can be made meaningful through study and reflection – to the twentieth-century Christian.”

In his introduction, Vagaggini again emphasized that there was a real and urgent need to correct “the canon’s intrinsic limitations and manifest defects.” Over the course of some 18 pages, he highlights ten specific defects, including:

1. The impression given of an agglomeration of features with no apparent unity (“this is the first and most serious defect that is immediately evident when it is compared with the anaphoras of Hippolytus or the Eastern Churches”).

3. The unsatisfactory way in which the various prayers of intercession are assembled in the Canon (“it is as though the worst possible solution had been chosen”).

6. The lack of a theology of the part played by the Holy Spirit in the Eucharist (“this is a very serious deficiency”).

7. Deficiencies in the Qui pridie and the institution narrative (“the greatest defect is that Hoc est enim corpus meum stands alone; [… it] is a serious one liturgically and theologically”).

9. The list of saints in the present Canon (“lend themselves to a great deal of criticism”).

10. The lack of an overall presentation of the history of salvation (“this is a failing of the Roman Canon and of the whole anaphora tradition in the West”).

Vagaggini bluntly delivers the judgment of the liturgical reformers: “these defects are undeniable and of no small importance. The present Roman canon sins in a number of ways against those requirements of good liturgical composition and sound liturgical sense that were emphasized by the Second Vatican Council […] the general liturgical reform called for by the recent Council would be failing in one of its gravest tasks if its courage faltered in confronting this problem.”

The Displacement of the Mysterium Fidei and the Fabricated Memorial Acclamation

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

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

Pope Innocent III and St Thomas Aquinas

1. The Traditional View

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

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

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

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

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

He responds to this objection:

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

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

2. The Phrase’s Antiquity and Obscurity

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

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

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

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

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

3. A Campaign to Remove the Phrase from Office

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

4. Paul VI Insists on Repurposing the Phrase

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Continue Reading this Article. . .