One of the ideologies of the 1970's betrayed in the good Monsignor's article is that the reforms of the Mass were SORELY needed. Really? When up to 90% of Catholics were attending Mass up to and shortly after Vatican II was there really a SORELY needed reform of the Mass?
We all know that Vatican II's document on the Liturgy was mild and conservative simply calling for the use of some vernacular, more Scripture in the Lectionary and eliminating "useless" repetition, but not really naming what was useless. It did not call for an overhaul of the Mass or a new Order of Mass or the elimination of Latin and ad orientem altogether. That latter, though, came rather quickly under the direction of Pope Paul VI who approved radical reforms of the Mass that went well beyond what Vatican II envisioned but was wholly in line with what academic liturgists wanted to do and were trying to do since the late 1940's and through the 1950's. They won the day, not Vatican II!
We must go back and recover what was good and holy about the pre-Vatican II Mass now called the Extraordinary Form and in fact we are doing this today. We cannot go back to a time when the pre-Vatican II Mass was forbidden as though a poison fruit of some kind.
Need I remind Msgr. Mannion of Pope Benedict's words concerning the two forms of our one Latin Rite? Yes, I do:
"There is no contradiction between the two editions of the Roman Missal. In the history of the liturgy there is growth and progress, but no rupture. What earlier generations held as sacred, remains sacred and great for us too, and it cannot be all of a sudden entirely forbidden or even considered harmful. It behooves all of us to preserve the riches which have developed in the Church’s faith and prayer, and to give them their proper place. Needless to say, in order to experience full communion, the priests of the communities adhering to the former usage cannot, as a matter of principle, exclude celebrating according to the new books. The total exclusion of the new rite would not in fact be consistent with the recognition of its value and holiness."
We must, though, apply the same principles of actual participation to the EF Mass as to the OF Mass and have an "art" to celebrating both forms in a natural and reverent way. Films of the pre-Vatican II Mass show how celebrants were quite comfortable with this Mass and far from mere robotic functionaries. And yes, Catholics in the pews should be able to speak and sing the parts that were normally reserved only to the altar boys and choir.
But most of the article hits the nail on the head as it concerns the abysmal state of the Ordinary Form of the Mass perhaps in the majority of parishes in the USA. Thus a reform of the reform in continuity with what preceded the Ordinary Form of the Mass is SORELY needed today given the fact today, which was not present prior to the Council, only 20 percent or so of Catholics actually attend Mass regularly!
Monsignor M. Francis Mannion's article:
I think that by now readers know that I am an unambiguous supporter of the liturgical reforms brought about by the Second Vatican Council. These reforms were sorely needed, and there is no going back, as some “conservatives” would wish.
The reform in the liturgy, particularly of the Mass, was undoubtedly the centerpiece of post-Vatican II developments. The liturgical changes impinged immediately on the life of worshipers. Practicing Catholic experienced the liturgical reforms first hand in their parish churches.
However, not everything is as it should be in the Church’s liturgical life. There is much unease in some quarters, and many people have a vague feeling that something is amiss with the liturgy.
What is wrong? In my opinion, the fundamental problem has to do with the manner in which the liturgy is celebrated.
Speaking generally, I do not give high marks to the way in which clergy preside at liturgy (sloppy, mechanical, soulless, artless), and the way they homilize (superficial, disorganized, prosaic, and unable to connect with people’s deepest needs).
Lay liturgical ministers are very often trained inadequately, and are unprepared to assist at Mass (this is especially true of lectors). On a regular basis, liturgical ministers simply do not show up when assigned; and they are often sloppily dressed (I continue to argue that lay ministers should wear albs, not least to cover a multitude of wardrobe sins).
Besides lay and ordained malfeasance, there are two areas in which the condition of the Church’s liturgical life is in very bad shape. These are liturgical music and church architecture.
Church music continues to have the folksiness carried over from the 1970s, and has a very outdated feeling; and there are almost no (and I mean no) good composers in the field of liturgical music today. Pastors are not willing to employ professional musicians, and musical leadership is often left in the hands of well-meaning, but poorly trained, amateurs.
The situation with church architecture is even worse, even disastrous (and I do not use that word lightly). Music programs can be improved quickly, but (modern) church buildings are apt to last for a century or more. For the first time in 2000 years, our churches are not designed to be replicas of the New Jerusalem; they do not point to heaven, and do not make present in icons, paintings, and murals the celestial hosts of angels and saints.
Modern churches are merely functional: They provide high-priced, colorless, and lifeless auditoriums for worship. (One prominent church architect who designed many Catholic churches–and renovated at least one cathedral–called his designs “non-churches”!)
The fundamental problem here is that few church architects are trained in liturgical theology, know very little about the history of church architecture, and simply ape one another. And the situation is not getting better. Church design in mired in the severe, cold, and lifeless style that began in Germany at the beginning of the twentieth century.
Some people think that all the problems would be solved if only the Church would make further structural changes in the liturgy. “Conservatives” think that we must go back to what obtained before the Council; and “liberals” think that, if only we would move forward and adapt the liturgy to the culture, things would improve vastly.
How can the problems I identify be resolved? Largely, by a massive liturgical education of clergy, lay ministers, musicians, architects, and artists. (On the matter of liturgical education in the seminaries, I’m afraid the outlook continues to be rather bleak.)
Msgr. Mannion is pastor emeritus of St. Vincent de Paul Catholic Church in Salt Lake City.
The article was written for Catholic News Agency.
19 comments:
Okay. I'll agree with the good Monsignor in very general terms. First, the regular celebration of a simplified vernacular Mass in parish churches is a good pastoral tool. And second, newer/renovated churches and ministerial irreverence have done the liturgical reforms no favors.
However, this frequent tendency by supposedly moderate commentators to pit reactionaries against revolutionaries fails to account for the reality. One would be hard-pressed to find among bishops, priests or the members of a typical parish any discernible group actively pressing to return the liturgical life of the Latin Church to it's state in 1964.
There is, however, a very active group that ignores the letter of Sacrosanctum Concilium and pushes for near total ritual freedom in celebrations of the Roman Mass.
"many people have a vague feeling that something is amiss with the liturgy."
A vague feeling? Those for whom the feeling is "vague" must be vegetables. Perhaps hynotized over decades in passive couch-potato mode by the audible drone of liturgy in pidgin vernacular (and not yet awakened to the glories of the new translation).
Prior to Vatican II, there admittedly those with 30-yard stares at Mass, perhaps even some who snuck outside for a smoke during the canon, but I'm convinced that far more than now were actively engaged prayerful participants (as are virtually all at EF Masses today).
I will admit that our parish is very conservative, yet we participate both during the Mass, singing and speaking the parts of the ministers when appropriate, although not very loudly when compared to our schola. We are prayerfully quiet during Low Mass but are quite loud while praying the Prayers requested by the Pope subsequent to Mass.
I suppose the Monsignor had to establish his credibility with his peers by taking a swipe at the EF in his opening remarks. Afterwards, however, he does a good job of analyzing the problems with the general execution and setting of the NO in American parishes.
It seems everyone agrees that the Masses were well attended prior to Liturgical Reform. It seems that the form of the Mass was not a problem for the laity in general. But clergy seemed to have authtecally disliked the Old form and enthusiastically attacked the form and structure of the mass and things associated with it, e.g. Altar rails. My experience was that this came from lay Liturgical experts as well as women religious consultants. Was there that much animosity among clergy toward the Mass and Church structures to almost in unison seek to make changes?
I fear that Msgr. Mannion is of the school of thought of many priests who would rather die than be labeled "pre-Vatican II." In the late 1960's and through the 1970's the greatest insult and the greatest danger to one's vocation in the seminary or one's ministry in the priesthood would be to be labled "pre-Vatican II." This is the Catholic version of the "n" word when it was in vogue in the south and used by racists.
The big question I have is that Pope Benedict had such clear vision on this topic, and his book "Spirit of the Liturgy," was marvellous, Summorum Pontificum, and his general example celebrating Mass point to his preferences: Why didn't he put forward the reform he saw for the Novus Ordo legislatively? Why wasn't there a matching Moto Proprio to SP that eliminated some or most of the options that he saw as problematic such as communion in the hand, the multitude of Eucharistic Prayers, etc.? This should have been done at the same time as SP because it would have made it easier to continue the reform of the reform and it would of given us a document to fight back with. Anyway. Sorry to go on, but it has been a a rough several years. Thank you for letting me vent Father!
I left out that having a "reform of the reform" document would have given leverage with priests like the Msr. who while scared of being labeled "pre-Vatican II" would give way to the document as they could point to it when people complained. It's how we got the quarterly Latin Masses in my parish, as the Parish Administrator just told the complainers that "he had no choice."
rcg,
In a number parishes in several dioceses in three different regions of the U.S. prior to the new Mass, I never heard a single word, lay or clerical, of dissatisfaction with the Mass or any desire for change. Indeed, I never knew anyone for whom "change in liturgy" was in their vocabulary or consciousness. The eternal unchanging Mass was simply taken as a given. Discussions since with older priests confirms that this feeling in the pews was shared by priests in the sacristy, at least in that the question whether one “liked” the way Mass was never occurred to anyone, people just did not have opinions on such matters (as opposed, for instance, to a universal dislike for long sermons, or to an assigned penance of a whole rosary said kneeling at the altar rail).
That said, people were schooled to accept the teaching of the Church, and hence initially accepted without question the assurance (however false) that all the changes--from the different-almost-every-Sunday vernacular EPs to jack-hammering the altar and statues--had been ordered by Vatican II. Many if not most were happy to hear the words of the Mass in the stately English translation that preceded ICEL's pidgin English translation, and I suspect that many priests and religion found a vernacular Divine Office a particular relief (despite the fact that Vatican II had directed that priests continue to recite it in Latin).
All this before it began to sink in that with the generally welcome vernacular were coming other changes in the Mass that destroyed its perception of reverence and mystery.
Henry,
Is that why the Office used in the US is so badly translated, because the religious and clergy were too relieved to care?
(I've heard the UK edition is much better, but I can't speak to that)
There does seem to be a desire for further reform of the Ordinary Form of the Mass and the difference in the two forms of Mass have been highlighted in recent comments of Fr Hunwicke and Fr Z. A summary can be found on the New Liturgical Movement. Fr Hunwicke makes the point that, although valid, the Ordinary form of the Mass is in fact a different rite from the Extraordinary form.
Fr Z comments that the two rites may not be mixed, as some priests are evidently saying the offertory prayers of the EF Mass in the OF Mass. He also sets out how the eucharistric prayers for the new Mass were "cobbled" together from the prayers of the 5th century Talmud with emphasis on a meal: "The French liturgist and converted Protestant minister Louis Bouyer (+2004), who was a key figure in the liturgical reform, wrote in his work Eucharistie that the old prayers were abandoned in order to situate “the words of institution of the Eucharist back into their own context which is that of the ritual berakoth of the Jewish meal.”
So, you can see why some priests would want to say the older, traditional Form of the Roman Rite and also use the older, traditional Offertory Prayers during the Novus Ordo."
It's an interesting read for those who are not sure why some prefer the Traditional Mass over the Novus Ordo Mass and also why some think that the Ordinary Form of the Mass needs more reform than just mere cosmetic change and why the Extraordinary Form of the Mass is loved not just for its beautify ...
http://wdtprs.com/blog/2015/04/ask-father-using-the-traditional-offertory-prayers-in-the-novus-ordo-wherein-fr-z-rants/#comments
Jan
Msgr. Mannion said, "These reforms were sorely needed, and there is no going back, as some “conservatives” would wish."
Having lived through the times (albeit as a child) I recall those days, when after the election of Kennedy in the U.S. there was a general feeling that civilization was moving into a more modern era - updating, upgrading everything from cars to appliances, with advances in technology seeming to announce the arrival of the "space age" (remember that term?), and so it seems clerics thought the Catholic Church, with liturgies in Latin 1000 or more years old, was going to be left behind and become irrelevant.
Bright young priests (like Ratzinger and Wojtyla) were itching to help update the Church and keep it relevant in a rapidly changing world. And that's the world view that made it seem like the reforms were "sorely needed." Now we know it was just stupid worldly fear.
How have the Eastern Orthodox Churches fared since the 1960's, the ones who didn't change a thing? I don't know the answer to that. But sometimes I think if things get any worse in the Roman Catholic liturgy and I can't find a parish where the priest will actually pray and lead worship OF GOD at Mass, I may have to move to an Orthodox Church that is in communion with Rome. Now, that's bad.
"...there is no going back, as some “conservatives” would wish."
I don't want to go back. I just want actual reverent prayer of the Mass, Novo Ordo or otherwise. Geez, I'm trying to get to heaven here. I'd like to be given half a chance at that by my own Church!
As everyone knows, I like the vernacular in the liturgy but had hoped that some Latin would be mandated for at least the sung parts of the Mass like it is at the Vatican even when most of the Mass is in Italian.
But in terms of the Ordinary Form approximating the reverence and piety of the EF Mass all that is required is the following and I doubt that most people could tell the difference between it and the EF Mass.
1. Celebrate the EF Mass in Latin and ad orientem, all the while keeping the liturgy of the word as it is and having a vested reader do the readings.
2. Chant the Mass in Latin
3. Receive Holy Communion kneeling and at the altar railing
4. Ask people to be quiet before and after Mass and not to get up and leave during Mass for anything short of an emergency of to take a screaming child out of church.
5. eliminate the sign of peace or make it more sober for the laity telling them ahead of time to turn to only two people on either side of them and offer the kiss of peace silently and in the Roman way as the celebrant would in the EF Mass to the deacon/subdeacon.
My first point above should read "celebrate the OF Mass" not EF of course.
In fact, our All Souls' Requiem Mass this past year that fell on Sunday was done this way and using Farure' Requiem, a simply stunning Requiem. It was OF but all in Latin except the readings, although we did chant the EF's Gradual and the Dies Irae as in an EF. But it was an OF Mass. I had many people who don't normally attend our EF Mass and many who never have tell me after this Latin OF Requiem that they had never attended the pre-Vatican II Mass and loved it. Of course it was the OF Mass!
Fr AJM
The Mass you describe is that celebrated every Sunday at the London Oratory, down to the Kiss of Peace within the sanctuary only and the reader for the first lesson wearing choir dress (male, of course; the Oratorians don't allow females in the sanctuary). Also the Roman Canon is de rigueur.
In the 1970s the Tridentine Mass was a rara avis and so we settled for the Novus Ordo done as traditionally as possible - the more Latin and chant, the better. In 1970 the English bishops expressed the hope that the new rite would be celebrated regularly in Latin (six years previously they had mandated as much vernacular as possible). Some parishes took them at their word; in 1980 no fewer than sixteen churches in central London had a Latin NO as their principal Sunday Mass. Elsewhere when older priests died or retired their successors were less familiar with Latin; the same applied to a new generation of bishops. The Latin NO is now, outside London and a few other venues, more difficult to find than the EF.
Those of us who for very good reasons prefer a Latin liturgy would not wish for others who have derived spiritual benefit from the vernacular to be deprived of it. However it must be recognized that they are a minority compared with their pre-Conciliar forebears who were less likely to lapse. Those who insist on every Mass they might drop in on being in English not only adopt a 'dog-in-the-manger' attitude but need to be told in no uncertain terms what 'Catholic' means.
Out of curiosity, Father McDonald, going off of John Nolan's last post and since it wasn't included on your list, what do you think as far as Eucharistic Prayers are concerned? I know you've said before you're fine with the new ones, but do you have a specific favorite over the others? Do you have complaints about or praises of the Roman Canon? Or is the whole matter off your radar?
Also, have you seen "Canon B," a sort of demo of Eucharistic Prayer III, from Cipriano Vagaggini's "Canon of the Mass and Liturgical Reform"? It was much more like the Roman Canon, and somehow strikes me as something you would like. You can download the whole book, and a comparison of this "Canon B" and EP III, right here:
http://catholiclectionary.blogspot.com/2015/04/pdf-download-c-vagaggini-canon-of-mass.html#comment-form
I have never seen Canon B and yes it is wonderful and I don't know why it wasn't used or the one we have is truncated as it is.
I am not opposed to the other Eucharistic prayers and I normally use 2 for daily Mass and the final Mass on Sunday if I am tired (5 pm)!
The Eucharistic prayer does two things in any valid form that it is prayed. It makes present the Risen Lord Jesus, Body, Blood, Soul and Divinity in the words of consecration. Then afterward our Lord's and His sacrifice is offered to God the Father in an unbloody way.
Does the Roman Canon do this in a better way? It is what it is!
I wish EP4 were more common (granted, it wouldn't make. As Father McDonald has said before, however, it is redundant after the Creed.
I won't lie; I feel the same way during the Divine Liturgy of St. Basil. It feels unnecessary for the priest to repeat what the Creed just summarised.
Interestingly, Flavius, if you look in the book I gave a link to above, the genesis of EPIV was "Canon C," which was identical "Canon B" except for the pre-Consecration rundown of salvation history, largely as we still have it (though, like Canon B, more fleshed out than the final product, if I recall). This Canon C was actually longer than the Roman Canon!
The ones who "can't go backwards" are the ones who have no idea where they are headed.
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