My personal opinion is that the TLM’s Solemn Sung Pontifical Mass with all the bells and whistles does not do any favors for those promoting the restoration of the pre-Vatican II liturgies of the Church.
While I disagree with how Blase Cardinal Cupich framed what the Fathers of the Second Vatican Council desired for the reforms of the Church’s liturgy and that it had anything to do with an exhibitionist attitude toward promoting or feigning poverty in terms of noble simplicity, I do believe that most bishops did not like the highest form of Pontifical Masses in the pre-Vatican II era.
They did not like all the ceremonial stuff prior to the Mass, the gloves, the buskins, the cappa magna. They did not like all the fussiness that certainly must have been designed and promoted by an ancient LGBTQ+++ cabal during the Renaissance or earlier. Maybe they wanted to make the Church's liturgy look ridiculous and over-the-top like what female impersonators do with women?
Who can fault them!
It is fussy!
It is pretentious!
It is bizarre, like the buskins and gloves and other ceremonies borrowed from worldly sources rather than true liturgical organic development.
It is pretentious! Oh, I already wrote that.
With that said, in pre-Vatican II times, how many Catholics ever experienced the kind of Pontifical Mass Cardinal Burke celebrated recently at St. Peter’s. Not many and most would avoid it like a plague.
Keep in mind, in pre-Vatican II times, the Mass most attended on Sundays was the Low Mass with no chanting. And most Catholics went early with multiple early morning Low Masses, some beginning at 5 AM if not earlier.
Why? The Church had a long fast and many people who wanted to receive Holy Communion when they went to Mass went early before breakfast time and to a short Mass. You could not even drink coffee to get the bowels working before you left for Mass! Think about that!
Catholics also wanted to get their obligation over, with a short Sunday morning Mass and then enjoy the Sunday morning with rest, relaxation, a big breakfast and nice family Sunday dinner.
The High Mass, and not even offered every Sunday, was always later in the morning, like at 10 AM or 11 AM—it was long, beautiful in most places and for those who loved chant, ceremony, bells and smells. Very few, though, actually received Holy Communion which made the Mass a bit shorter.
I don’t think the Council Fathers had the normal parish Low or High Mass in mind when it called for noble simplicity. They had in mind the Pontifical Mass. And they certainly did not desire a complete overhaul of the liturgy that would appear to be more Protestant than Protestant or even post-Catholic like the liturgy in Germany recently celebrating Queerdom but without all the drag!
You can watch the video of that Mass, if you can stomach it, available here.
With all of that said, though, there is no reason to suppress the ancient liturgies of the Church or forbid them for the new and “improved”. Both should co-exist and let the Holy Spirit working synodally in the clergy and faithful make the determination which will last for the long-haul.
Just my 2 cents worth, although pennies are no longer made! What a shame!
8 comments:
There is a lot of similarity between the Pontifical High Mass and the Hierarchical Divine Liturgy, which seems to indicate a rather (dare I say it) ancient common ancestor between the two. Given that lengthy history of use, it seems problematic to throw your Pontifical Mass due to "fussiness" or "pretentiousness."
Anyway, I'm not sure those things are necessarily baked into your rite itself. One issue you have is that those Pontifical Masses are so rare these days in your church that they're made to be a spectacle. In my time with the SSPX, Pontifical Masses were somewhat more common and weren't quite the ordeal that they appear in the photo reports.
And now in my time in the Orthodox Church, I've been to a few Hierarchical Divine Liturgies that would probably appear quite "fussy" in photos, but in reality weren't -- because the hierarch is used to this sort of thing (with the vesting rite, etc.).
I suspect that my experience there is maybe similar to what would've routinely happened in the Roman church "back in the day" due to the normality of rites.
St. John XXIII would disagree with you, Father McDonald! He loved all of that pomp and circumstance. He personally did not like much about the 1955 Holy Week Reforms and sometimes used the pre-1955 version!
I do agree, however, that most Catholics would lack the patience to sit through a Pontifical Mass. I grew up in the Midwest and our normative Sunday Mass was a Missa Cantata. Low Masses were very early on Sunday morning for the golfers!
When liturgical practices evolve organically and incrementally, prudence and right reason prevail. Changes made to our sacred rites after Vat. II were abrupt, arbitrary, and imposed. They were largely, if not exclusively, devised and drawn up by one agenda-driven mastermind -- Cardinal Annibale Bugnini.
"Fussiness" and "spectacle" are in the eye of the beholder. Take, for example, the genius Cardinal Cupich, who criticizes the TLM for being too much of a spectacle yet does nothing about some of the absolute nonsense occurring at the Novus Ordo parishes in his diocese. Worse than a spectacle, they beclown the dignity of the liturgy.s
Nick
Our Hierarchical Divine Liturgy is the same as yours and I've experienced it several times over. Agree, there's a fundamental similarity between it and the pontificate high mass. Both would be more closely aligned if the Romans removed the temporal elements that crept into their ceremonial. If kept purely sacred, without buskins and gloves, there is nothing faulty about the missal itself.
The fussiness is an easy target for the "it doesn't measure up crowd". Arguably, buskins, gloves etc serve no liturgical purpose and only create a sense of "more".
That said, if only your NO was under the same microscope....
Nice to see you posting again, Byz. I hope you've been well!
Claiming such things "serve no purpose" often shows smallness of mind, or at least unwillingness to accept what has been handed down. The waving of the aer serves no purpose now that our buildings are reasonably enclosed from insects, and yet Eastern Catholics and Orthodox haven't thrown that out.
Nick
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