I copied and paste this Facebook article I found. However, it did not paste the name of the author and when I went back to Facebook, I couldn’t find the original post that I copied! Apologies to the author. My comments after his post.
The Holy Sacrifice of the Mass celebrated in 1922:
Fr. Pius Parsch celebrating Mass in 1922 in a 'popular' style of Mass approved by bishops and spread through Germany/Austria. Whatever the defects, the style became quite popular.
We should not forget Vatican II saw itself as endorsing a movement already well under way in many places, popular among laypeople & scholars, and endorsing fairly standard views among liturgical scholars regarding what the earliest Roman liturgy looked like.
[NB: Newman's 'Callista' gives a similar picture of what early Roman liturgy was thought to be like.]
But there were alternative approaches to what would come from that movement as pertains to liturgical reform. Some scholars, such as Louis Bouyer, came to see the product of VII's reform as falling short of their intended goals, even as they endorsed Sacrosanctum Concilium as the great victory for their movement.
I cannot help but agree with Bouyer. Being myself firmly in the Bouyer-Ratzingerian camp on the VII reforms, I'd think: Some changes were good & reasonable; others bland & decrease in quality; others inadvertently led to rupture & chaotic abuses. But there was reasonability in the initial aims of the liturgical movement that needs not to be forgotten.
(In fact, let me say too that, despite the picture (above) I agree with Razinger, Bouyer, Lang, etc., that 'versus populum' liturgy has turned out to have largely the wrong effect on everyone. It seems to me the right response would be to reverse this emphasis and reintroduce 'ad orientem' celebrations into popular practice again.)
My most humble commentary:
Some have claimed that I am clairvoyant—who knows. I have no idea what Pope Leo will do to calm down the current liturgical wars that are on many fronts. Thank you Vatican II and Pope Francis.
Somehow I doubt that Pope Leo will abrogate TC and go back to SP, but who knows? I do think he will encourage bishops to be generous about the celebration of the Vetus Ordo. I would hope he would eliminate some of the Orwellian aspects of TC or later communications from Cardinal Roche, like the Vetus Ordo can’t be celebrated in parish churches, forcing its celebrations to shrines and gymnasiums.
As well, the truly Orwellian Roche mandated law, that the Vetus Ordo can’t be advertised in parish bulletins is truly Orwellian and should have been shot down by now.
What do I think that Pope Leo should do? Write a TC type authoritative document that liberalizes the celebratioin of the Vetus Ordo along the lines of Ecclesia Dei of St. John Paul II.
Then, allow the Novus Ordo to have the option of “looking like” the Vetus Ordo’s celebration by simply giving the Novus Ordo what the Ordinariate’s Divine Worship already has and promulgated by Pope Francis!
What is that? You know:
The PATFOTA, the Gradual from the Roman Gradual, the ancient Offertory Prayers, ramped up rubrics for the Eucharistic Prayer approximating the Vetus Ordo’s, the Triple Non Sum Dignus and the Last Gospel. Also, reestablish all the Octaves dropped in the Modern Missal as well as Septuagesima and Ember Days as Divine Worship has done and format a new Novus Ordo Missal to reflect the look of Divine Worship which looks like the Vetus Ordo Missal which includes in the propers the Offertory Antiphon. The Gloria Patri is also reinstated in Divine Worhship for the Introit and the other times this is prayed in the Mass.
The option of celebrating Mass ad orientem and with Holy Communion distributed to kneeling communicants must be made explicit!
It must be made clear that the Novus Ordo may be celebrated in Latin (although the lectionary normally in the vernacular) or it can be a hybrid of Latin and vernacular.
What I suggest and hope Pope Leo will do is a part of organic development of the Novus Ordo that respects its essence and tradition while re-enchanting it with elements of tradition from the Vetus Ordo.
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