Liturgical theologians touted the breakthrough that the Bugnini contrived Mass was. And that breakthrough was “resourcement”!
It’s one of those words that everyone, except liturgical elites, forget what that French word means.
Let me make it simple.
In 1969, you take a fully loaded Lincoln Continental sedan and you strip it down and return it to the Model T Ford from which it evolved and grew organically.
That’s what the 1970 Roman Missal or, truthfully, Bishop Bugnini did to the 1962 Roman Missal, organically developed over centuries. He tried to return it to the way the early Church celebrated the Mass in a Model T fashion.
So, from the Mass, you take away automatic transmission, power brakes, electric windows, cruise control, V-8 engine, computers and safety features and strip it down to what it was originally without all those accretions.
Yes, that’s what the 1970 Missal tried to do, or better yet, Bishop Bugnini did.
I had a Ford lightbulb moment when Pope Leo was giving His Holiness’ Wednesday catechesis on Sacrosanctum Concilium. SC was not talking about some future stripped down, contrived Mass like the one Bugnini came up with, but rather it was talking about the Mass of the day during the Council and for centuries before.
Yes, in not the most unambiguous way, SC called for some conservative reforms. Most of these, in my most humble opinion, had to do with the complexity of Pontifical Masses celebrated by the Bishop of Rome and all other bishops. It was not aimed at the typical parish Low or High Mass. Maybe more to the Solemn Sung Mass with deacon and subdeacon.
Noble simplicity doesn’t mean stripping the Mass down to a Model T Ford. It means making it easier to celebrate the Mass with vernacular rubrics and taking away some of the odd additions to the more solemn celebrations of the Mass, like the server kissing the priest’s hand, the taking of the paten in a solemn way away from the altar, the oddity of the paten not used on the corporal until right before the priest’s “Domini non sum dignus”.
A useless repetition would be the double prayers at the PATFOTA, the double “non sum dignus” at Communion time, one for the priest the other for the laity and the Confiteor again recited prior to the people’s non-sum dignus.
But what in the Name of God and all that is Holy is wrong with the priest and ministers at a sung Mass saying the PATFOTA while the Entrance Chant (Introit) is chanted?
What in the Name of God and all that is Holy is wrong with all of the other silent and private prayers of the priest that Bugnini completely stripped away?
What is wrong with all the sign language used by the priest during the Roman Canon, like multiple signs of the Cross, genuflections and bows???
What is wrong with the Last Gospel and in fact with the Order of the Mass where the Dismissal comes first and the Final Blessing last, with those pesky private prayers of the priest in between?
Fidelity to SC’s call for certain changes in the Mass would be the 1964 Roman Missal that allowed for quite a bit of vernacular but also mandated Latin for the Roman Canon or any Eucharistic Prayer developed, although SC did not call for additional Canons!
Preserving Gregorian Chant and Latin could be accomplished by mandating that in a sung Mass the Propers be in Latin and perhaps the fixed parts of the Mass.
SC did not call for a reorientation of churches and the wreckovation of church sanctuaries. It did not mandate that the Mass always be said facing the assembly.
It did not call for standing for Holy Communion, the removal of altar railings and extraordinary Ministers of Holy Communion.
I hope Pope Leo realizes as he teaches us about the true meaning of SC that His Holiness needs to reform the reform and make it what SC actually sought for the Mass of the ages.
Hint: It isn’t the 1970 Roman Missal or any other version of said missal since 1970.
8 comments:
Everything that Sacrosanctum Concilium called for was accomplished in the 1965 reform of the rubrics. The Novus Ordo is not the Mass called for by Vatican II!
As for preserving Latin, I think that the sung Ordinary should be returned to Latin. These are simple prayers that are repeated at every Mass and thus can be easily learned.
The 64-65 Missal did not revise or expand the lectionary which SC did recommend. I don’t think the lectionary needed to be dropped altogether but may a year “B” and “C” added to “A” which would be the original. Maybe year B would include more Old Testament Readings and Year C more Gospel readings or whatever. I don’t think adding one more reading was the way to go as it is too many readings and makes the Mass even more wordy and it’s too much to comprehend or remember.
I'm curious if you've attended a Pontifical High Mass since your youth...
While those sorts of masses as pictured on the internet are usually fairly ornate and complicated, I recall during my time at an SSPX chapel that such masses weren't quite as complicated as the "special event" sort usually depicted on the internet. I suspect that the SSPX experience of these things probably better approximates the typical situation from before Vatican II rather than fussier versions.
At any rate, the same sort of feel happens in the Orthodox Hierarchical Liturgy: it's obviously more complicated than the typical Divine Liturgy, but once one goes to this sort of thing multiple times, it's not quite as ornate as it first appears.
There was an accompanying daily Mass lectionary. The lectionary can be expanded by proper ferial readings and greater selections for the feasts. There was no need to disturb the Sunday lectionary. The is actually a good pedagogical reason for hearing the same Sunday readings year after year.
That "Ford lightbulb moment" you had was rather dim, kinda like the light you get from a flashlight when the batteries are 90% gone.
Consider a better analogy for the reform of the mass. Discovered in 1905 in South Africa, the Cullinan diamond weighed 3,106 carats or about 1.3 pounds. It had been growing "organically" for billions of years underground. When unearthed, the beauty was recognizable, but obscured, the essence of the gem was well known, but did not shine forth.
After lengthy study and planning this clunk of a rock was cut and polished, removing that which concealed the great beauty within. Nine principal gems were produced, each a masterpiece of God's creativity and man's ingenuity. They sparkle with inner fire, they twinkle with each movement, they flash and gleam when the light hits them just right.
The goal, which was achieved, was to simplify the liturgy and make the core elements more transparent, participatory, and grounded in biblical sources
No, I never have been to a pontifical Mass, only saw it on YouTube. But, I have celebrated the 1962 Solemn Sung Mass with deacon and subdeacon and all the bells and whistles many times.
Your analogy is not apropo—the sludge on this diamond did not add to its beauty by hid it. Whereas the organic development of the Model T Ford into a Lincoln Continental brightened the diamond of a car that the Model T became in the Lincoln Continental. The early Mass did not accumulate dust, dirt and a hard veneer of ugliness, it attained more and more beauty, regality and solemnity—thus the 1962 Roman Missal is the diamond and the 1970 Missal is the “unearthed diamond you speak of with its beauty unrecognizable!” Nice try, but extremely poor analogy, except your analogy makes my point even better! Thank you.
More like taking the Hope Diamond, which had been carefully cut, and smashing it with a sledge hammer because that looked more natural.
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