Annibale Bugnini: Reformer of the Liturgy (BOOK REVIEW)

The world knows Steve Jobs and Mark Zuckerberg. Does it know Tim Berners-Lee? The world knows "Uncle Joe" Stalin. Does it know Ion Mihai Pacepa? Jobs gave us the iPhone and Zuckerberg some blue website, but Berners-Lee gave us the internet. Stalin took over Eastern Europe and committed genocide, but Pacepa inculcated materialism and jealously into the hearts of academics and undergraduates throughout the West. The real work of changing the world is so often obscured by those who later reap its laudatory recognition.

Similarly, Paul VI is given the credit for the final form of the Roman liturgy which emerged in the late 1960s. Responsibility for the Liturgia Horarum and Novus Ordo Missae do inevitably fall upon Giovanni Bautista Montini, who signed his regnal name under the decrees promulgating their uses, but the creation of these rites belongs to the less known and more obscure Annibale Bugnini.

We know the name Bugnini and we know the product of his work. What we do not know is the man and his life. We do not know how the man who changed how we pray actually prayed himself. We do not know how the man who influenced how we related to God himself related to God. We do now know how the man who wrote the liturgy himself understood the liturgy. Yves Chiron's Annibale Bugnini: Reformer of the Liturgy does not answer all of these questions, but it does open a substantial aperture into the life and decisions of a man whose traces remain in the trace of every western Christian.

The Author

Yves Chiron is a French essayist and historian who has written extensively on the history of the modern papacy, the saints, and the contemporary state of the Church. A traditionalist, but a staid one, a Francophonic correspondent likened him to a "more intellectual version of Michael Davies". Not many of Chiron's works have made it into English, but Annibale does reflect an objective approach to the sensitive subject matter, an interest in connecting the facts, and a respectable refrain from voicing an opinion until the end of the work.

The Book

Annibale Bugnini was born near Orvieto to a sharecropper and his wife. The fifth of seven children, Annibale came from a pious family that attended the great feasts of the Church and made an annual pilgrimage to Santa Maria de Scopulis during the Paschal octave. Half the children went into the religious life, Annibale himself into the Vincentians. 

Chiron follows his subject through his religious studies in Sienna and his initial interest in liturgy. He loved the major feasts with tremendous enthusiasm and would readily put on a cassock in the sacristy of any church if given the chance to introire ad altare Dei. Liturgy, Chiron suggests, was an enthusiasm for Bugnini. His real interest was in managing people, a skill which would inform his life's work much more than his expertise. A student in Sienna, he wrote his dissertation on the role of committees during the Council of Trent. 

After ordination to the priesthood, Bugnini made two pivotal moves which would determine the direction of his ecclesiastical career. First, he accepted the directorship of a failing liturgical journal called Ephemerides Liturgicae, which had fallen to 96 subscribers; under Bugnini's niche interest in "pastoral liturgy", readership increased into the thousands. The other major step was Bugnini's first and only pastoral experience as a weekend chaplain in a poor Roman suburb [presumably] celebrating low Mass for the locals. Here, he nursed his "pastoral" angle on the liturgy by having a "reader" hold up large cardboard signs which commented on the Mass or translated the priest's words into Italian and which prompted the congregation to reply in Italian. Something new was in the mix.

We then follow the aspiring liturgist to the Le Thieulin conference in 1946, a gathering of like minded promoters of the Liturgical Movement and all its aspirations. Here Bugnini met Dom Beauduin, Yves Congar OP, and the progressive Georges Chevrot. The mutual meeting effected the formation of the Centro di Azione Liturgica, which gave this particular brand of the Liturgical Movement its form and Carlo Braga his first job. 

Bugnini played his modest part in the Pian reforms to Holy Week, in which he was a passive secretary more than an active participant. After the election of John XXIII and the calling for an ecumenical council, Bugnini was appointed secretary for the new commission charged with drafting the Conciliar agenda and documents regarding the liturgy. Here emerged what the author astutely denominates the "Bugnini method." 

Normally, a secretary functions as a minute-taker, an envoy for someone in greater authority, and a delegated staffer. Bugnini employed his talents for bureaucracy and used his unique position to create various factions within the preparatory commission, isolate them, and then dictate their agenda to them. He created thirteen subcommissions, each dedicated to a particular function such as vernacular, sacred music, concelebration, the Office, and more. No one subcommission could influence the work of another subcommission nor consult them. Everything had to be done through Father Bugnini. 

In the preparatory commission, Bugnini set the agenda for each commission and by putting hitherto unconsidered matters on the table, he moved what political scientists call the "Overton window" such that some movement on these issues was inevitable. Wary of backlash, Bugnini instructed members of the subcommissions drafting sections of what would be called Sacrosanctum Concilium not to be too forward in their views on the vernacular, concelebration, or the extent to which they desired to reform the entire liturgy:

"It would be most inconvenient for the articles of our Constitution to be rejected by the Central Commission or by the Council itself. That is why we must tread carefully and discreetly. Carefully, so that proposals be made in an acceptable manner (modo acceptabile), or, in my opinion, formulated in such a way that much is said without seeming to say anything: let many things be said in embryo (in nuce) and in this way let the door remain open to legitimate and possible postconciliar deductions and applications; let nothing be said that suggests excessive novelty and might invalidate all the rest, even what is straightforward and harmless (ingenua et innocentia). We must proceed discreetly. Not everything is to be asked or demanded from the Council—but the essentials, the fundamental principles [are]." 

In 1962, Bugnini was informed that Ferdinando Antonelli OFM would be named head of the Conciliar commission on the liturgy. Bugnini, in a risible fit of extraordinary self-entitlement one usually only sees in college sororities, wrote everyone he knew asking for the job, citing his "bitterness" and the harm done to his reputation. At the same time he was fired from his job teaching at the Lateran University. He appealed to Pope John, who either willed his dismissal or consented to it.

Bugnini's double edged sword, Sacrosanctum Concilium, passed muster in Saint Peter's Basilica during Vatican II; even Archbishop Lefebvre voted for it (although bishops were hardly given the time to read the documents). Now Giovanni Bautista Montini was Pope Paul VI and he restored Bugnini to his secretariat on the Conciliar commission. What is most impressive, and new, in Chiron's research is that he has uncovered Bugnini's takeback of control of the reform project. The Consilium, under the nominal leadership of Cardinal Lercaro, was to be dissolved and the reforms to the Mass and Office would descend upon Cardinal Larraona and his Congregation for Sacred Rites. The Consilium managed to appoint itself reformer of the liturgy.

From here, we are familiar with the history. Our author does, however, supply us with new and useful tidbits, including the startling reaction of the 1967 Synods of Archbishops who viewed three experimental Novus Ordo Masses in the Sistine chapel. A two thirds majority was needed to approve the new rite and only a third voted against it, a fact already known; what was largely unknown is that another third of bishops, uncomfortable with the new Mass and equally uncomfortable opposing the Pope, voted "present." Pope Paul eventually saw a spoken rendition of the Novus Ordo himself and suggested numerous changes (returning the Kyrie, keeping the triple Agnus Dei, and retaining the Last Gospel). Apparently the new Mass was to have even less of the old Mass than it does now.

One last insight provided by the author is a debasement of the long held rumor that Archbishop Bugnini was a subversive Mason, a member of the Lodge bent on destroying the Church from within. When Paul VI decided to abolish both the Consilium and Congregation for Sacred Rites, he elected to create a new commission to handle the regulation of his new liturgy. Bugnini was the obvious choice, but was, inevitably, not the choice. Why? The author sides with those who think Pope Paul was simply tired of Bugnini, his methods, and his antics.

Montini intended to send Bugnini on a Papal Embassy to Latin America, but Bugnini objected on the grounds of his ignorance of Spanish. Instead he was sent to Tehran. Those who believe him to be a Freemason have their roots in Cardinal Oddi, who started to Tito Casini that he had seen evidence that Bugnini was an affirmed member of the Lodge. Archbishop Lefebvre repeated this rumor in 1975 and began an accusation that lingers until our own day. Ironically, while in his second exile, Bugnini wrote to Paul VI suggesting that Lefebvre and the Seminary of Saint Pius X be given permission to use the old Mass under similar conditions to the "Agatha Christie Indult" in England; he was ignored and Rome's relations with the French missionary deteriorated.

Conclusions

There is much more in Annibale Bugnini: Reformer of the Liturgy that cannot be covered in a simple review: his influence on papal ceremonies, his war against the collegiate churches of Rome in their effort to preserve Gregorian chant, and his very human reactions to the political situation in Iran. 

Chiron has given his reader much food for thought without explicitly telling them what to think. The cover of this book is, fitting, a picture of Msgr. Bugnini against a page for the introductory rites of the Novus Ordo Missal. We can see any number of option greetings, aspersions with lustral water, or a penitential rite. The choice is left with the reader of the Missal. Similarly, conclusions about Bugnini are left with the reader. To the progressive, he will be a noble warrior who patiently dealt with the Baroque liturgical establishment in Rome until he found the moment to spring forward and initiate renewal. To the traditionalist, Bugnini comes across as a double dealing, mealy mouthed ignoramus who spent decades destroying sacred things and replacing them with his own machinations. The moderate and the conservative, however, are so confronted with facts that they have no where to hide, no where to talk about the misinterpretation of Vatican II or the silvering linings of the reform; either Bugnini was a scoundrel or the agent of reform.

Chiron only departs from his dispassionate facts and gives an opinion on the last page. The opinion is his own, but Josef Ratzinger supplies the words:

"On the other hand, the liturgical reform enacted after Vatican II made 'the liturgy appear to be no longer a living development but the product of erudite work and juridical authority; this has caused us enormous harm'."

Montini's Exile

"It is also well-known that Giovanni Battista Montini was exiled from the Curia to the See of Milan by Pius XII, without being made a Cardinal, the first Archbishop of Milan not be made a Cardinal either upon appointment or shortly thereafter since 1893."

This remark, taken from the comments in a NLM post on Montini's desire for absolution without admission of liturgical guilt, repeats a common myth in traditionalist circles about the relationship between Papa Pacelli and Paulo VI. At face value it certainly follows the popular narrative that portrays Eugenio Pacelli as a charismatic, arch-conservative pope—and occasionally an organic reformer of the liturgy while defending against "antiquarian" archaeology; by contrast, Msgr. Montini is liberal, loose-thinking and given to the whims of the times, and held in suspicion by his employer. It follows that Pius XII, fearing the Secretariat of State's rising influence in the Vatican's liberal faction, exiled him to the industrial city of Milan to prevent him from being made his successor. After all, he deprived Montini of the red hat, did he not?

It all makes sense. Only it doesn't....

Some basic facts debunk the basic theory before the more particular circumstances can be judged. First, Pacelli sent Montini to Milan in 1954. The pope did not hold a consistory after 1952 due to his ailing health. Indeed, the conclave that elected John XXIII had fewer electors (53) than the one which selected his predecessor (62). John held several consistories in his short reign to amend this seeming disparity.

Moreover, Giovanni Battista Montini was never Vatican Secretariat of State. Pius appointed Cardinal Maglione as his Secretariat of State throughout the Second World War, after which the cardinal died and his duties were absorbed directly by the papacy until Papa Pacelli's death in 1958. Msgr. Montini acted as an assistant in fulfilling these duties, wherein he supposedly had furtive negotiations with Communists and incited the pope's ire and condemnation to exile. Does one exile a monsignor from an under-secretary role by making him an archbishop? Does one punish a priest by making him archbishop of the diocese that produced the prior pope? If Pius wanted to exile Montini he could have sent the university chaplain and left-wing agitator to any number of tiny village dioceses in Italy. One does not punish a minor bureaucrat by making him papabile.

At a closer view Pius XII and Paul VI were extraordinarily alike. Both came from influential families—Pius coming from "black nobility" which increased its wealth in banking and Paul coming from Giorgio Montini, a luminary in the Christian Democrats movement. Neither went to a seminary to do anything other than study Canon Law for a few years and fulfill a legal requirement; otherwise their clerical educations were undertaken by their cardinatial mentors (Rampolla and Pacelli respectively). Both worked in the Secretariat of State office, although Pacelli had more significant field work than Montini, who made one embassy to Poland before being recalled to Pius' side. Both displayed an optimistic willingness to cooperate with post-War political institutions erected by democratic powers; Pius XII was called the "chaplain to NATO" more than once while Paul VI told the United Nations that the edifice it built must never fall.

Above all, both embraced liturgical tinkering at an historically unprecedented level. Pius XII hired Annibale Bugnini after reading his reform-minded article in a liturgical journal and gave Bugnini carte blanche to restore Holy Week to a form that never existed, a reform less radical than Paul VI's only in that it ruined only one week of the year. Paul, after gathering university students around his altars and saying Mass in the streets of Rome with progressive students, re-hired Pius's fixer after John XXIII fired him and let him wreak havoc on the other 51 weeks of the year. Other than the scale of destruction, perhaps the only real difference between the two popes is that Paul VI showed severe regret and cognitive dissonance later in life.

What, then, do we make of the 1954 "exile" to Milan? There are several possibilities. Perhaps Pius grew tired of Montini's antics, like saying Mass surrounded by a crowd of teenagers, and wanted him to rethink his ways. Perhaps Pius knew he was getting too old to function and that giving his protege a papabile see would guarantee him the chance to become his eventual successor. Or maybe they butted heads and Pius needed space from his friend all the while remembering that Montini was his friend.

Sometimes becoming a bishop can be demotion. It may well have happened to Robert Barron, who now instead of forming priests in the mold of Cardinal George now gives the odd sermon at someone else's cathedral in Los Angeles. But then again Father Barron was not made an instant candidate for the papacy.

When the Saints Come Slouching In

(source)

The heavily politicized canonizations of the postconciliar era continue unabated. Papa Montini is the latest to receive the dubious honor of being scheduled for elevation to the altars. No doubt the bloggers and twitterers will be aflutter with commentary on the greatness of Paolo Sextus—how he saved the world from the terror of birth control and ushered in an era of liturgical glory.

About a week ago I had a long conversation with an old friend of my wife's who was complaining about some bad habits of Tradistanis, in particular the mindless aphorism that a good Catholic should "Be like the saints." What about St. Simon the Stylite, she wondered, who lived the last few decades of his life upon a pillar? Should we also live on a pillar until our deaths, or should we arbitrarily choose another saint to imitate? The question was provocative, but it made the point that it is rather absurd to advocate the imitation of the saints without being somewhat more specific about the ways in which we are to imitate them.

It used to be that sainthood was a glory bestowed on certain of the faithful departed who had lived a life of extraordinary virtue in some manner worthy of admiration and imitation. They needed to be publicly recognized so that we could learn from their spiritual fruitfulness and also so they could be called upon for intercession with the Most High. God especially loves those who love him, and is more willing to be swayed by their requests.

Christians could learn what makes a good pope from Gregory the Great, what makes a good penitent from Augustine, what makes a good monk from Benedict. Martyrs teach a simple though difficult lesson, but the lessons we are supposed to abstract from most of the more recently elevated are ambiguous. What shall we learn from Teresa of Calcutta: that we may permit pagans to die unbaptized? Shall we learn from Mary Faustina Kowalska how to feminize Our Lord? Can Josemaria Escriva teach us how to terrorize our subordinates? Was John Paul's particular virtue popularity? When the virtues desired for imitation are not specified, the faithful are left to assume that those canonized are perfect through and through without any shade of turning, and will perform extraordinary feats of mental gymnastics to maintain this pious fiction.

Adding P. Paul to the very kalendar he created is fitting, if not edifying. We do not yet know how Pontifrancis intends to laud his progressive predecessor. One wishes we had reason to hope for the best, but one also knows better.

Pius XI Reconsidered

Pius XI, Papa Ratti, was the last pope following traditional models of the papacy much like how his name predecessor, Pius X, was the first pope in the modern mold of the papacy. Some will blithely point their fingers to Pius IX and Vatican I saying "When the Council made the pope infallible we have the modern, constantly inerrant vision of the pope." That Council forms a simple demarcation if we do not think about what the modern papacy really is and why Pius XI did not fit into it.

What better defines modern government, religious or secular, than what Nisbet called that great vacuum of buffer between the governing and the governed? Whereas traditions, institutions, places, and customs once gave the individual identity and gave authority a measure of guidance, modern government gives the individual all his rights, privileges, prerogatives, and policies that govern his life. In light of this, the modern papacy really begins with Pius X and the tradition papacy ends with Pius XI. Papa Sarto began his reign following a controversial conclave, when the metropolitan cardinal of Poland vetoed the election of Mariano Rampolla for any number of speculated reasons. Initially interested in seemingly harmless subjects like ensuring only men sang Gregorian plainsong or giving chant a place of prominence again, but soon interests, either Papa Sarto's own or those of the Vatican bureaucracy around him, began to stick their tentacles into common Christian life. His re-introduction of Communion for the young confused the order of sacramental initiation in most of, but not all of, the Western Church, a mistake some bishops have slowly remedied without a universal correction. His re-jiggering of the Office kalendar and psalter effectively tossed out the Divine Office as Saint Benedict, Saint Bernard, Saint Pius V, and the pope himself knew it, paving the way for the "restoration" of the other unchangeable part of the Latin liturgy, the anaphora. Most notably, he enabled Umberto Benigni to hunt anyone whose opinions differed from his own, be they true heretics or simply those in need of correction. While modest by today's standards, Saint Pius began a practice of the papacy that dictates how one enters the Sacramental life, how Mass is said, what prayers a priest prays daily, and that the priest is someone whose ideas must actively correlate with those of the Roman Bishop's. By contrast, Pius XI had little to do with these things.

In his Phoenix from the Ashes HJA Sire observes that many traditionalists "regard popes Pius IX, Pius X, and Pius XII as models of what a pope ought to be, but (with due respect for their sacred office) really look upon Leo XIII and Pius XI as rather letting down the standards of papal authority. They show little sympathy with social and political pragmatism in the framing of religious policy" (Sire 139). In Pius XI was a resolute orthodoxy tempered by a cautious, healthy distance from the impractical excess condign to arbitrary use of power.

Papa Ratti's foreign policy is the most memorable and mixed aspect of his pontificate. He had the good sense to end the "Roman question", which had been answered since the Italian unification ended the Papal States in the prior century. With traditional monarchies and temporal rule gone, the pope could now, ironically, speak on matters of foreign policy with an authoritative detachment and lack of personal interest that gave moral strength to his statements. History perceives Pius as friendly, or at least amenable, to Fascistic movements in Spain and elsewhere in Europe because he was. While horrifying to post-modern liberals, the only options most had in revolutionary countries were atheistic, class warfare Communism or Fascism—understood as a glorification of the state and its cultural history along with public-private cooperation with major corporations (Nazism was not Fascism, it was something more unique). Because Fascism takes the state as its alpha and omega, Fascism is not Catholicism, but it can tolerate Catholicism and even give a place of respect to Catholic culture; Communism cannot, and as ruthless as the Fascists were in the Spanish Civil War, the Communists matches or exceeded them in brutality, something anti-Fascist adventurer and author Ernest Hemingway begrudgingly depicts in For Whom the Bell Tolls. The pope's vociferous denunciation of Hitler and his deranged racialistic theories of state and expansion redeem the pope to historians; Mit brennender Sorge had to be smuggled into Germany to be read from the pulpit during Passiontide in 1937, and since his Secretary of State, Eugenio Pacelli, succeeded him as pope, one might reasonably assume the swift reaction of the Nazis against the Church was a lesson learned by Pacelli in his more cautious War-time administration. Post-War Europe's coziness with socialism has cooled Pius's legacy, but we must admit given his choices he could have done far worse.

Pope Ratti's most enduring success and failure could both be summed up in three word: Christ the King. In an age when nation or class or race ruled men's hearts, Papa Ratti reminded Christians eager to embrace political movements that Christ must be king both of the individual and all of society. Yet when the Freemasonic president of Mexico, Plutarco Calles, enforced the existing anti-clerical laws in that country and the Catholics in the populace effected an outright rebellion without episcopal support, they won near-total victory in the Cristiada only to be told by Rome to sue for peace and return a near-unconditional surrender. The enforcement of the anti-clerical laws lessened after Calles, doubtless inspired by Henry VIII's reaction to the Pilgrimage of Grace, reprised the favor with some indiscriminate slaughter. A shining moment for the Secretariat of State under Gasparri and Pacelli. Viva Cristo Rey.

Despite my education being partially in Economics, I have not read the pope's encyclicals on the subject in depth with supplementary resources. And yet I feel familiar enough to say he wrote in continuity with the social teachings of Leo XIII, reflecting Pius XI's pervading theme of upholding doctrine fully with some awareness of his times. The times asked different questions under Leo XIII than under Pius XI, not just in social questions, but the state of the Western economies and of economic literature. Leo wrote during the Industrial Revolution, the abuse of child-workers, new money capitalists, economists writing about rational self-interest as an inherently moral act, displacement from traditional settings of living into atomistic city life, and the like. By contrast, these phenomena were three decades old when Ratti took the tiara. The new concerns were political cults, collectivism's many forms, atheism, interventionist economics, and secular utopianism. In this regard, the pope was quite adroit in keeping up with the signs of the times; would that our modern popes be interested in any issue more current than 1978.

Pius XI was a good pope. He was, in no sense, a great pope. He made any significant contributions to the Church while not entirely succeeding in making lasting changes that he successors felt obliged to keep. Perhaps he never saw himself as a reformer, merely a traditionalist, that is, one handing on the Church as he knew in the best way he could. He was not a modern pope, reforming the Church according to his own ideas. HJA Sire notes that if not for his boundless optimism, John XXIII could have returned the Church to the paternal, familiar style of government Pius XI and Leo XIII personified, gentle, firm, practical, and respectful of tradition. Vatican II was supposed to rubber stamp some very unimaginative documents and move on in eight weeks; what ensued was something quite different, a parliamentary hijacking by bureaucrats whose power derived from a more modern practice of the papacy. John XXIII died and "blessed" Paul VI took his place, succeeding Pius XII more than John XXIII or Pius XI.

Pope Ratti was a good pope, perhaps the most recent thoroughly traditional pope we have seen.

1967 Revisions: Back to the Future

Bill Riccio's poignant reaction to recent proposals to modify the "liturgical books of 1962" (aka the "Mass of the Ages") brought to my mind the parallels with the reforms of the 1960s. It seems in the "liturgist" crowd reform can really be reduced to just a few unique features of Paul VI's new Mass and nothing else. Still, the proposals really are a flashback to the halcyon days just after Vatican II, when no one knew what the hell was going on. It instantly brought to mind a little hand Missal I saw in a used bookstore for a mere $6.00; I was tempted to buy the item for its historical value, not for actual use; the lack of any markings or wear shows just how useless this book was, of value for only two full liturgical years before the Pacelli-Montini revolution was brought to completion.

Popular participation, the be all and end all of worthy latria.

The reduced preparatory prayers, still with the double-Confiteor.

At first glance I wondered if the phonetic Latin text below the English

might be useful, but if one knows Latin is phonetic one need not

separate each syllable. The Fore-Mass has been rebranded "Liturgy of the Word of God"
and Mass is now assumed to be versus populum according to the decorative "art."

The newly translated Canon of the Mass, in direct contradiction

to the last vote of Vatican II. The translation, aside from being inferior

to those of many hand missals from the prior thirty years, looks remarkably like

what the Anglophonic world was given until 2011, and this two years before

the introduction of the new Ordo.

"I never knew a translation could be heretical." -Alexander Schmemann

A Reading from the Book of Numbers (against the Variable Lectionary) UPDATED

I read them the Numbers....
source: Cornell Catholic Community's Facebook page

"Oh, Rad Trad! How are you today, Rad Trad?"

A doey, dopey eyed student asked me as I walked into the chapel for a weekday Mass during my student days. This shorts-wearing man was the perfect JP2 Catholic: young, pro-life, liturgically liberal, Ultramontane in all matters, and he read the new Catechism every night before going to sleep. A kind, simple soul of exceptional devotion whose capacity for creative thought had been circumscribed by too many sports related concussions.

"Would you like to prepare a reading today, Rad Trad?"
"If it will make you feel better, alright," I acquiesced.

I reviewed the material in the lectionary for any Hebraic words or turns of phrase that might rattle my dyslexic eyes and found none. After the Collect Opening Prayer I assumed my place at the ambo and began with the immemorial words, "A reading from the book of Numbers."

A rare thought, gentle and fleeting, like a dandelion petal, that comes to a man only a few times in his life if he is careful enough to nurture it, came to me: "What the hell am I doing?"

The year was 2011, the apogee of Benedict XVI's pontificate, which in retrospect shared much with Pius XII's in looking much better on the outside than on the inside. We were reviving the "never abrogated" 1962 Missal and calling it the "extraordinary form," sticking the Big Six on the altar of Pauline Masses, and telling ourselves that the average parish Mass is not how Paul VI really wanted it. Liturgical conferences with Scott Alcuin Reid abounded and "mutual enrichment" was the defining phrase of obedient clergy. The new Mass could learn much from the old form's prolix reverence, mystery, orientation, and sense of the sacred. But, so the other side of the enrichment went, the old Mass could be inferior to the new in any number of ways, not least of which was the expanded lectionary. As I read figures for building dimensions and storage capacity to the JP2 generation and some paid staff, I concluded the benefits of the expanded lectionary were doubtful.

Peter Kwasniewski rightly points out that the expanded lectionary has allowed grave passages of Holy Writ to be omitted or relegated to obscure times of the year so that they do not appear whenever the church is full; most infamously, St. Paul's admonition against unworthy participation in the Lord's Supper never made it into the lectionary of Paul VI. Dr. K likens the new lectionary to a Cliff Notes version of Shakespeare that includes a large quantity of material, but which censors any passages unsavory to modern ears and modern morals. Quantity over quality.

Another, less often considered problem of the new lectionary is that it drowns any sense of rhythm and thematic continuity with its "Scripture for Scripture's sake" methodology. Keeping with the motif of the Bard, Shakespeare's sonnets are best understood when read aloud so that the pattern of speech and repeated images may mature line to line. The old lectionary used a few sonnets in whole; the new lectionary reads them all in sequence, but never more than five or six of the fourteen lines at a time.

Criticism of the older lectionary and support for the pedantic three year cycle of Paul VI rest on the ahistorical assumption that the Eucharistic sacrifice is the appropriate place for ad libitum readings of Scripture. The original setting for Scriptural lessons, East and West, was the Mattins of the all-night vigil, from which only the Roman rite retained consistent readings; the Byzantine rite does maintain extensive pericopes during Vespers of Great Lent and major feasts. As with the Mass, Romans initially observed the vigil only for Sundays and great feasts, which is reflected in the coherence of the passages for the most ancient feasts (Pascha, Pentecost, Theophany, Christmas, Peter & Paul, Andrew, John the Baptist, and the like). Rome eventually followed the Constantinopolitan custom of observing the vigil every night and began to read Scriptures sequentially through different books each month. Mass, with its instructive lessons geared toward the solemnization of a particular mystery celebrated on a given day, remained unique to feasts, Sundays, and days of penance; there was no daily Mass in St. Peter's Basilica, but there was a daily Office. Local churches had particular Masses for saints more often than the Roman Church, which contented itself with Common Mass formularies for martyrs, bishops, and virgins; by the time of St. Pius V's Missal, half the days of the year were still of either Simplex of Ferial rank, so the repetition of the numerous Commons was hardly as dull and numbing as it was by the time of Papa Sarto's reforms and the rite of Iste Confessor. The considerable number of Ferial and Simplex days also permitted votive Masses of Saints and of Requiem when appropriate, providing a variety of Mass options with unified Scriptural lessons concerning the saint or mystery observed. All of this would gradually change, and perspective with it, in the years after Trent.

The Tridentine Council required the Breviary of every ordained cleric in the Latin Church. Pius V's breviary lessons are similar to those in medieval books, but subsequent popes shortened many readings to lessen priests' burden; contrary to the curt Roman Office, Cluny covered such extensive passages of Holy Writ that a monk with a bat would roam the choir during Mattins to tap anyone who had fallen asleep during the daily reading of many chapters. Mass replaced the Office as the daily observance of parishes and cathedrals, especially Mass in the spoken form, wherein words are less audible to the faithful, faithful who were often speakers of Romance tongues descended from Latin. Similarly, the number of saints multiplied and their feasts were almost always assigned a Duplex rank with a Common Mass, compelling priests to recite the same Masses week after week. By the time of Vatican I one could hardly go a week without a Mass or two that began Os iusti. Vatican I considered a two year lectionary, yet nothing came of it. The 19th and early 20th century Liturgical Movement and Ressourcement revived chatter about the limited use of Scripture in the Roman liturgy, especially when contrasted with the supposedly more Biblical protestant churches. A more tempered perspective might have led these reform-minded gentlemen to realize the Roman liturgy utilized Scripture very effectively in its structures, just not in its contemporary incarnation.

There are a few possible solutions for the limited use of Scripture in the old liturgy, at least in its various forms since the 20th century began. First and foremost would be to reduce the rank of feasts so as to allow the Ferial Mass to be repeated or a votive Mass to be said; the occurring Scripture, at least in the genuine old rite, could also be said in the Office under this scheme. Second, if Ferial Masses can be repeated provide alternative, cogent readings on the same mystery or event from other parts of Scripture, as was the Norman praxis in the middle ages; were the Roman rite to revive the octaves Pacelli removed, different readings pertaining to the feast could also be read during the eight days. Third and finally, Mattins needs to return to cathedrals, collegiate churches, and parishes, even in a reduced form for non-obligatory settings that would permit just one nocturne with the assigned readings; the rhythm of the liturgy is not in the Mass, it is in the Office, which Byzantine churches have managed to keep while Roman counterparts have to bribe the faithful with Communion to get anyone interested in a service.

One must also consider that a practicing Roman Catholic need only attend Mass on Sundays and Holy Days. Not even the most devout are able to attend Mass on a daily basis. The average Roman Christian who does what is required of him will likely hear different lessons at each Mass. Just before Pius X's changes about half of "green Sundays" would have been exceeded by feasts, often from Commons, but not the same Commons. From 1911-1955 feasts of Our Lady, St. Lawrence, the parish patron, and the Apostles could still be celebrated on Sundays, but in practice this only happened a few times a year. Since 1962 only half a dozen feasts can replace the Sunday Mass and none of them probably use Commons. The issue of a limited lectionary was belonged to a narrow segment of the Mass going population from the beginning.

If a Catholic wants to hear a variety of Scripture in a Church, would he not have been better off attending the Office all along?

Update: I seem to have neglected one other possibility for expanded, reasonable use of Scripture at Mass. What of the unique Masses for dioceses and congregations for Counter-Reformation saints that did not make it into the Roman Missal after the saints' canonization? And what of the unique Masses for pope saints suppressed by Papa Pacelli in 1942? Both could be revived without disturbing ancient texts (in the former case) and would even revive some (in the latter case).

Ultamontane Liturgy

"Let the law of supplication," wrote St. Prosper during the reign of Leo the Great, "form the law of belief." Traditionalists will apply these words readily to the Pauline reform of the Roman Missal and, in rare instances, to the Roman Office, but what about to the papal liturgy?

We recently eclipsed the anniversary of the last Papal Mass, the basis of the Roman liturgy and the form of Mass celebrated by the Bishops of Rome on holy days and for stational observances since the middle of the first millennium until the fifteen regrettable years of Giovanni Battista Montini, Pope Pius XII.2. Before Pope Paul knowingly tinkered with the ordo Missae of the normative Tridentine Mass he unknowingly created a novel ordo Missae for Papal Mass which would endure for several pontificates beyond his. Indeed, it is unthinkable that Jorge Mario Bergoglio would ascend to the Petrine chair without this innovation by Montini.

What did Papa "Zio" do? He generally retained the rite of Papal Mass and the coronation with the triple tiara, but he moved it outside. Pius IX celebrated low Mass outdoors for troops in the papal army during one of the many nationalist uprisings in central Italy a century before, but Pope Paul rarely fought anyone who was not a French missionary prelate.

While the Archbasilica of Our Savior at the Lateran Palace is the cathedral of Rome the rites of papal initiation have traditionally been performed in St. Peter's basilica. St. Peter was the Prince of the Apostles, the first bishop of Rome, and the Pope is the "vicar of St. Peter." Moreover, St. Peter's tomb has remained one of the primary destinations of pilgrimage in the world. Conventionally the bishop-elected would be consecrated and celebrate Mass at St. Peter's, be crowned with the tiara, and then proceed to take possession of the Lateran cathedral. St. Peter's is not small either; it is nearly as long as the Titanic and can accommodate 60,000 people. And yet this did not suffice for Pope Paul.

Enter the modern spectacle of the Popes holding Paschal Masses, canonization Masses, and audiences outside the basilica for no reason other than the excess capacity offered by the square. Like a rock concert, the man on stage is the primary point of focus. We may say it is a Mass, but we all know, deep down, that the arrangers of these services are putting the person of the sitting pontiff on display rather than humbling him as a celebrant of Divine service within the more demanding confines of the basilica. Within St. Peter's the pope is one of 266 men to have held the office; the vertical focus of the basilica's inner lines draw attention from the celebrant of the Mass to the One Who the Mass honors. Outside, the celebrant is the one celebrated.

Above, Pope Paul is still vested in the unique garments of the papacy: the fanon, the sub-cincture, and the tiara. Despite the arrant use of an opportunity to show a big crowd in the television age, the pope, atop the sedia gestatoria, is layered well enough by his office that his own person did not dominate the event. A mere three years later those degrees of protection would be laid aside or donated to the United Nations. The modern Popemobile deifies the pope and dehumanizes him much more than the sedia gestatoria ever did: in the latter he was touchable and visible without any degree of separation, save for the previously noted ornaments of office; now he is dressed down to the level of a parish priest, but elevated above and shielded with bullet-proof glass, almost saying "The pope's presence among the people is so necessary that God and the Vatican automotive service demand he risk his Apostolic life." At last, the man's presence is more needed than his office's dignified visibility. This is the Papal version of the Mass of Paul VI, and Msgr. Bugnini had nothing to do with it.

We would like more than Francis, but after Pius XII, Paul VI, and John Paul II do we deserve it?

As an aside, this video shows several moments of the papal election procedure that crystallized during the Renaissance practiced for the last time: the votive Mass of the Holy Spirit at the altar at the throne, the "thrones" with collapsing tops in the Sistine chapel (after election all the cardinals would pull their's down and the canopy would denote the new pope), and cardinals vested in penitential violet rather than scarlet; monsignori wore black.

7s and 8s for the Octave of All Saints

Seven candle laid before the altar in the Leonian Triclinium during
the Fourth Lateran Council, Innocent III presiding.

"And on the seventh day God ended his work which he had made: and he rested on the seventh day from all his work which he had done. And he blessed the seventh day, and sanctified it: because in it he had rested," begins the second chapter of Genesis. Biblical numbers used to occupy a more prominent place in the world of conspiracy theories and listeners of the Art Bell Show, but to a believer Three, Seven, Eight, Twelve, and multiplication by thousands still carries importance. Seven remains a popular number in common life because a week is seven days long, the resting day preceding a return to work. A former coworker of mine named her son Seven—poor lad.

Seven and Eight occupy a prominence in the Church, both in Holy Writ and in the liturgical life of Christians. While Three arrantly refers to the Holy Trinity and the days before the Resurrrection, and while Twelve recalls the tribes of Israel and the Apostles, Seven and Eight are less immediately obvious and the most inseparable of these numbers, not least because they are sequential in every way.

Count 'em: seven on the top.

Seven is conspicuous throughout the tradition of the Church, being found in Scripture and in the celebration of sacred rites. According to Genesis, God created the world in seven "days," the last of which He did not create anything, but instead rested and sanctified that day by His rest. He dedicated the day to Himself. Seven is also reiterated throughout the Apocalypse of St. John: seven candles, seven spirits, seven seals. In the old rite of Papal Mass, acolytes set seven candles in front of the altar, imitated in the Lyonese rite. The "Tridentine" Roman liturgy, a pontifical Mass celebrated by a bishop in his own diocese mandates seven candles on the altar rather than the conventional six, or whatever the rank of the day dictates. Many Byzantine Holy Tables will support a tabernacle ornamented with seven candles, too.

Seven is perfection. It is fulfillment. It is rest for God, but not for man. By sanctifying the seventh day unto Himself, God made Himself man's duty on that day rather than the work he earned by the merit of his sin. The seventh day is meant for the worship and adoration of God, to plead for the forgiveness of sins and for clemency in all man's needs. 

Man's Fall impairs his worship of the Creator. Abraham's summoning to the mountain initiated the Jewish tradition of sacrificing small animals, vital sources of sustenance—milk, meat, textile materials, for God's ignorance of sin. The Law came through Moses. Grace and Truth—and the realized remission of sin—came through Jesus Christ. Christ's death on the Cross remitted the sins of those who follow Him, just as His Resurrection from the dead empowered His Apostles to heed the command to repeat the offering of bread and wine "for the anamnesis of me," revisiting, not repeating, His sacrifice.

The significance of Seven did not end with the Cross, rather it realized it final potential and deeper meaning. St. Paul's much abused adage "the letter kills, but the Spirit gives life" (2 Corinthians 3:6) excuses most Christians from meeting their duties by dismissing their potential detractors as legalists. The real meaning of this phrase could not be further from its modern reception. The letter, meaning the Law of Moses, was a meeting point between the Divine plan and man's fallen nature. Since the Passion of Christ and the coming of the Holy Spirit, the Law has become antiquated in light the coming of the Spirit. Adherence to the Law yields death, adherence to the Spirit yields life. The significance of the signs of the Law did not vanish with Christ; they became more powerful.

God's reservation of the seventh day makes Seven a Temple number, both in the Old Testament and in the New. A young animal was fit for sacrifice when it was seven days old (Exodus 22:30). Visibly there were seven lamp stands in the Temple, an image continued in the Apocalypse of St. John. In a passage of Scripture read at Mattins for the feast of All Saints, the writer described the court of the Almighty:

"And from the throne proceeded lightnings, and voices, and thunders; and there were seven lamps burning before the throne, which are the seven spirits of God" (Apocalypse 4:5)

God no created nothing new on the seventh day, yet Genesis delineates the end of Creation on the seventh day. The seventh day is perfect, it is completion. The use of seven in the Apocalypse may relate a vision to the reader, but it may also communicate to the reader that the eternal liturgy in the heavenly court is the Christian's final destination, his perfection, his fulfillment. If true, this imbues the liturgy with an apocalyptic nature, a preview of what eternity is supposed to be. The tradition of the seven lamps remained a feature of Papal Mass until Paul VI discontinued the rite in 1964. The use of Lyon retained the tradition until adopting Pope Paul's reforms. Greek churches still often display seven candles above the altar. The recent loss of this tradition does not neglect what appears to have been the conventional interpretation of this number by the Church according to her sacred rites, that adoration of God in sempiternal beatitude in the un-ending end of the faithful.

Alas, Seven is succeeded by Eight, and it is time to move on.

If Seven is clear and explicit, Eight is hinted and implicit. Christ entered Jerusalem on Palm Sunday the day after the Sabbath and was put to death the day before the Sabbath. A good Jew, he rested on the Sabbath and rose the next day, a unique and extraordinary event in human history never to be repeated. Our Lord did not rise in a new body, nor the old as it was, but in the old body glorified, so resplendent and transformed that His own Apostles did not recognize Him. Understanding this, St. Paul writes to the Philippians, "Who will reform the body of our lowness, made like to the body of his glory, according to the operation whereby also he is able to subdue all things unto himself" (3:21). Christ rose on the first day of the new week, a new first day of Creation, in the "body of his glory."

"Our Redeemer's visible presence," wrote St. Leo the Great, "has passed into Sacraments." The Sacrament most readily associated with the Resurrection and with the renewal of mankind is Baptism, which St. Augustine often calls the Sacrament in his Confessions (my emphasis). Baptism is the Sacrament of regeneration, where what Christ did physically comes to the catechumen spiritually now and physically in eternity.

The great ancient feasts, Greek and Latin, have two commonalities: an extended liturgical celebration and the celebration of Baptism. Pascha, Pentecost, and Epiphany/Theophany are the greatest of all feasts in the Church, feasts liturgically observed for an octave of days and which relics of the older practice of Baptism on the feast vaguely remains. Pascha and Pentecost were preceded by a vigil in older times that became its own liturgical day in the middle ages. On those vigils, Baptism is still celebrated with the reading of prophecies, the blessing of water, and the Sacrament itself. Epiphany/Theophany no longer sees Baptism on the day of its celebration, but water is blessed and distributed by vials or by sprinkling among the faithful there gathered.

Lateran Baptistery

The extended liturgical celebration of Christ's regenerative mysteries is the octave, the eight day long week. In lesser feasts, the octave day repeats the feast day. In these three feasts, however, the octave day is unique from the feast itself. Pascha has Low Sunday (Thomas Sunday for the Greeks). Epiphany/Theophany is capped with the Baptism of the Lord (or a leave-taking in Byzantium). Pentecost does not have a strict octave day, but its semi-festive vigil can reasonably make Ember Saturday an octave day; Trinity Sunday could also be read as an accidental octave day, celebrating the complete revelation of the Trinity, the Third Person of Whose revelation was observed the prior week (Greeks do not have a formal octave, but they do call the week after Pentecost Sunday "Trinity Week," during which there is no fasting).

Eight not only appears in liturgical times of Baptism, but also in space. Baptisteries traditionally have eight sides, again signifying the Resurrection on the eighth day of the week, the first day of the new Creation. Even smaller churches without dedicated Baptisteries often possess an octagonal font. The local FSSP parish—despite the prevalence of plaster statues, blue wall paper, and young St. Joseph—has a proper Baptistery, octagonal in shape.

For the Jew, the only eighth day was the eighth day of the Feast of Tabernacles. Those under the Mosaic Law would build tents of palms and offer sacrifices for seven days, recalling the cycle of Creation. The entirety of the seven days was an extension of the Sabbath, the seventh and perfect day, wherein no servile work was performed. On the eighth day, a solemn celebration would resume and sacrifices would be offered communally. "On the first and eighth day shall be a sabbath, that is a day of rest" (Leviticus 23:39). This was a penitential cycle, attached to the Day of Atonement, the day the people would project their sins onto a "scapegoat" and offer sacrifices according to their means. For the Christian, the Sacrifice has been made by Christ, the Lamb Who took on the sins of the world. The celebration is a celebration not only in the sense of observance, but also in joy.

Unfortunately, the significance of Eight, octaves, and Baptism became obfuscated by the decline in liturgical observance in the Latin Church and the suppression of almost all octaves, save three, by Pius XII in 1955. Paul VI would unwittingly suppress Pentecost in 1970, after his mentor, Pius XII, removed its vigil and Baptism rites 15 years earlier.

Seven and Eight are sequential, as the fullness of Creation in one gives way to the new Creation in another. God created us to His end, from which we fell away on the seventh day and to which He restored us on the eighth. We are meant for Him, both now and forever. There is no new revelation, no new progression along the Biblical number line. We live in the final age, the last aeon (one could write a post on the meaning of "unto the ages of ages" in prayers). There will be no more progression in our knowledge of God until the end, when we will no longer see Him gradually lifting the veil, but instead see Him and He is. To end this numeric article, Msgr. Alfred provides the faithful with another mathematical insight on the Almighty in the first chapter of We Believe:

"The analogy or comparison which I personally find useful is to think of eternity as the point at the center of a circle. You know from your geometry that a point has no extension in space: it simply exists. In the same way, eternity has no extension in time: it simply exists. When we say of Almighty God in our limited language that He was, is and always will be, it would be far more correct to say—since in eternity there is no succession of events—that He always is. Now, if you think of time as the circumference of that circle, with every single point on the circumference equally and simultaneously present to the center, you may see what we mean when we say that the whole of time is likewise equally and simultaneously present to Almighty God. But to us the succession of events in real indeed: we are successively encountering what is simultaneous to Almighty God."

Seven and Eight can make you a saint! A happy octave day to all.

Pius XII: True Reform?

source: sgg.org

Our post on Byran Houghton generated some passing discussion on the liturgical reforms of Pius XII and the curious tendency of some traditionalists not only to accept their legality, but to embrace the Pacellian wisdom, glorifying the Black Nobleman's work as "true reform." Bryan Houghton, Michael Davies, Brunero Gherardini and countless others accepted part or all of Pius XII's liturgical novelties—particularly Holy Week. While most of the emerging traditionalist movement used pre-Pius XII (not necessarily "pre-1955"), a strange Gallican tendency preferred early Paul VI and eventually settled on 1962. The Fraternity of St. Pius X's preference for 1962 compelled its descendants in the FSSP, ICRSS, IBP, monastic communities and "indult" Masses to follow suit. The general consensus is that something was wrong with the liturgy before Pius XII and something had to be changed, but not everything; Pius XII changed just enough, Paul VI changed too much. Why?

Sadly, the reasoning is likely laced in the politics of the time. Pius XII, the first pope of the media age, filled every seminarian and priest's newspaper and television, always wearing the tiara and uttering the pontifical blessing from his lips. Papa Pacelli embodied the outward immutability of the baroque Church, if, of course, one ignores what he actually did. Pope John's Council and Pope Paul's New Mass, as Michael Davies entitled both of those phenomena, broke the baroque statue of the Church and left those reared in the eccentric obedience of the time grasping for a means of understanding what had just happened. They latched on to Pius XII as a contrast to the changes of Paul VI, true change versus false change, true renewal versus false renewal.

On closer inspection, these aspirations are quite facile. Giovanni Battista Montini, not Siri of Genoa, was Pius XII's protege and handpicked successor (one does not get rid of a priest with an under-secretary job by making him archbishop of the prior pope's see and instantly papabile). The same people who accomplished Paul VI's reforms also accomplished Pius XII's and were in fact hired by Pius XII (he personally found Bugnini). At a time when the pope was too sick to hold a consistory or meet with bishops, he was well enough to get regular reports on the progress of liturgical changes. All this will be familiar to regular readers, but to newer ones this may be a surprise.

There stands another possibility, however, that early proponents of the post-War Liturgical Movement, disappointed with the Pauline liturgy, projected their hopes onto the liturgy of Papa Pacelli. Louis Bouyer, whose arrant disillusionment with the reform would startled modern day conservatives, recounts that in the 1940s, before it was legal he celebrated the Holy Saturday Vesperal Mass after nightfall. The Paschal vigil Mass obsessed liturgists, who, far from acknowledging that its daytime celebration was a pastoral accommodation, saw the morning or noontime vigil as a great corruption, a departure from the ancient practice. They welcomed Pius XII's experimental vigil in 1951, and the next one in 1952, and the third one in 1955 (four Masses for one day in four years!). In reality, the "vigil," as it existed as a distinct ceremony from the all-night Paschal celebration of the first millennium, never took place at night; its creation separated it from the Resurrectional liturgy and put them both in the daytime. However, those who wanted to return to the ancient praxis as best they knew it may have seen in Pius XII's Holy Saturday a nod toward the primitive practice devoid of Paul VI's textual deviations.

Rather than asking "What is true reform?" Catholics would better use their time by asking "What is true tradition?"

Louis Bouyer: About A Council

source: ignatiusinsight.com

The first ten chapters of Louis Bouyer's Memoirs are characteristic of Franco-Germanic charm, or at least what we imagine it to be. Then Bouyer was exposed to the Theology department at Notre Dame and to Fr. Danielou in European settings. And then came the Council. His chapter on Vatican II and the subsequent section on friendship are eye opening reads given to us by someone who knew the characters of "the Council", its preparatory commission and the liturgical reform on a personal level. Rather than dilate upon these topics, I give some favorite memories from Bouyer below:

"The worst of it was that the same Pizzardo would remain, for an entire generation, at the head of a Roman congregation that was supposed to run all ecclesiastical studies. As a colleague once said: had the KGB undertaken to undermine the Catholic Church from within, it could hardly have picked a better man!"

"As soon as I had come into the Catholic Church, and even before that, it had been easy for me to notice that as far as the Catholic pioneers of ecumenism were concerned....., and also as far as its most tenacious enemies were concerned, such as, at the time, the future Cardinals Bea, Journet, or Paul Philippe, simply being a convert disqualified one from being involved in these issues. For the former, this stemmed from the idea of ecumenism, creeping at the time, triumphant today, that Eric Mascall has quite accurately dubbed 'Alice in Wonderland Ecumenism:' 'Everybody has won, and all must have prizes!' In other words: it is out of the question that anything should change on either side, the important thing being to agree that one may behave or believe as he pleases...."

"In the best-case scenario, that of a truly ecumenical council in the traditional meaning of the term, i.e. actually representative of an undivided Christendom, the most that divine assistance can ensure for the Apostles' successors is the absence of any possible error in the doctrinal definitions such assemblies venture to produce. But, short of this extreme case, any dosage of approximation, insufficiency, or simple superficiality are expected from even so sacrosanct an assembly."

"Under different circumstances, [the liturgical reform commission] might have accomplished excellent work. Unfortunately, on the one hand, a deadly error in judgment placed the official leadership of this committee in the hands of a man who, though generous and brave, was not very knowledgeable: Cardinal Lercaro. He was utterly incapable of resisting the maneuvers of the mealy-mouthed scoundrel that the Neapolitan Vincentian, Bugnini, a man as bereft of culture as he was of basic honesty, soon revealed himself to be."

"The idea was to obviate the Holland-born fashion of Eucharists being improvised in complete ignorance of the liturgical tradition going back to Christian origins."

"But what can I say, at a time when the talk was of simplifying the liturgy and of bringing it back to primitive models, about this actus poenitentialis inspired by Father Jungmann (an excellent historian of the Roman Missal—but who, in his entire life, had never celebrated a Solemn Mass!)? The worst of it was an impossible offertory, in a Catholic Action, sentimental 'workerist' style, the handiwork of Father Cellier, who with tailor-made arguments manipulated the despicable Bugnini in such a way that his production went through despite nearly unanimous opposition...." Bouyer goes on to tell that he found the Sanctus, or something like it, in an early text, which justified its continuing existence to the archaeologists who wanted to expunge it! He does admit that the Pauline Mass has the added benefit of older prefaces and disused Lenten collects, but laments that they were mangled to soften their message.

On the kalendar in Paul VI's Missal: "Because these three hotheads obstinately refused to change anything in their work and because the pope wanted to finish quickly to avoid letting the chaos get out of hand, their project, however insane, was accepted!"

On pp.224-225 of the new English translation, Bouyer goes on to tell of how Bugnini and his handlers would expurgate the psalms and the liturgy for the dead by telling them that the pope wanted these changes and meanwhile tell Paul VI that the committee unanimously wanted these same changes he personally opposed, guilty the committee into obedience and Montini into despair: "In such cases, he didn't hesitate to say: 'But the Pope wills it!' After that, of course, there was no question of discussing the matter any further."

On Paul VI:

"Along with his exquisite tact, there was in this pontiff a mean streak that very few people seem to have suspected."

"I shall say that finding myself here at the end of the race renew the sympathy I had to Paul VI. He, too, was perpetually more attracted to the Benedictine tradition than to any other.... 'When all is said and done, the two of us are just failed Benedictines'!" "

"At any rate, since I am not in too bad a position to speak of him, I shall only say that just as John XXIII was far from being the revolutionary he has so often been described as, his successor has never at all been the frightened reactionary some have stupidly invented. As a matter of fact, he was the true liberal. He succeeded an undeniable though intelligent conservative, but could not allow a proper freedom to degenerate into pure (or rather impure!) license."

Did Pews Bring About the Pauline Mass?

source: traditionalcatholicism83.blogspot.com

Could the change in liturgical life brought about by the innovation of pews have contributed in no small part to the eventual introduction of the Mass of Paul VI? The basis was that the faithful in the pews were spectators, disengaged and thumbing through their rosaries, except during the sermon, and only communicating during Paschaltide. Participatio actuosa was necessary on the part of the congregants.

Why, we may ask five decades later, were they reduced to spectators at the act of baroque theater that had become of Mass—the "opera of the poor," as Voltaire put it? Yes, medieval English, French, and Italian were closer to Latin, but not so much closer that the faithful were so drastically less capable of comprehending the liturgy just a few centuries later. Consider what the faithful did during Mass in the first millennium: on great feasts there would be a night-long vigil, beginning outside the church. The pope or local ordinary would arrive for the Office and a procession would follow into the church proper. Then Mass would be celebrated. In the middle ages, there would be prayers and hymns around the church to the local saints, a procession would follow around the church and arrive at the rood screen, where prayers for the church were made in the vernacular, and then Mass would follow. In both cases the faithful stood unimpeded and were free to move about as the Spirit or their bodies compelled them. Those tired could take a break. Those wishing to pray quietly could disappear to a side chapel. Those especially moved could stand closer to the front. The call to Communion would been the movement of a crowd towards Christ, not unlike those who sought to hear Him preach on the coast on atop the Mount. Communion was not a linear parade.

How different was Mass with pews? First, the ritual itself was highly reduced: no processions, no night watches, no rites for the local saints. Just one or three clerics performing the Mass itself in a simple fashion. Then there was the pew. The faithful could not move, could not process, could not go somewhere to pray, could not do anything but sit still and watch for an hour. The only "break" in action was the possibility of a sermon. Gone were the rood screens and the air of mystery. Instead, an elevated altar behind a rail was viewed by a layman sitting on a bench. There was the mystery, to be watched by a remover spectator in plain sight.

As low Mass replaced high Mass as the norm, people were naturally further disengaged. Even in languages closer to Latin than our English—French, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese—the faithful could not really do anything other than find means of diversion, means of entertainment.

If anyone doubts this thesis, and you are open to doing so, consider the 1955 Holy Week. Eight years before Sacrosanctum Concilium put "active participation" into our liturgical vocabulary and fourteen years before the new Mass ritual, Pius XII introduced a series of rites which have, as one of their stated goals the "living participation of he sacred ceremonies." Churchmen in 1955 understood "living participation" differently than churchmen in 1455 did. They wanted the priest to talk to the congregants and for the congregants to talk back to them, and what better way of doing that than facing them? Pius's Holy Week includes Palm Sunday (now "Second Sunday in Passiontide") and Holy Saturday (now "Easter Vigil") rites conducted at length atop a table versus populum in front of the actual altar. Ritually, it was likely an experiment to test how the faithful would receive it and to tweak the ceremonies for when the complete reform was ready for release.

Mass facing the people, what Geoffrey Hull called the "great narcissism," became a matter of fact in almost every parish by 1965.

Pews were not the immediate cause of the new liturgy, but they were a necessary cause.

Ostpolitik: A Hermeneutic of Continuity

News of the pope's very prominent role in de facto ending America's long standing embargo against Communist Cuba has caused the secular press, again, to rejoice in the reigning pontiff's accomplishments. The media are comparing Francis' efforts in Cuba to John Paul II's efforts against the Red Russians, disregarding a strong difference in goals.Perhaps, when the writers at the New York Times are not goading on the mayors of that town to ban smoking, they will light up a Cohiba Esplendido in celebration. For those looking to make more serious sense of Francis' international politics, one must look back to the beginning of the 20th century. 

Francis is continuing a dangerous and long disproven method of Vatican diplomacy called Ostpolitik. One could seek a formal definition using Mr. Google, but a practical definition would be something like this: whereas in previous times the Church exercised political power through alliances with like-minded and like-oriented parties, she now engages hostile parties directly, making concessions to her aggressors in hopes that said aggressor will be nice. His Traddiness suspects that Ostpolitik has a special appeal to the modern papacy because it disassociates from the now-detested "altar and throne" arrangement of previous times and instead substitutes direct engagement where Churchmen can be assured of their own do-goodism. Benedict XV—along with Pietro Gasparri and Eugenio Pacelli, a disciple of Cardinal Rampolla—tried to end the First World War by his effete appeals and by maintaining neutrality, understandable given the Church's fragile status. Gasparri, as Pius XI's Secretariat of State, ended the Cristero War by forcing the army which had achieved absolute victory to make an unconditional surrender, again to maintain "the peace" despite the fact that the Cristeros were fighting for the faith, although not for the Vatican or the disinterested Mexican episcopacy. Pius XII most successfully practiced Ostpolitik to save nearly 800,000 Jews during the Second World War, leaning on local relations to stop deportation trains, to create false Bapstismal certificates, and to hide Jews in local religious houses. However, in doing so he put the entire Church at risk by not maintaining neutrality and the Church in Europe was more or less destroyed by the War, nominally rebuilt with American money after the conflict. He furtively practiced Ostpolitik with the Russians after the War while publicly maintaining an anti-Communist facade, hence his support for the troubled Josef Cardinal Mindszenty; given America's prominence, he had to tow their anti-Communist line while secretly attempting to make Catholics' lives better behind the Iron Curtain. Unlike his efforts on behalf of Western European Jews, his efforts for Eastern Catholics failed and the Eastern Churches were nearly liquidated; only the Ukrainian Church survived strong. Paul VI continued his mentor's approach with the Russians and maintained the lines of communication they had opened in the 1950s (those Orthodox observers at Vatican II did not appear ex nihilo). The process failed, reunion with the Orthodox never happened, and the anti-religious campaign of Nikita Khrushchev became as active as Stalin's. There is even some evidence that Communists had agents within the hierarchy, which should not be written off as "conspiracy" given that they had agents in every major Western government just as we had agents there. Pope Paul's continuation of Ostpolitik ended the Church's important place in international affairs until the election of John Paul.

Papa Wojtyla may not have been the virulent anti-Communist we like to imagine. His philosophical training was quite tainted by his rearing, which was not his fault. He even had unique travel privileges that his predecessor in Krakow did not enjoy. Still, he wanted to make life better for the Church behind the Iron Curtain and, rather than pick up where della Chiesa, Gasparri, Pacelli, and Montini left off, he began a unique diplomatic approach by paying visits to Eastern Europe, to his native Poland, and by making friends of Maggie Thatcher and Ronald Reagan, the ideology's chief political opponents. Simultaneously, he subverted the Soviet establishment in the East and strengthened its opponents in the West. If the Second World War and the Cold War taught Wojtyla anything, it taught him a lesson in real power politics.

And now Francis has revived Ostpolitik in dealing with Cuba: secret negotiations with Communists in hopes that the situation will improve. Why did he do this? We can only guess: dislike of the embargo formed by the non-alignment legacy of Peronist Argentina? Fantastical notions of the poor of Cuba becoming wealthy with new trade lines become available? His arrant admiration of Paul VI, the pope he quotes most of all? Was he seduced by the supposedly charismatic Barack Obama? Could the Pope himself still have some hitherto unknown political baggage? We will probably not know until this Pope has passed and the political play in Cuba unfolds. This return to Ostpolitik disconcerts at least this writer, who had happily read a hermeneutic of discontinuity and rapture in the diplomacy of John Paul and Benedict XVI.

Judaism & the Pauline Rite

Elsewhere we have cited Jean Guitton's radio interview in which he stated his friend, Papa Montini, aimed to approximate the Roman rite with the "Calvinist Mass." To many Catholics of the age, the transition from Latin to vernacular, from orientation to versus populum, and from chant to hymns appeared to mirror the process of de-Catholicizing England and the Germanic countries during the Reformation. The common perception that the Pauline Mass was inspired, in whole or part, by protestantism is integral to several studies of the new liturgy, notably Michael Davies' Pope Paul's New Mass and Anthony Cekada's Work of Human Hands. Ecumaniacs of the 1960s and 1970s egged on the Church about her sudden convergence with protestantism and her disregard for her past. There is a sliver of truth to this narrative, but it is on the whole a simplistic reduction for those looking to ignore what really happened in the 20th century.

The new liturgy is a baked outcome of a strange batter of ingredients: clerical lethargy, boredom with the devotional culture, Jansenism, Modernism, pro-protestant ecumenism, neo-Scholastic minimalism and focus with form-matter-intent, an archaeologist obsession with the "early Church" (whatever that was), and, we often forget, Judaism.

The Second World War and Holocaust had just ended. Religious scholarship of both Christianity and Judaism returned to European academia. Modern religious scholarship, like most bad things (Nazism, Communism, protestantism, Wagner, and beer) comes from Germany. In the 19th century linguistic scholarship boomed in Germany and, with it, textual criticism of Christian and Jewish literature. The consensus held in academic circles corresponded to the biases of academic circles at the time against religion. They held the New Testament books to be second and third century divinizations of an historically doubtful Jewish rabbi with a simply message of peace. Early Christianity was re-imagined as a simplistic, communitarian potluck devoid of strong clergy. Judaism did not escape unscathed, either.

One cannot really say that the Rabbinical Judaism of today is the Judaism of Christ's age. Since the 19th century people have understood the synagogue to the Jewish equivalent of a church and the rabbi to be the equivalent of a priest. The synagogue is the worship house and the rabbi leads the prayer rites and provides the community with instruction. That is certainly modern Judaism, the Judaism those wishing to return the Church to her primitive roots sought to imitate, but it betrays an ignorance of first century Judaism.

When one reads of the question of the Canon of Scripture, one finds numerous debates which revolve around which books Christ quotes to which people. The Pharisees, Saducees, and Hellenistic Jews accepted different books ranging from the five Mosaic books alone to the Greek books contained in the Septuagint. These points did not make Hellenistic Jews any less Jewish than the Pharisees. What defined a Jew at the time was ethnic origin, the observance of the Mosaic commandments, and one's relationship to the Temple. This last point cannot be ignored in any way. Jerusalem was a temple surrounded by a city, not a city housing  temple. The Temple was where God's Chosen People worshipped Him according to laws and rites revealed to them by Him through special prophets and continued with the aid of the Levitical priesthood. The rest was important, but additional. The Rabbinical model filled the abyss of a void created when the Temple was destroyed in 70, Jerusalem was destroyed in 135, and Jew expelled from Palestine until 1948. Judaism, to survive, moved from a Temple model to a synagogue model. Formerly, synagogues were akin to community and educational centers with a religious function. Rabbis were not strictly necessary. "Rabbi" was a generic term for a preacher, sometimes educated, sometimes not. The rabbi found himself in the synagogue eventually, expounding on the codified Hebrew Scriptures to members of a scattered community in some remote part of the Diaspora, far from Jerusalem. The priesthood, the place of worship, and the state were replaced with teacher, local community, and minority status. Imagine, as a Catholic, being trapped in some isolate part of northern China with some other Catholics and no priest. On Sundays, you gather as a group and perhaps get some spiritual advice from a particularly devout member of the circle. This is what happened to the Jewish people.

That Rabbinical Judaism influenced Christianity cannot be doubted. St. Paul came from the Pharisaical tradition that spawned the Rabbinical movement, a student himself of Rabban Gamaliel (rabban was a title of high status among rabbis). This influence is evident in St. Paul's epistolary and preaching style, which lived on in the Apostolic Fathers. This influence is not evident in the Patristic and Apostolic era's liturgical praxis because it did not exist. When one reads early accounts of the Christian house liturgies, one is struck at the level of organization (how many priests and deacons concelebrate, who houses the Eucharist, how many plates are used, who takes Communion to the sick etc). While the particular practices have either faded or been absorbed into the traditions of Rome, Byzantium, Antioch, Syria, Armenia, Alexandra and the others that come to us today, a clear taxis emerged. They worshipped in houses rather than grand edifices because houses were what was available to them. When Christianity emerged from the Diocletian persecution's catacombs and entered the Constantinian sun, the believers built grand churches and consecrated them as the Temples were consecrated. More recent scholarship by Margaret Barker and Laurence Hemming reveals that the Temple, not the synagogue, was the template the early—and certainly medieval—Christians sought to emulate. Hemming's Liturgy as Revelation even notes the strong textual parallels between the Roman Mass and Office for the Dedication of a Church (created c.500 for the consecrated of the Pantheon as "St. Mary and the Martyrs) and the previous Temple, as well as with the heavenly Jerusalem to come. The Church's rite are the maturation and fulfillment of the Temple rites, which prefigured Christ's perfect Sacrifice, a Sacrifice made present again on the altars of the Church. The priesthood is no longer Levitical, but Christ's. The Temple is no longer limited to one physical space because the Sacrifice of Christ can be renewed anywhere. 

The spiritual archaeologists, seeking a plain and communitarian "early Church," erroneously took Rabbinical Judaism as the normative model rather than the Temple Judaism which prefigured Christ and which He fulfilled. In doing so, they took the parish rather than the cathedral as the normative setting for the liturgy. They took the reduced parish liturgy rather than episcopal celebration as the normative standard. And they took an earthy community rather than a heavenly one as the normative attendees. Unfortunately, bad thoughts do not die with those who think them.

In related news, Anthony Cekada is trying to get his Work of Human Hands back into print. To bring attention to this endeavor he has returned to making one chapter summary videos on YouTube. I find Cekada's research very valuable, particularly with regard to the figures around the reform process and the variable parts of the new Mass (orations and the lectionary). Still, one gets the same trite words about Modernism vs. "traditional" (neo-Scholastic Latin moral) theology one finds among those whose knowledge of theology begins with St. Thomas' Summa and whose scope is limited to the Roman patriarchate. His latest video, below, provides invaluable information when he is not calling Eastern Christians "woolly" and "schismatic" without qualification. If readers have time, I recommend his earlier videos on the reform process, "Adroit Choices, Giant Voices," and the offertory. His sly style is both entertaining and accessible thanks to his helpers, Fr. Chuck and Fr. Retreaux.