A New Face on Marian Feasts

Minor and major Marian feasts proliferated after the issuance of the Tridentine Missal under Saint Pius V. The Dominican friar who became Roman Pontiff was himself a part of that expansion, publishing Quo primum tempore and his edition of the Missale Romanum in 1570 and then adding the Feast of Our Lady of Victory the very next year to commemorate the Blessed Virgin's intercession on behalf of the Christian navy at Lepanto.

Pius V's Missal and Breviary follow a very sleek, elegant version of the Roman kalendar. Did he go a step too far in stripping out medieval feasts like those of Ss. Joachim and Anne? Perhaps, but his kalendar does maintain an elegant balance of the temporal, the ferial, the Dominical, the penitential, and the festive. There is never too much or too little of anything. His kalendar retained the two major Marian feasts of the day (Annunciation and Assumption) as well as a handful of Christologically important, albeit less popular feasts (Visitation, Conception, and Nativity of the Blessed Virgin). Additionally, there were two feasts commemorating Marian miracles, first Our Lady of the Snows and a year later Our Lady of Victory (the Rosary).

Consider that after these feasts, seven days plus an additional seven for the octave of the Nativity of the Virgin, took up a fraction of the entire year and yet each of them possessed a Double feast, substantial enough to supersede the Sundays per annum on which they fell, all except Annunciation and the Conception of Our Lady, since in traditional rubrics no day may supersede an Advent or Lenten Sunday.

What followed after Pius V was a long flourishing of new Marian titles, feasts, and devotions. Among them:

• Our Lady of Lourdes
• Our Lady of Mount Carmel
• Our Lady of Ransom
• Immaculate Heart of Mary
• Our Lady of Sorrows (September)
• Our Lady of Sorrows (Passiontide)
• Blessed Virgin Mary, Queen
• Presentation of the Blessed Virgin Mary

Almost all of these new feasts followed the Common of the Blessed Virgin Mary in both the Mass and Office, albeit with some exceptions in the orations and concessions granted to religious orders. What is strange is not the character of the new feasts, but the new face given to the older ones.

Commentary has been made on this blog of Pius XII's mutilation of some parts of the Office and of the entire Mass for the Assumption of Our Lady. Papa Pacelli discarded the entire Gaudeamus omnes Mass, replete with one of the most beautiful collects in the Roman Missal, in favor of something he had a commission create after he confirmed the teaching of the Assumption by solemn proclamation. Yes, it has a predictable Gospel and an insipid Introit melody, but there is more to Pius XII's Assumption feast, but to look at it we must first look back a century earlier.

In 1854 Pius IX, following consultation with all bishops of the Church (one of the last pontiffs so to do), taught "that the most Blessed Virgin Mary, in the first instance of her conception, by a singular grace and privilege granted by Almighty God, in view of the merits of Jesus Christ, the Savior of the human race, was preserved free from all stain of original sin."

The Mass of the Conception of the Blessed Virgin, called the Immaculate Conception before the Dominican Pope Saint Pius V, was restored to its pre-Tridentine title. The Mass itself, formerly the exact same formulary as that of the the Nativity of the Blessed Virgin only with "conception" swapped for "birthday" in the collect, was revised into the current Gaudens gaudebo Mass. The Office underwent a more modest change, retaining the psalms and hymns from the Common of the Blessed Virgin Mary, but with a notable change to the lessons. 

Traditionally, Marian feasts read from the Wisdom literature at Mattins, either Sirach, the Canticle of Canticles, or the Book of Wisdom. The revision introduced a then-novelty by reading Genesis and a Papal Bull.

The first nocturne of the Immaculate Conception reads Genesis chapter 3, recounting the Fall of Man and God's foreboding to the Serpent "I shall put enmity between you and the Woman, and her seed and yours. She shall crush your head and you shall lurk under her heel." Indeed, given the versicle at first Vespers and Lauds (v. Immaculata Conceptio est hodie Sanctae Mariae Virginis r. Quae serpentis caput virgineo pede contrivit), one might be inclined to believe Genesis was chosen simply to arrive at that last verse. 

While there is nothing inherently wrong with reading Genesis on a Marian feast and drawing to the faithful's attention the typology of between Eve and Our Lady, it is a marked departure from the Wisdom literature wherein the Blessed Virgin is said to be considered part of God's plan from the beginning and one who rests in His dwelling place. The luscious Mattins for the Assumption begin with sensual undertones ("thy breasts are sweeter than wine"), comparing the Virgin's intimacy with God to that of a man and woman in the act. In this Genesis reading, without the broader context provided by the older liturgical texts, Our Lady almost seems a standalone figure, a tool of God much like a prophet or soldier crushing evil on her own accord rather than due to her maternal bond to the Godhead.

The second nocturne of the Immaculate Conception introduces another peculiarity at the time, namely the reading of papal documents as liturgical texts. The sermons of Ss. Leo and Gregory the Great figure prominently in the Mattins lessons throughout the year, but they are mainly in the liturgy for their exegesis on the Gospels of the day and the memorable sanctity of the men themselves rather than because they were popes of Rome. Pius IX's declaration of the dogma in the Vatican basilica forms the sixth lesson in the Mattins of the feast. It reads much like the hagiographies of the sanctoral feasts, recounting the events in a praiseworthy and straightforward manner. 

Pius IX also turned the Immaculate Conception into an octave. Whereas Genesis was read at Mattins of the feast day itself, the occurring Scripture is read instead throughout the octave. However, the second nocturne is occupied with excerpts of Ineffabilis Deus. Readers with more resources are open to correct me, but this appears to be the first time papal documents were read as liturgical, prayerful texts simply because they came from the Roman Pontiff. The texts allude to the consultation of the bishops, the preface of the Mass of the day, the Roman Church's unique devotion to Our Lady, the the Pontiffs' efforts to guard the Virgin's reputation from the assaults of heretics. It is stuff worth reading, but only a Marian feast would one not prefer to read about Mary?

In a case of strange bed fellows—Pius IX a liberal turned arch-reactionary and Pius XII an outward conservative with a liberal demeanor—Papa Pacelli repeated many of his predecessor's steps in re-crafting the Office of a feast, in this case that of the Assumption. The first nocturne of the older feast, again, read the exotic words from Wisdom literature and spoke of Our Lady's intimacy with God. The second nocturne, from Saint Athanasius in the Tridentine books and Saint John Damascene in post-Tridentine editions, recounts the handing down of the tradition of the Assumption and what exactly transpired with the Apostles, the singing of the angels, and the finding of Our Lady's belt. 

"They cut me off!"

Pius XII once again removed the Wisdom texts and substituted Genesis, although unlike Pius IX he only used the snippet with the familiar "I will put enmity between you and the Woman" rather than the entire thing. Awkwardly, the text then switches the passage about the General Resurrection from Corinthians read at Requiem Masses.

Two of the three texts from Saint John of Damascus remain in the second nocturne, but the third lesson is excised in favor of a description of the events surrounding Pius XII's dogmatic definition of an already clear teaching. Pius XII eliminated the octave of the Assumption, along with that of the Immaculate Conception and most others in the Roman kalendar, four years later, meaning the rich texts of Saint John describing the tradition of the Assumption and the actual events themselves, read later in the octave, never appear. Whereas in 1949 a priest would in fact read about the entire event of the Assumption, a priest in 1959 could go the entire liturgical year and never encounter a description of the Assumption, just Pius XII's word that it happened. In liturgically solemnizing the doctrine he eliminated the liturgical evidence for it, contrary to Pius IX who at least expanded the liturgical tradition around the Immaculate Conception.

Pius IX's changes to the Office are noticeable, but hardly jarring. They did set a precedent followed a century later by another Pius. In both cases texts from Genesis are adapted to the feast giving the Blessed Virgin a character unique from the texts previously read on those days and still read on other Marian days. The result is an aesthetic not necessarily at odds with a traditional of Mary, but distinct from the received liturgical outlook.

The Organic Restoration of the Roman Rite

The Question of the "Traditional" Roman Rite

Do you remember what the Council of Vienne said about anything? No, and no one else does either. The Council of Constance fired all three popes in the 15th century, but its acts were nullified by the following successor of Peter, a pontiff eager to nip any hint of Conciliarism at its bud. In more ancient times, the 382 Council of Constantinople reiterated the Nicene doctrine of Christology and added exposition on the Holy Spirit to the Creed, but the event was disastrous enough to send Gregory Nazianzen to despair.

Councils are strange things, with as many good in history as bad, and enough forgotten out of their lack of enduring relevance. Those who know the history of the Roman rite know that what happened to the Mass and Office in the 20th century had nearly nothing to do with the Second Vatican Council and everything to do with runaway bureaucracies, antiquarians with delusions of piecemealing together an Apostolic liturgy, and an out-of-control papacy. And yet the general justification for the Novus Ordo Missae, the final completion of the liturgical reform, came from the Conciliar constitution Sacrosanctum Concilium (even the Council document's title was about itself!). In the eyes of the ignorant, to discard these mistake is to discard the Council and its legacy, something easy to the student of history but difficult for the Churchmen of Baby Boomer generation.

As Dr. Kwasniewski tightly argues, the integrity of the Roman rite took a major hit throughout the 20th century, especially regarding the Mass. Laymen in the pew may not have noticed much different at Mass after S Pius X's changes other than more green vestments and fewer sanctoral events on sundays, but Mrs. Jones and little Timmy would absolutely start seeing things differ from the time of Pius XII's accession onward. The last typical edition of the old Mass, distinct from the Office, was published by Pius XI in 1939. There is no "1950" or "1954" Missal, just a modified version of the Rattian Missal. The "1965" Missal was simply a further vitiation of the editio typica of 1962.

Ain't nothin' like the real thing

Still, all of these post-1939 Missals have some stain of mangling done out of committee of papal initiative rather than organic change. Is the answer really to go back to 1939? Is that the Roman rite? For the Mass, certainly, but for the Office certainly not.

The point of defining the traditional Roman rite becomes difficult for most traditionalists, even the most learned, at this point. Many would still defend the reforms of Papa Sarto as necessary to correct the Dominical imbalance prior to 1911 and point out that the Office of feasts changed very little aside from the lamentably broken integrity of the Laudate psalms. The Office of Divino Afflatu differs drastically, however, from the old one almost every single day that is not a major feast, especially on days that carry no feast at all. Far from address the imbalance of the kalendar, Papa Sarto mangled the psalter (effectively the same since Gregory the Great split the two Sunday nocturnes into three and moved a few psalms to Prime) while leaving the kalendar laden with Duplex saints.

No one would argue that the Breviary and Mass published by S Pius V do not reflect the Roman tradition. Does anyone wish to return to it? We would now be in the Octave of Saint Lawrence and observe him three more times, including the Octave day with its unique Mass, this week. In the Divino Afflatu schema, he will be commemorated on his Octave day this Saturday and otherwise neglected. Does Saint Lawrence deserve special notoriety when Saint Cecilia and Saint Dominic do not? After the Prince of the Apostles and Doctor of the Gentiles, Holy Lawrence is chief patron of the city of Rome and the older rite of the Roman Church reflects this relationship. In 1962 he will not be mentioned again, outside the Canon, until next August 9th.

None are clamoring, however, to return to the medieval rite of S Pius V and skip 450 years of canonizations. The Tridentine kalendar not only lacks ancient saints like Ss. Joachim and Anne, but also enduring Counter-Reformation saints like Ignatius of Loyola, Philip Neri, and Francis de Sales. A more recent edition of the Roman books prior to Pius X sound appealing to those who would like to observe S Thomas Villanova on a Sunday next month, but to most the merits of a more recent edition would be offset by the same problems which prompted the "solution" of Divino Afflatu in the first place.

On potential and un-discussed solution would be to petition for a new and restored edition of the traditional Missal and Breviary, restoring the Tridentine lectionary, sacramentary, psalters, lessons, antiphons, kalendar, and Ordo Missae with a massaged cycle for the saints. John Rotondi experimented for a few years using his "Current Tridentine Ordo", something similar to what myself and others do. It is effectively an approach that begins with the Tridentine books and adds the enduring post-Trent canonizations as Simples or Doubles depending on their gravity. In practice, almost every saint canonized after Trent was given a Double feast which could replace the Sunday Office (and even if it did not, it "eased" the onus of the ferial Office). This option is certainly far more attractive that trying to go back to an arbitrary date from when my grandparents were younger than I am now.

Is There a Path to Restoration?

source: New York Times

This approach does have its obvious short-comings. Ecclesia Dei was more accommodating in recent years than in the past, authorizing the old Holy Week and even approving diocesan ordinations in the old rite for certain conditions. Perhaps its successor body could be trusted for such an undertaking with reverent consultants, but the more interest the project gains the more [ambitious] hands will find a way into it. Also, a new edition of the old rite would not be a republication of the Roman Missal from an older form, but an alternative, "extraordinary" version of the modern form. While a minor consideration, it would continue the old rite's current legal status as a curio.

On April 15 this year, we watched in horror as Notre Dame de Paris burned into a scorched stone shell. A cathedral which, like so many from that era, took centuries to build burned within hours. Fittingly, many of those cathedrals which took hundreds of years to build succeeded smaller structures which burned to the ground. Like the Roman rite, that which took saints and centuries to build was demolished by modernity and tactlessness within the blink of an eye. President Macron immediately vowed to rebuild the structure within five years, but more realistic minds know that a thorough and proper restoration is a protracted undertaking, much to the chagrin or modern and myopic impertinence. We may want to see Notre Dame whole today, but those who built it were content to wait centuries for their work to come to perfection.

Is this not the story of the Roman rite today? A pope could order a nominal restoration or Ecclesia Dei's successor body in the CDF could issue an updated Missal, but the natural process of maturing the liturgy under the aegis of the Holy Spirit would be neglected. We enjoyed centuries of "organic development", a phrase which sparked a cottage industry of wordsmiths eager to get in their two cents on the Roman rite. Instead, let us have organic restoration.

The process is already underway. The sedevacantist associations of the pre-1962 books have faded in favor of a longer view, a situation possibly eased by the likelihood that this pope is less interested in active management of the Liturgy than his predecessors. Last year saw celebrations of the ancient Holy Week proliferate; one might point out that this followed an experimental permission granted by Ecclesia Dei, but many churches had already been doing the old rite for several years by this time. Also, the last few years, I heard of some churches skipping Saint Joseph the Communist on May 1st.

While outside the envisioned strictures of the "extraordinary form", these developments represent a crystallization of the Roman rite, an effort to rediscover in earnest that which was lost. Sing not Quomodo sedet sola civitas and instead demand allowed, "Give us the Roman rite!"

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'."

Bugnini & Pacelli

"You remember Eugenio, don't you?"

I have spent the last two weeks in a hospital room along side my ailing father, who the other day went to Confession for the first time in many decades. During my time alongside him in his convalescence I was able to start Yves Chiron's Annibale Bugnini: Reformer of the Liturgy, the first genuine biography of Msgr. Bugnini and a book which I hope to review this week or next. For many reasons it is an interesting book, bringing to light many aspects and details of the reform process which are lost in the propaganda narratives on both the conservative and liberal sides of the aisle. Among these details is the liturgical reforms of Pius XII.

We know about the Vatican II preparatory commissions, which included Msgr. Lefebvre and Cardinal Montini; they did not like each other well before 1975. We know about the parliamentary tactics at "the Council." We know about the Consilium and its members. We are inundated with facts about the Vatican II reforms. What we do not know as much about are the Pius XII reforms. We know what they were (common of Popes, three new Holy Saturdays, a new Holy Week, compressed feast ranks, no subdeacon if one wanted, dialogue Masses and much more). We know less about the people and process behind it, or at least we did until now.

Papa Pacelli's first reform was that of the psalter, re-translated from Greek into Latin by Augustin Bea, SJ, whose work was received with the criticism adauget latinitatem, minuit pietatem. Pope Pius held the accuracy of the psalter close to his heart and took the popular clerical disdain for the project, written off as "German pedantry", very personally. Down, but not out, he and Cardinal Salotti decided to convene a commission interested in the "general reform" of the Roman liturgy in 1946. The date is quite crucial because Mediator Dei and the "Pian Commission" followed in successive years. Other than the inversion of St. Prosper's dictum lex orandi, lex credendi, the most pivotal part of the encyclical comes in the pontiff's acknowledgement of organic development as the natural mode of liturgical maturation and then derogating all liturgical authority to the Holy See alone (MD 58). Far from restricting the more radical elements of the Liturgical Movement, the pope was taming them and culling from their number. Ferdinando Antonelli, OFM, a member both of the Consilium and Pius XII's group, would call Mediator Dei a magna carta for the healthy part of the Liturgical Movement.

Unlike the Vatican II preparatory sections and the Consilium, Bugnini spent most of his time on Pius XII's commission as a secretary and observer rather than an administrative leader and visionary. Hired directly by Pope Pius after reading his pastoral articles in his journal, Ephemerides Liturgicae, Bugnini was a conscientious worker who did little in the discussions and work groups. Bugnini, Antonelli, and the rest of the initial study group published a generally forgotten work called Memoria sulla Riforma liturgica, which highlighted a general desire to reform the Martyrology, the Office, the kalendar and festive system, liturgical music, Canon Law, and the Mass itself (over 343 pages). Pius's interest in the Mass is unclear, as the Memoria suggested the Mass itself would not change much, but vernacular would be introduced and the popular manner of participation would forcibly evolve. Organic change by committee.

In 1958, the year of Pacelli's death, the Commission drafted an instruction on the liturgy with a particular focus on sacred music. The document, issued fittingly on September 3rd, defined several levels of "active participation", giving popular singing of the Ordinary chants a nod of approval, but expressing a greater desire for the laity to join in singing the proper chants of the Mass! Aside from being ridiculous musically, the proper chants were a clerical function before the Ordo Romanus I in the year 800, when Latin and proto-Italian were still very similar languages. The document permitted hymns to substitute for the propers when such music might incite "devout feelings".

Perhaps most eye-popping among the Commission's internal reporting are the results of an international survey sent to 400 bishops concerning potential reform of the Breviary. The most popular things demanded were simpler hymns (23%), vernacular (18%), and a single nocturne at Mattins (17%), meaning the vast majority had no interest in these things at all, but were eventually given them in time.

So, what was the Vincentian priest, Annibale Bugnini, doing while Antonelli, Bea, and others were plotting to cut Patristic lessons from Sunday Offices? When Pope Pius declared a Holy Year in 1950 Bugnini saw an opportunity to repeat an experiment he concocted some years earlier in a poor Roman suburb. He attempted to publish a book geared toward pilgrims and their priests called La Nostra Messa, his first attempt at "paraphrasing" the existing Roman Mass. His Vincentian superiors took a look and point blank refused to publish the work, but Bugnini self-published the 36 page pamphlet through the printer of his journal, Ephemerides.

What was La Nostra Messa? Bugnini's "paraphrase" of the Mass, edited by his disciple, a young Carlo Braga, was effectively an instructed narration of the Mass read by a "commentator" or "reader", a role which would reappear in the transitional Mass of 1964-9. The priest would celebrate a spoken Mass quietly with his server while the reader—"a priest, member of Catholic Action, or a woman"—would verbalize descriptions of what was going on during the Mass and suggest certain pious thoughts or prayers people might consider during these moments. During the Lavabo inter innocentes the reader would tell people the priest was washing his hands so he could touch the Body of Christ shortly. This incessant noise would only stop for the consecration; otherwise, he or she would continue to blather through the Roman Canon. Bishop Charriere of Lausanne criticized this dialogue Mass as an imbalance between between the priest and the people, but the damage was done. The Holy Year meant two printings of La Nostra Messa were sold and made their way to parishes with modern-minded priests that year; by 1962, twelve editions of the pamphlet had come off the press, some 1,500,000 copies.

Even five years ago one would occasionally hear that Pius XII's pontificate provided genuine liturgical reform, in contrast to those novelties of Paul VI. Time, scholarship, and continually expanding use of the pre-Vatican II rites have effected one conclusion: it all needs to go. Give us the real Roman Liturgy, please.

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.

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.

Ordo for the Ordinary Old Rite, Not the Extraordinary New Rite

How is the 1962 liturgy different than what preceded it? For one, Pius XII “renewed” Holy Week by tossing it asunder and concocting something else. There are also fewer commemorations than the one to six one could feasibly observe on most days in the old rite. Is that it? A few less prayers and one week of the year a bit wonky? What if I were to tell you every day of the year is different in 1962 from what came before it. While some days, like the Sunday of Our Lord’s Resurrection, only vary minutely, large swatches of the year are quite different from the traditional Roman liturgy.

Enter exhibit A, the days preceding Palm Sunday during Passiontide. The most obvious difference is that the 1962 liturgy admits no such thing as Palm Sunday other than as an alternative name, curiously calling the day the “Second Sunday in Passion Time.” What about the days before the Second Sunday in Passion Time? Wednesday calls for Saint Benedict’s three nocturne Office and a Mass with a commemoration and proper Last Gospel of the feria. Friday anticipates the suffering of Christ in one week by contemplating the suffering of His Immaculate Mother now, again commemorating the feria. And Saturday is the feast of Saint Gabriel the Archangel. Both of these feasts would treat the season just like Saint Benedict’s feast, a full liturgy with proper and thorough commemoration of the season, so as not to omit it.

Why, surely the 1962 liturgy, which—unlike the big, bad “Novus Ordo”—has feasts of saints plentifully and commemorations, does this right? No. In fact it disregards most of it out of hand. You see, Carissime, the old rite does not permit saints to replace Sundays of penitential seasons, but it will permit them to replace weekdays under certain conditions. Perhaps saints ought not make such a splash during a time of fasting and prayers. Or perhaps Saint Benedict is not a minor saint, but the father of Western monasticism and the man whose legacy saved Europe for Christ’s sake. Perhaps the feast of the Seven Dolors of the Blessed Virgin is not a lollipop Marian devotion, but a preparation for the Passion of Christ and the antecedent to the surviving September feast, which is centuries newer. And perhaps Saint Gabriel is celebrated on the 24^th of March because the following day is ordinarily the Annunciation, when God firmly entered into the fullness of time for our salvation by the fiat of the Virgin and the words of the same archangel.

These differences, sometimes subtle and sometimes broad, are exactly why every traditionalist, cleric or lay liturgy-ophile, should be armed with the 2018 edition of the St. Lawrence Press Ordo Recitandi Officii Divini Sacrique Peragendi. This Ordo, unlike those of Ecclesia Dei, the British Latin Mass Society, the FSSPX, or FSSP, follows the liturgy as it existed before the gears of change that brought about the liturgical revolution began to churn. It is the last Office, Missal, Gradual, and Ritual that Montini, Pacelli, Braga, and Bugnini did not touch, and is consequently the last calendar that a saint from 1900 and 900 would recognize, especially during major liturgical seasons. Ought it be used to its full extent?—i.e. the use of the Roman liturgy prior to the “extraordinary form”? It is really not much of a moral dilemma. One should follow the tradition of the Church and her mens of worship, which, come to think of it, precluded committee fabrications until quite recently. There really is not much dilemma as to what one should do on May 1^st, when one can either follow the 7^th/8^th century feast of Ss. Philip & James or celebrate the [rather dated] political outreach to communists called Joe the Worker, which includes texts about construction workers joyously listening to Pius XII talk in St. Peter’s square.

Not only is the St. Lawrence Press Ordo valuable to a full-on traditionalist parish, but also to those who are searching for enough bottle to take the final plunge; it is good for those getting a feel for tradition and looking to filter good practices, like commemorations or Monday Requiem Masses during Lent, into the current extraordinary form of the Pauline Mass, the 1962 Missal. One could, for instance, celebrate a votive Mass of the Holy Name of Mary on the Sunday after her September Nativity or that of St. Joachim on the Sunday after her Assumption. One can introduce the proper Last Gospel, as we recently had at the third Mass of Christmas day.

Lastly, the St. Lawrence Press Ordo is worth buying because of the increasing popularity of the old rites of Holy Week and the traditional rubrics (both ritual and textual) for Sunday Masses. Not only does the Ordo help with such work, but it made these modern efforts possible in the first place by preserving and promoting liturgical orthopraxis after Archbishop Marcel Lefebvre acquiesced to the Vatican’s 1983 request that he switch to 1962 precisely because it was published during Vatican II. Without preserving knowledge of the rubrics and keeping the old rite as a real, living tradition it is doubtful we would be seeing the resurgence of the genuine old rite that we do today. If anyone has doubts, look at the Holy Week pictures on New Liturgical Movement. I never thought I’d see a Presanctified Mass at Holy Innocents in New York, but I have.

Gaudeamus Omnes! Assumpta Est Maria!

Below is an annual repost of one of the more insightful liturgical articles on this blog.

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Liturgical theology is, according to Aidan Kavanagh, not a theological examination of the liturgy, but theology done by means of the liturgy. Liturgy is the theologia prima of the Church. When someone asks a Catholic how to learn more about the faith, the believer never directs the inquirer to obtain a copy of Denzinger. Invariably, the believer tells the non-Catholic to go to Mass (and hopefully at a carefully selected location). With this in mind, let us [very succinctly] consider what the Church told and taught us about the Assumption of the Mother of God today.

Apse of St. Mary Major with mosaic of Mary as Queen of Heaven,
crowned by and reigning with Christ.
source: Rad Trad's collection

Mattins—or the "vigil," as Dobszay insisted on calling the first major hour—consists of nine psalms and readings divided evenly into three nocturnes. Contrary to the eccentric and rich local traditions of northern Europe, which created special texts for Marian feasts, the Roman rite retains a primitive and sparse text. The psalms and hymns for the feast are typical of any Marian feast prior to the 1860s when Pius IX issued a unique liturgy for the Immaculate Conception. Where the Assumption stands alone is in the Mattins lessons and the text of the Mass. According to Dom Gueranger: 

"the Lord Pope went to St Mary Major, where, surrounded by his court, he celebrated First Vespers. At the beginning of the night the Matins with nine lessons were chanted in the same church.

"Meanwhile an ever-growing crowd gathers on the piazza of the Lateran, awaiting the Pontiff's return.... Around the picture of the Saviour, within the sanctuary, stand twelve bearers who form its perpetual guard, all members of the most illustrious families, and near them are the representatives of the senate and of the Roman people.

"But the signal is given that the papal retinue is redescending the Esquiline. Instantly lighted torches glitter on all sides, either held in the hand, or carried on the brancards of the corporations. Assisted by the deacons, the Cardinals raise on their shoulders the holy image, which advances under a canopy, escorted in perfect order by the immense multitude. Along the illuminated and decorated streets, amid the singing of the psalms and the sound of instruments, the procession reaches the ancient Triumphal Way, winds round the Coliseum, and, passing through the arches of Constantine and Titus, halts for a first Station on the Via Sacra, before the church called St Mary Minor.... In this church, while the second Matins with three lessons are being chanted in honor of the Mother, some priests wash, with scented water in a silver basin, the feet of the her Son, our Lord, and then sprinkle the people with the water thus sanctified. Then the venerable picture sets out once more, crosses the Forum amidst acclamations.... it at least enters the piazza of St Mary Major. Then the delight and the appluse of the crowd are redoubled; all, men and women, great and little, as we read in a document of 1462 (archivio della Compagnia di Sancta Sanctorum), forgetting the fatigue of a whole night spent without sleep, cease not till morning to visit and venerate our Lord and Mary. In this glorious basilica, adorned as a bridge, the glorious Office of Lauds celebrates the meeting of the Son and the Mother and their union for all eternity." (The Liturgical Year, August 15)

All rungs of Roman society paused regular life and joined Christ and Mary in the divine life for a night and an octave, celebrating Mary joining her Son in eternity and anticipating their own union with Christ in eternity. Mary was the first of what Christ wants all Christians to become by the Sacraments, albeit in a lesser degree.

The first three lessons are extracted from chapter 1 of the Song of Songs:

1 Let him kiss me with the kiss of his mouth: for thy breasts are better than wine,2 Smelling sweet of the best ointments. thy name is as oil poured out: therefore young maidens have loved thee.3 Draw me: we will run after thee to the odour of thy ointments. The king hath brought me into his storerooms: we will be glad and rejoice in thee, remembering thy breasts more than wine: the righteous love thee.4 I am black but beautiful, O ye daughters of Jerusalem, as the tents of Cedar, as the curtains of Solomon.5 Do not consider me that I am brown, because the sun hath altered my colour: the sons of my mother have fought against me, they have made me the keeper in the vineyards: my vineyard I have not kept.6 Show me, O thou whom my soul loveth, where thou feedest, where thou liest in the midday, lest I begin to wander after the flocks of thy companions.7 If thou know not thyself, O fairest among women, go forth, and follow after the steps of the flocks, and feed thy kids beside the tents of the shepherds.8 To my company of horsemen, in Pharao's chariots, have I likened thee, O my love.9 Thy cheeks are beautiful as the turtledove's, thy neck as jewels.10 We will make thee chains of gold, inlaid with silver.11 While the king was at his repose, my spikenard sent forth the odour thereof.12 A bundle of myrrh is my beloved to me, he shall abide between my breasts.13 A cluster of cypress my love is to me, in the vineyards of Engaddi.14 Behold thou art fair, O my love, behold thou art fair, thy eyes are as those of doves.15 Behold thou art fair, my beloved, and comely. Our bed is flourishing.16 The beams of our houses are of cedar, our rafters of cypress trees.

Some of these verses are very sensual and even sexual. Let no one say that the medievals were prudish on matters of intimacy! These verses can be applied both as the Church's acclamation to the Virgin, joyfully exclaiming her maternal nurturing of us Christians working out our salvation in fear and trembling. These words can also, with some care and reservation, be interpreted as a dialogue between Mary and her Creator. The first verse "Let him kiss me with the kiss of his mouth: for thy breasts are better than wine" speaks to Mary on a level of intimacy that no man ever knew, but Christ did. He nursed from her, yes, but He, in the Father, also created her in accordance with His divine plan for mankind. The image of the breast conjures immature sexual ideas today, but previous peoples instantly affiliated it with nurturing and familial ties: the affection of the husband, the nurturing of the children—two kinds of love, the second generated from the first, which reflects the Divine Love. At this level of power and privacy did Mary know God, of course without the sexual element. Should the dialogue interpretation continue, Mary is both removed from conventions "I am black, but I am beautiful" and presented as close with God on the level of bride in the King's chamber, as the versicle before the third nocturne says.

The readings in the second nocturne come from St. John of Damascus' second treatise on the Dormition of the Mother of God. These readings replaced the writings of St. Dionysius of the [pseudo] Areopagite —which would have been the lessons read at St Mary Minor—with the Tridentine reforms. St. John explains the typology of the Virgin, her prefigurement in the Ark of the Covenant, which housed the old promise between God and mankind, and its fulfillment in her, who housed the new and eternal promise between God and mankind. And like Christ, she did not refuse death, but embraced it as a path to life away from the death wrought by Adam:

"From her true life had flowed for all men, and how should she taste of death? But she yielded obedience to the law established by Him to Whom she had given birth, and, as the daughter of the old Adam, underwent the old sentence, which even her Son, Who is the very Life Itself, had not refused; but, as the Mother of the living God, she was worthily taken by Him unto Himself."

In the treatise from which the above passage in extracted, the Damascene saint goes on to teach that Mary's body could only be assumed into heaven because its use by Christ consecrated it as a thing of heaven. The treatise goes on to recount the entire event of the Dormition and Assumption of the Blessed Virgin, which ran the course of three days:

"An ancient tradition has been handed down to us, that, at the time of the glorious falling-asleep of the blessed Virgin, all the Apostles, who were wandering throughout the world preaching salvation to the Gentiles, were caught up aloft in the twinkling of an eye, and met together in Jerusalem. And when they were all there, a vision of Angels appeared to them, and the chant of the heavenly powers was heard; and so with divine glory she gave up her soul into the hands of God. But her body, which bore God in an effable manner, being lifted up amid the hymns of Angels and Apostles was laid in a tomb in Gethsemane. There for three whole days the angelic song was heard.

"But after three days, the chant of the Angels ceased, and the Apostles who were present (for Thomas, the only one who had been absent, came after the third day, and wished to adore the body which had borne God) opened the tomb; but they could by no means find her sacred body in any part of it. But when they only found those garments in which she had been buried, and were filled with indescribable fragrance which emanated from them, they closed the tomb. Amazed at this wonderful mystery they could only think that he, who had been pleased to take flesh from the Virgin Mary, to be made man, and to be born though he was God the Word, and the Lord of glory, he who had preserved her virginity without stain after childbirth, should also have been pleased to honor her pure body after her death, keeping it incorrupt, and translating it into Heaven before the general resurrection." 

The best sermon this writer ever heard preached about the Assumption, or "Dormition" given the setting, was that of a Melkite deacon. Paraphrasing and condensing ten minutes into a few sentences, "Heaven and earth were not vast enough to hold Gods' glory, but Mary's womb was. Christ received His Divine nature when He was begotten of the Father in eternity. He received His human nature when He was conceived and born of Mary in time. When her earthly course was run, Mary died and her body was taken into heaven by the One Who created her because it was inconceivable that the womb which ore God-made-Man could decay in the ground. But this does not separate Mary from mankind. God became united to mankind through her. Mary was the first. We will never know God as closely as she did on earth, except perhaps when we receive Holy Communion, but we can pray to know Him in eternity because of her."

The Annunciation by Fra Angelico
source: joyfulheart.com

At the third nocturne we arrive at the Gospel of the day, also used in the Mass of the day. The pericope, Luke 10:38-42, is the same Gospel story applied in the Liturgy of St. John Chrysostom in the Greek tradition for this feast, adding verses 11:27-28. The last verses used in the Byzantine liturgy highlight the entire point of the Gospel for this day: "And it came to pass, as he spoke these things, a certain woman from the crowd, lifting up her voice, said to him: Blessed is the womb that bore thee, and the paps that gave thee suck. But he said: Yea rather, blessed are they who hear the word of God, and keep it." Is any depiction in pre-modern art more popular than that of the Annunciation? Mary became special because she bore Christ. She is a powerful intercessor with Him, indeed the most powerful intercessor with Him precisely for this reason. But also for this reason Mary is not a lone, solitary figure of power. She matters because wherever she is, Christ is nearby. Practically every depiction of the Virgin before the vulgar kitsche artwork of the 19th century showed Mary and our Lord Jesus together. In the various pieta paintings and sculptures, the great paintings depicting the Crucifixion and Norman rood screens recounting the same event, and first millennium holy images—Eastern and Western alike—Mary is with her Son. So let us agree with the woman in the crowd: blessed is the womb that bore the Lord! And then let us turn our attention from Mary to Christ by hearing the word of God and by keeping it.

Culminating with the Mass, the Introit invites us to enter into the heavenly abode of joy, elevated from the earthly joy and instruction in Mattins and Lauds, as well as the rites local to the diocese of Rome described by Gueranger above. In the Mass God's presence begins as a mystic one and elevates into a literal presence that can be seen and touched, a presence similar to the one Mary knew as Christ's mother. The collect of the Mass is among the best in the Roman tradition:

"Forgive, O Lord, we beseech thee, the sins of thy servants: that we who by our own deeds are unable to please thee, may be saved by the intercession of the Mother of thy Son our Lord."

This collect, as Fr. Hunwicke has stated, is the theology of Mary East and West. What words could better express our Lady's place in the plan of salvation? The Mass became the integral part of the Assumption liturgy and, in time, many stunning settings of the Mass were written by the great polyphonic and choral composers. Palestrina's setting of the Ordinary of Mass is a personal favorite. The below sequence of videos has both the proper chants and Palestrina's setting concatenated, as for a Mass.

Lastly, the feast is an octave. This blog has discussed in other posts the concept of the eighth day and the theology of the Resurrection. Christ rose on the eighth day after He entered Jerusalem and He appeared to the Apostles on the eighth day after that, one octave after another. Moreover, the Resurrection constitutes the eighth day of the week, the new day of Creation, or re-creation. Mary's tomb, like her Son's was found empty. While the myrrh-bearing women and the Apostles Peter and John only found a few burial garments in Christ's tomb, Mary's tomb was found full of flowers and sweet scents. Christ's Resurrection brought mystery only clarified with the descent of the Holy Spirit on Pentecost. Mary's Assumption was clear and a fruit of Christ's Resurrection. 

Unfortunately, this historic and gladsome liturgy was altered in 1950 after Pius XII's definition of the Assumption—wherein he says nothing new and clears up none of the controversy stemming from the chirpy immortalist crowd, even if the accompanying letter did in fact say she died. The Office readings were altered severely: the first reading is now taken from Genesis chapter 3 and the next two readings from Corinthians (the same passage used in the Requiem Mass). The Pope's encyclical Munificentissimus Deus replaces one of the lessons from St. John of Damascus. The hymns are new and utterly ghastly. And the Mass is entirely new. The Introit is no longer an invitation to joy, but instead an excerpt from Revelation chapter 12. The collect is banal beyond belief and the Gospel is the account of the Annunciation heard at practically every Marian feast now other than the Immaculate Conception. Of all the changes to the feast in 1950, the insertion of Genesis chapter 3 at Mattins and the new Introit of Mass stand out most. Far from according to a "hermeneutic of continuity" with the previous liturgy, these texts exude the images of plaster statues and devotional lithographs so common in the 19th and early 20th century. Who has not seen a plaster statue of the Virgin, clothed in blue, perhaps with a bulbous baroque crown rimmed in twelve stars, standing on a blue globe and crushing the head of a green snake? The problem that arises from this depiction of Mary as crushing sin and standing above the moon, crowned with stars is not so much what it says as much as what it fails to say. The Mary of these images, pieces of art, and, to some extent, devotions is an aggrandized Mary not entirely dependent on Christ for her importance. There is nothing wrong with these texts doctrinally, but they replace other texts that were more coherent, beautiful, and holistically reflective of the Church's understanding of our Lady. The octave was stripped in 1955.

As with Holy Week, the same people who created the Pauline liturgy restored a few small portions of what they vitiated in the 1950s. The old Gaudeamus omnes Introit is made available as an option. The Mass as a whole is just as bad as the Pian Mass though. The readings are respectively Revelation 12 and the 1951-1969 Mattins readings from Corinthians; the Gospel is again the Annunciation. Mattins The Office of Readings gives Ephesians 1:16-2:10 and again Pius XII's encyclical as the lessons. The mystical understanding of Mary in union with Christ, representing the Church, and the link between the God-Man and mankind is obscured or forgotten. Who can deny that even the most pious of Roman Catholics—far better people than the Rad Trad—only know of Mary through the kitsch statue or as the object of the line "Hail, full of grace"? Again, there is nothing strictly heterodox about this folkish interpretation, but it comes at the cost of the stronger, traditional interpretation of the feast.

On a happy note I know of at least one priest who celebrated the old Mass and kept the old Office for August 15 and the octave! This feast, like so many of the most ancient feasts in the Roman rite, brings the faithful deep into the mens of the Church and her theology of the mysteries of God.

Gaudeamus omnes in Domino!

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).