Counting our blessings: 10 years of Summorum Pontificum in England and Wales

Bishop Schneider in London

Last summer, on the occasion of the 10th anniversary of Summorum Pontificum, I was asked for illustratative statistics by Paix Liturgique. This is what I came up with, from the Latin Mass Society's records:

Locations with 'every Sunday' Masses (excluding Saturday evening Masses)
2007: 20
2012: 34
2017: 40

Christmas Masses (including Midnight, Dawn, and Day Masses)
2006: 10
2012: 44
2016: 71

I thought of these numbers when my attention was drawn to a post on a somewhat obscure blog which claims, without giving a great deal of even anecdotal evidence, that the Traditional Mass is 'stagnating' in England and Wales.

It strikes the author of that post as very significant that the numbers attending, for example, the 11 o'clock Novus Ordo 'bells and smells' Mass at the Oxford Oratory, have declined, in recent years, only a bit, whereas the numbers at the 8am Low EF in the same church have merely tripled, as have numbers at the equivalent, 9am Low EF in the London Oratory. I can't squeeze a great deal of pessimism for the Traditional Mass's cause out of that, but maybe that's just me.

Cardinal Sarah's proposed reform of the Traditional Mass

In addressing the Summorum Pontificum Pilgrimage to Rome last weekend, with many very fine and important things to say, on the occasion of the 10th Anniversary of Summorum Pontificum, Cardinal Sarah acknowledged the response to his earlier remarks on the subject of ‘reconciling’ the Ordinary and the Extraordinary Forms of the Roman Rite. 

In July I spoke of a possible future reconciliation between the two forms of the Roman rite. Some have interpreted this expression of personal opinion as the announcement of a programme that would end up in the future imposition of a hybrid rite which would bring about a compromise that would leave everybody unhappy and would abolish the usus antiquior by stealth, as it were. This interpretation is absolutely not what I intended. What I do wish to do is to encourage further thought and study on these questions in peace and tranquillity and in a spirit of prayerful discernment. There are improvements which can be made to both forms of the Roman rite in use today, and both forms can contribute to this in due course.

Irreversible reform? Me in the Catholic Herald this weekend

This weekend the Catholic Herald has a cover story about the Traditional Mass' appeal to young people, by Matthew Schmitz.

Accompanying this is a shorter piece by me on Pope Francis' remarks, made in a speech to a group of Italian liturgists, that the 'reform' is 'irreversible'.

It is not available online, so you'll need to look out for a paper edition. Here's a taster.

Pope Francis’s recent address on the liturgy – about which he has hitherto said little – was striking for its conventionality. In almost every respect, the Pope’s speech hews to the official,  post-Vatican II line. It emphasises the continuity of the post-conciliar reform with the efforts of Pius X and XII; it praises the reform for its “vitality”; it condemns liturgical abuses (“deformations”); and it calls for an end to liturgical conflict. 

But it has raised eyebrows for its rejection of the possibility of revisiting the “decisions” of the reform in light of its “inspirational principles: an explicit rejection of the “Reform of the Reform” project, which seeks to go back to the Council documents and do the reform again, better. This should be no surprise. In the official mindset, the reform was perfect and was marred only by liturgical abuses. Liturgical progressives should note that the account of the liturgy which follows is entirely traditional, focusing on the altar, the Sacrifice of the Mass, and the Priesthood of Jesus Christ, not even mentioning the Last Supper, the Mass as a shared meal or the liturgy as an affirmation of community. 

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My reply to Cardinal Sarah on 'liturigical reconciliation'

It seems that the most trad-friendly Prelates of the Church actually want the Traditional Mass to disappear. Thus, Cardinal Burke said in 2011:

It seems to me that is what he [Pope Benedict] has in mind is that this mutual enrichment would seem to naturally produce a new form of the Roman rite – the 'reform of the reform,' if we may – all of which I would welcome and look forward to its advent.

Cardinal Sarah has now said the same thing.

It is a priority that, with the help of the Holy Spirit, we can examine through prayer and study, how to return to a common reformed rite always with this goal of a reconciliation inside the Church,

Cardinal Sarah's concrete suggestions point to an intermediate state, in which the two 'Forms' have converged somewhat. I have addressed these suggestions in a post on the Catholic Herald blog (no longer available there, but reposted here). Notably, the Novus Ordo Lectionary cannot be simply be inserted into the Vetus Ordo Missal, because it reflects a liturgical vision which is completely different from that of the ancient Mass: which is why all the other changes were made at the same time. A compromise between these two two understandings of what the liturgy is for and how it should work will not produce a perfect synthesis, but a muddle.

The Church's calendar and popular culture

Reposted from 2014.

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Yesterday was St Valentine's Day. That is what a thousand shop windows, restaurant menus, and service station card racks proclaimed. St Valentine was a martyr of the 3rd Century, over whose tomb a basilica was built when the Church's time of persecution was over. I attended Mass in his honour, and in the name of the Church the celebrant implored God's mercy in light of St Valentine's merits.

Collect:
Grant, we beseech Thee, O almighty God, that we, who celebrate the heavenly birthday [ie, death] of blessed Valentine, Thy Martyr, may by intercession be delivered from all the evils that threaten us. Through our Lord...

Vatican II on liturgical preservation

Reposted from Feb 2014. The 'good bits' (from a conservative point of view) in Vatican II on the liturgy were completely without force during the reform which followed it. As Michael Davies wrote somewhre, the only passages in official documents which are of any real importance are those which allow what was previously forbidden, or forbid what was previously allowed. That's a lesson a lot of conservatives have been slow to learn.

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Tenebrae: Solemn Offices of Holy Week, abolished in the Ordinary Form after Vatican II

This is what the Second Vatican Council  said about the Seasons of the liturgical calendar. (Sacrosantum Concilium 170)

The liturgical year is to be revised so that the traditional customs and discipline of the sacred seasons shall be preserved or restored to suit the conditions of modern times; their specific character is to be retained, so that they duly nourish the piety of the faithful who celebrate the mysteries of Christian redemption, and above all the paschal mystery.

Not only is there no mandate to abolish the Season of Septuagesima, but it is clearly ruled out. Both because all the seasons are to be 'preserved or restored', and you can't preserve or restore something by annihilating it, and because this applied a fortiori to Septuagesima since it is part of the preparation for 'the Paschal Mystery', Easter, to which this passage (rightly) accords a special importance.

If you accept Vatican II, you'd better get over to Mass celebrated in the Extraordinary Form during this season. Because in the Ordinary Form it does not exist.

But we can say the same about a number of things. Take Latin. Here is Sacrosanctum Concilium again, section 36.

Particular law remaining in force, the use of the Latin language is to be preserved in the Latin rites.

You can't 'preserve' a thing by abolishing it. If you want to be faithful to the Council, you'd better attend a Mass in Latin. That will, sadly, be almost impossible in the Ordinary Form, so it had better be the Extraordinary Form.

Isn't this word 'preserve' interesting? Talking of rites in general, Sacrosanctum Concilium declares (para 4)

Lastly, in faithful obedience to tradition, the sacred Council declares that holy Mother Church holds all lawfully acknowledged rites to be of equal right and dignity; that she wishes to preserve them in the future and to foster them in every way.

Following the Council, the Dominican Order effectively forbade the Domincan Rite, a situation which only changed with Summorum Pontificum in 2007. Forbidding something, however, is not a way of preserving and fostering.

The Dominican Rite: effectively suppressed after the Council

Of course the Council did mandate a liturgical reform. It says (50)

For this purpose the rites are to be simplified, due care being taken to preserve their substance;

Again, it is impossible to preserve the substance of a rite by abolishing it. But that is what happened to the Prayers at the Foot of the Altar and the Last Gospel. The ancient Offertory Prayers were also removed, to be replaced with new ones with a markedly different 'substance'. They were not 'preserved'.

Again:

114. The treasure of sacred music is to be preserved and fostered with great care. 

Now music continued to exist after the Reform, but the process cannot be described as one of preservation. What existed before - Gregorian Chant and Sacred Polyphony - was destroyed, with so few exceptions that, at its low ebb, they could be counted on the fingers of one hand, as far as the Ordinary Form is concerned.

Chant and Polyphony: for practical purposes they ceased to exist in the Ordinary Form

How about sacred art? Para 123:

Thus, in the course of the centuries, she has brought into being a treasury of art which must be very carefully preserved.

Again, 129:

In consequence they [clerics] will be able to appreciate and preserve the Church's venerable monuments, and be in a position to aid, by good advice, artists who are engaged in producing works of art.

To labour the point, art and monuments cannot be preserved by being destroyed. If it means anything, this clause means that what happened to St Chad's Cathedral, Birmingham, and to a million other churches around the world was wrong.

What are those who defend the liturgical reform to say about these passages? They can point out that Sacrosanctum Concilium is not infallible, since the only things in a General Council which are infallible are the anathemas (lists of condemned propositions which are found in every other General Council in the history of the Church, but which the Fathers of Vatican II eschewed).

They can point out that the practical decisions made in the course of a liturgical reform are prudential, and the guidelines given by the Council are generally prudential, and that applying them is prudential: in short, it is impossible to draw a simple line from doctrine to what actually happened in the reform.

They can point out that, as far as the law of the Church is concerned, the Pope has the authority to promulgate new rites, and the Council was actually not strictly necessary.

Defenders of the reform very seldom make these points, however: they prefer to ignore the problem. It is left to me to defend Pope Paul VI from the charge of heresy implicitly levelled against him by a liberal who thinks that deviations from Vatican II are incompatible with the Faith (or thinks that 'conservative' Catholics should think so).

The reason is simple: they don't want to shatter the illusion that those attached to the Traditional Mass are being wickedly disloyal to Vatican II, and have placed themselves irretrievably in the wrong. But if Traditionalists have done this, the reformers of the liturgy, and their supporters, have done it with knobs on.

Ruins of the Priory at Walsingham, visited by LMS pilgrims. From the point of view of
'preserving' sacred art, many Catholic churches haven't done much better since the Council.

Reform of the Reform: a brief reply to Fr Hugh

Fr Hugh Somerville-Knapman has done me the honour of replying to my post on the fall-out from the Sacra Liturgia conference. At the risk of appearing engaged in too incestuous a discussion - Fr Hugh is an old friend and fellow student and I've had a similar discussion with him on this blog before - I wanted to pick up on a couple of his points.

First, I should apologise for the offence I've caused; I did get a little carried away. I don't mean to impugn the good intentions of people like Fr Hugh who promote the Reform of the Reform, and indeed I did try to explain the reasoning behind their position in in a sympathetic way.

Second, I should say to Fr Hugh that I certainly didn't have his blog in my sights when I talked about the damage caused by the hype over Cardinal Sarah's words. His blog, like mine, is not, I fancy, primarily responsible for the way things are perceived in Rome, Washington DC, or Archbishop's House in Westminster. I had more in mind banner headlines in the Catholic Herald.

But to business. Fr Hugh makes a surprising assertion about my position. He writes:

Yet, if the full restoration of pre-conciliar worship is the goal, how to achieve it? By fiat, an imposition on the Church as violent as that in 1969 which made mandatory a Mass that few if any laity were really prepared for?

The answer to that rhetorical question is 'Obviously not', but Fr Hugh appears to imagine that I think the answer is 'Yes', and goes on to criticise me quite harshly for a proposal I have never made, never intend to make, and do not agree with. Indeed, I thought the tenor of my post was clear enough: that I envisage progress (at any rate for the foreseeable future) as nothing more than the organic growth of the celebration of the Traditional Mass, a continuation of the progress it has made particularly since 2007.

That is just a misunderstanding. More substantively, Fr Hugh reacts to my criticism of the tactical blunder of the Sacra Liturgia conference people in a somewhat confusing way. What I had said was that the volume of hype forced Cardinal Nichols, Fr Lombardi, and others to react publicly: that is, it made them feel they had to react. This seems undeniable, since they didn't react in this way on the previous occasions Cardinal Sarah has made his point about the desireability of celebration ad orientem, as he did in an interview back in May.

Fr Hugh wants to have this both ways. First, yes there was nothing in the Cardinal's remarks which justified the reaction, because there was nothing very new or startling about them; but at the same time they were worthy of the hype because they were new and startling after all.

Well, whatever you say Fr. The point remains that the reaction came because the remarks were being presented (hyped) as significant, and in the present situation in the Church the reaction was, if not completely predictable, at least very likely. The saddest thing in the whole sorry story is Fr Hugh's assertion, which I am sure is true:

'the organisers did not have any expectation of response'

Fr Hugh is here pleading guilty, on behalf of the organisers, of serious naivity. 

My friends, this is not a good time to be naive. 

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The Sacra Liturgia Conference has set the cause of the Reform of the Reform back by 20 years. That may not be a bad thing.

The reactions to Cardinal Sarah's words encouraging celebration of Mass 'ad orientem', with the priest facing east as the congregation does, continue to reverberate. In addition to a 'clarification' by the Vatican spokesman, Fr Lombardi, and a letter from Cardinal Nichols to the priests of Westminster Diocese, we have now had a letter from the Chairman of the relevant committee of the US Bishops' conference. All these statements point out that Cardinal Sarah's comments do not change liturgical law, and in slightly different ways claim that the current law favours celebration 'versus populum,' with the priest facing the people. The US letter asserts that a decision to change from vs. pop. to ad orientem celebration by a priest should only be done with the knowledge and approval of the bishop.

None of these statements, any more that Cardinal Sarah's, have in themselves the force of law. Nevertheless, they make public, clear, and official, a view which was up to now not so public, not so clear, and not so official: that celebration vs. pop. is officially favoured to the point that celebrating ad orientem needs, at least, special justification.

The kind of initiatives in which the 'Reform of the Reform' (RotR) consists, at the local level, depend on a degree of ambiguity about what is allowed or favoured by the rules. Such ambiguity abounds in official documents. Are altar girls permitted or actually favoured? Female lectors? Communion under both kinds? The use of the Roman Canon? Silent recitation of the Offertory? The sign of peace? Concelebration? The debate about the rules (unlike the debate on the underlying theology) is not only endless, but both exceedingly boring and ultimately pointless. It suffices that conservative and liberal priests alike can claim a degree of leeway and, when the pastoral and political conditions permit, quietly move things in their favoured direction. The golden rule in such matters is that you don't press for clarification unless you are sure things will be clarified in your favour.

Cardinal Sarah on Liturgical Orientation

It it always interesting to see arguments about liturgical orientation, the priest 'facing east' in Mass, since this is an important characteristic of the Church's liturgical tradition. Cardinal Sarah mentions it in a list of things which might be done to make celebrations of the Ordinary Form more worthy, along with a greater use of Latin, kneeling, and the discouragement of photography. It is not exactly a full-dress treatment of the issue, and nor is it new. In his talk he refers back to an article he wrote for Ossovatore Romano and the work of Pope Benedict. He could equally have referred to the writings of Cardinal Schonborn, who is quoted in the FIUV Position Paper on Liturgical Orientation. In this particular talk, Cardinal Sarah throws it out as a nice idea:

This practice is permitted by current liturgical legislation. It is perfectly legitimate in the modern rite. Indeed, I think it is a very important step in ensuring that in our celebrations the Lord is truly at the centre. [Full text]

What is rather amazing, however, is the reaction to these remarks. Cardinal Nichols has written to his priests, the Vatican spokesman Fr Lombardi has made a statement, even Fr Spadaro SJ and Austen Ivereigh have felt the need to get in on the act: all with a view to contradicting the basic idea, that celebration facing east would be a good idea. Of course, they, like Cardinal Sarah, are all entitled to their opinions, and Cardinal Nichols is not just entitled, but obliged, to exercise prudential judgement in guiding his priests. The debate has been marred somewhat by a technical dispute over the correct translation of a passage in the General Instruction of the Roman Missal - this is the kind of tedious issue which those who are really interested can look up in a footnote in the Position Paper (see footnote 1). But let me say something about the bigger picture.

This debate is inevitable and intractable because both sides are right.

What sort of Mass did 'Vatican II' want?

The Traditional Mass on the Chatres Pilgrimage. Not as off-putting to young people as Pope Paul VI imagined.
Photo by John Aron.

Liturgical conservatives and progressives argue endlessly about this. Their argument will never be resolved, both because Sacrosanctum Concilium was and the subsequent magisterium has been self-contradictory, but also because neither side in the debate is willing to be honest about the historical facts. I am sorry to be harsh, but having read the output of both sides of the debate over a number of years, it is time it was said.

First, Sacrosantum Concilium: how is it self-contradictory? It makes few concrete suggestions, but it does make some. It calls for wider use of the vernacular (63); the removal of 'useless repetition' (34), and a more 'lavish' presentation of the Scriptures in the readings, arranged 'prescribed number of years' (51). It leaves further details to local initiative and an official commission. On the other hand, it says (23)

there must be no innovations unless the good of the Church genuinely and certainly requires them; and care must be taken that any new forms adopted should in some way grow organically from forms already existing.

Statement on allowing the washing of the feet of women at the OF mandatum

The Stripping of the Altars on Maundy Thursday, with the FSSP in Reading.
Until 1955, the Mandatum took place after this, final ceremony of the Mass of Maundy Thursday.

I've been asked for a statement on the decree of the Congregation for Divine Worship allowing the washing of the feet of women as well as men in the 'mandatum' of Maundy Thursday.

I feel very sorry for priests who have been trying to obey liturgical law on this issue, as on other issues in the Ordinary Form. They may well feel betrayed. Equally, I can see that from the Roman perspective, the rule has become meaningless - and did so even before the Holy Father broke it himself. This has happened again and again since Vatican II. The traditions of the Roman liturgy, as preserved in the Ordinary Form, are being stripped away one by one.

An important aspect, which is generally neglected is the question of the etiquette of men washing the feet of women. This would have been considered inappropriate only a few decades ago in the West, and such a view persists in many cultures. In many developing countries there is serious conflict between people trying to be as progressive as possible on such matters, and others reasserting traditional sexual constraints and gender roles. This decree is not going to help priests in those places.

Here's the statement.

1P5 on female lectors: a response

The subdeacon chants the Epistle at the LMS
Pilgrimage to Wrexham.

I'm delighted that the issue of the roles of the sexes in the liturgy is getting more discussion. Just now the blog 1Peter5 has addressed the issue of female lectors (plus reply to criticisms). While agreeing with the conclusion - female lectors are liturgically inappropriate - I want to disagree with the argument for that conclusion, made by the contributor 'Benedict Constable' (a nom de plume).

Pope Francis on the Reform of the Reform

Pope Francis made some interesting remarks at a recent meeting of priests in Rome. There's a fuller report on Rorate Caeli here; I want to focus on just one aspect of what he said. What follows is paraphrase with snatches of direct quotation. (The scattered remarks are reported by participants of the meeting; we don't have a full text.)

Through the Motu Propio Summorum Pontificum, published in 2007, the now Pope Emeritus allowed the possibility of celebrating the Mass according the liturgical books edited by John XXIII in 1962, notwithstanding that the "ordinary" form of celebration in the Catholic Church would always remain that established by Paul VI in 1970.

Pope Francis explained that this gesture by his predecessor, "a man of communion", was meant to offer "a courageous hand to Lefebvrians and traditionalists", as well as to those who wished to celebrate the Mass according to the ancient rites. The so-called "Tridentine" Mass – the Pope said – is an "extraordinary form of the Roman Rite", one that was approved following the Second Vatican Council. Thus, it is not deemed a distinct rite, but rather a "different form of the same right". (sic)

However, the Pope noted that there are priests and bishops who speak of a "reform of the reform." Some of them are "saints" and speak "in good faith." But this "is mistaken", the Holy Father said.

Reform of the Reform: what is the key issue? Part 2

The Traditional Mass is about the Peace of Christ.

In my last post I wrote about the bewildering variety of issues which those involved in the Reform of the Reform movement are concerned about - or should be. These issues are urgent: whether through liturgical abuses, some of them reluctantly authorised after years of conflict, or through ill-conceived aspects of the Reform which Cardinal Ratzinger criticised, sometimes with considerable force, these aspects of the Novus Ordo (as it is usually encountered) are doing damage, year by year, to the Faith of Catholics in every country in the world. It is not surprising that the Church is having problems proclaiming the Gospel.

The obstacles to dealing with these issues are, however, huge. While keeping a grip on the seriousness of the problem, we also need to understand the impossible situation conscientious parish priests are in. At its simplest, going too far can simply end the priest's tenure in the parish, with nothing achieved. e.e. cummings expressed it nicely:

Don't go too far, said she.
What's too far? said he.
Where you are, said she.

It's not so different for the Monsignori in the Curia. There are good, as well as lazy, stupid, and bad people in Rome - like everywhere else. They tried, especially from the mid 1990s to the end of St John Paul's pontificate, to put a brake on abuses with a series of official documents. These weren't pointless, because they drew attention to the problems and stooped the abuses from being seen as de facto permitted, but they made no discernable progress in stopping the abuses. Since then, we've had the new English translation of the Missal, Summorum Pontificum, and the Anglican Ordinariate: top-down reforms which made an important difference. But they also demonstrated the problem of opposition from bishops around the world. We aren't going to have more things like that because Pope Francis does not want a civil war in the Church over the liturgy. That, I should say, is a perfectly understandable position.

Movement, outside of a handful of parishes, on the issues I discussed in the last post, is not going to happen unless there is a change of mood among the Faithful themselves, and ideally the Bishops as well. This is not going to happen as a result of the Reform of the Reform, because it is a precondition of the Reform of the Reform happening in the first place. It's not going to happen as a result of ordinary Catholics reading scholarly books, or even blogs, either, because only a tiny percentage do either.

Is it offputting to children?

Many in the Reform of the Reform movement have argued that the Traditional Mass is a step too far, something ordinary Catholics will never accept, which is why they (priests and scholars) have to focus on tweaking the Ordinary Form. They sometimes say that this would be a way, not only of addressing the serious problems I have mentioned, but of preparing the ground for the Vetus Ordo. However, the opposite is the case.

The Reform of the Reform agenda strikes directly at the spiritual lives of Catholics completely unprepared to go down the path of tradification. That is why its supporters see it as such an opportunity, because - they say - these Catholics need better liturgy more than anyone, but it is also why it is not going to work. Catholics - and there are many - who see their attendance at Mass largely in terms of human contact with the priest and their fellow worshippers, are driven up the wall by each and every one of the items on the Reform of the Reform wish list. Not only that, but these Catholics often sense their power as representatives of a dominant ideology, and are willing to use that power to make their priests' lives impossible. If the Reform of the Reform is going to work, this group needs either to be converted or somehow made less significant within the parish.

The thing which can be done, in a parish, to bring this about is the introduction of the Traditional Mass. Yes, obviously, the liberal die-hards will hate it. They may even complain to the bishop. But he is much less likely to listen, for two reasons. First, the rights of the priest and any traddies in the parish to have the Vetus Ordo are settled by Summorom Pontificum, and secondly, the complaints are much less reasonable.

Let's consider things from the Bishop's perspective. Bishops are not solely motivated by ideology. They respond to complaints because, ultimately, they are concerned about people's spiritual welfare. If a priest drives his flock away by praying in Latin with his back to them, this - it is natural for the Bishop to think - is a problem. But if busybodies are complaining because other people in the parish are doing something which those other people find spiritually beneficial, which is permitted by the Church, that is not a real problem. The liberals should perhaps learn to live and let live.

Once established in a parish, the Traditional Mass can start to have an effect. Some people will attend it. Their numbers will gradually grow. If it is at a reasonable time, and above all if it is on a Sunday, it can easily become as big as one of the other Sunday Masses over a few years - this has happened in many places. People will discover it by accident, when it is convenient for them one week. It will make them think; it may stimulate them to read up on it. It has the power to change them. It has more power, because it is not just an improvement on the unreformed Reform in one respect, but in a whole lot of ways, looking at it from the Reform of the Reformer's perspective.

If it changes enough people, the balance of political forces in the parish will itself begin to shift. The possibilities start to open up. This is not the work of a moment; this is something which takes years, but difficulties are bearable if one can make progress.

Ultimately, the knowledge, even a slight one, of the Traditional Mass, and the understanding that it is legitimate, valuable, and represents many centuries of Tradition, on the part of the Novus Ordo congregation, will make them far more amenable to the Reform of the Reform type changes than they were before. It is important to remember that many Catholics have been educated not just in ignorance of the Tradition, but to vilify it.

The Reform of the Reform is not an easier, more practical, more politically astute alternative to introducing the Traditional Mass in a parish. It is more difficult, less practical, and less politically astute. The Reform of the Reform is not the only way the Traditional Mass can be made acceptable to the average Catholic in the pew. The Traditional Mass, as part of the liturgical life of the parish, is the only way the Reform of the Reform is ever going to become acceptable to the average Catholic in the pew.

The Rosary Walk at West Grinstead

Reform of the Reform: what is the key issue? Part 1

While Bishop Schneider was in England we were reminded of the issue of Communion in the Hand: he has written two short books on the subject. The problem with Communion in the hand can be summed up as the failure to preserve the Blessed Sacrament from either accidental or deliberate profanation. (Does any need to be reminded that you can, or at least could, watch a YouTube video of someone profaning a consecrated Host stolen at Communion time from a certain well-know London church?)

There is, incidentally, no real precedent for the casual form of reception of Communion in the history of the Church; St Cyprian, who describes the way they received Communion in the hand, in Jerusalem, in the 4th century, which bears only a slight resemblance to the modern practice, describes fragments of the Host as 'more precious than gold dust'. See the FIUV Position Paper here.

The modern practice of Communion in the Hand strikes at the heart of the faith in the Blessed Sacrament of the ordinary Faithful, who are not exactly being bombarded with high-quality catechetism in other forms. So, yes, this is extremely important.

It is easy to see how difficult it is for priests to address this issue. So how else can the liturgical crisis be addressed?

Well, there is the issue of Liturgical Orientation. This cartoon has been doing the rounds, and yes it is a no brainer really. Fr Michael Lang of the London Oratory has written a book on this subject which has become quite well known; it is worth reading if you need to be convinced, or want to see the arguments close-up. The nub of it is that, as Cardinal Ratzinger (remember him?) argued with startling force, the modern practice creates the impression that the community is worshipping itself; it is a 'closed circle', not opening out towards God.

There is, again, no real precedent for the modern practice in the history of the Church; the ancient churches oriented so that the priest could face east while looking into the nave, which are by no means the majority, would not have witnessed eye-contact and a standing-round-in-a-circle atmosphere; for heaven's sake they had curtains round the sanctuary in many cases. See the FIUV Position Paper on the subject here.

The modern practice of celebration 'facing the people', which is not even mentioned in the documents of Vatican II, is undermining the very concept of worship for generations of Catholics, who are not exactly being bombarded with catechesis, liturgy, or religious art, emphasising the transcendant nature of God, to counter-balance it. So yes, this is very important.

However, this is also very difficult for priests at the sharp end to handle this issue. They can expect some very negative reactions if they try. So what else is there?

Well, there are Altar Girls. Like the practice of Communion in the Hand, the modern practice grew out of defiance of the Church's law, and is permitted only with heavy restrictions. In both cases, of course, the restrictions are ignored. But the official documents - I'm not talking about loonies on the internet, but the Prefect of the Congregation for Divine Worship, writing at the behest of St John Paul II - makes it abundantly clear that the problems created by the practice make it, well, problematic. See the FIUV Position Paper here.

The nub of it is that, given the close connection between Acolytes and the priesthood, the service of the Altar is giving out the message that, if women cannot be ordained, it is an arbitrary and unjust restriction. By allowing it we are undermining the notion of a male priesthood and destroying vocations. It is not as if the Faithful are being bombarded by messages supporting the Church's teaching about the complimentarity of the sexes from the wider culture.

This is politically very sensitive for parish priests. I don't blame any priest finding himself surrounded by Altar females not wanting to kick this hornet's next. We all know what kind of support priests are likely to get from most bishops if they take a stand on this. A one-way ticket to Outer Mongolia would be at the mild end of the spectrum of possible reactions.

There are plenty of other issues. A case can be made for their importance, and the difficulty of doing anything about them is even easier to describe. The use of Latin in the liturgy was actually demanded by Vatican II - yes, it is important. Most parishes would assume that their priest has gone stark staring mad if they heard him saying the Canon in Latin, however. (FIUV Position Paper here.) Then there are things which only changes to liturgical law can make possible, like the use of silence (FIUV Position Paper here), which St John Paul II said we needed to 'rediscover' in the liturgy. And there are the problems raised by the Novus Ordo Calendar (such as the loss of Septuagesima), the Lectionary (such as the loss of St Paul's admonition on unworthy Communions from Corpus Christi: see the FUV Position Paper), and the Proper Prayers (see Lauren Pristas' new book on this).

Priests and scholars pushing the Reform of the Reform tend to focus on just one or two issues; one problem is that they are not they same one or two issues. But it doesn't make any difference. The political and ideological obstacles to rolling out a reform of the reform on any one of these issues are overwhelming. In the FIUV papers we've modestly suggested lengthening the Eucharistic Fast and restoring Holy Days to their proper dates; these might happen, just; that would be progress, of a limited kind. We have now had the improved translation of the Novus Ordo Missal; that is big progress, but the kind of effort which was required for this is not going to be repeated for the other issues any time soon, and it only affects the English-speaking world.

It is good that we've had this debate over the last couple of decades, but neither the parish-by-parish model of the Reform or the Reform nor the top-down model are going anywhere right now. Tomorrow I'll make a positive proposal.

Jesus falls for the third time; He is stripped. From Ramsgate.

Radical trads spoiling it for everyone?

High Mass in Westminster Cathedral.

The favoured explanation of what went wrong in the Fisher More College affair, among those (you know who you are) who wish to support the banning of the Traditional Mass by the bishop, now seems to be that this is a case of extremist supporters of the Traditional Mass spoiling things for everyone: by linking the Vetus Ordo with extreme views, they left the bishop no choice but to prohibit it. I don't know if this is Bishop Olsen's view, and unless they have inside information on his state of mind - which they do not claim to have - neither do they. But we have all heard the argument before. Oh boy, have we. At the end of this post I will quote the locus classicus.

The policy, though familiar, is both self-defeating and hypocritical.

It is self-defeating because severe restrictions on the EF confirm the suspicions of those who think that, because there has been such a radical discontinuity in the theology of the Church with Vatican II, the theology of the Old Mass directly contradicts the official theology of the post-conciliar Church. Unwillingness to allow celebrations of the ancient Mass suggest that those in charge don't agree with it, and don't think it should be allowed to influence the way people think and pray.

This is given further support when the EF is specifically not allowed for students and young people, or in the context of religious orders which are successful and are spreading. Those who make such restrictions appear to want to stop the theological ideas implicit in the old Missal to infect new generations and new places, and are sometimes quite happy (or at least, a lot happier) to allow the Traditional Mass to be celebrated for the older generation.

This is not a wild-eyed conspiracy theory. It reflects the openly stated views of the more extreme liberals. Cardinal Ratzinger himself attributed opposition to the celebration of the Traditional Mass to a widespread rejection of the theology of Sacrifice as understood by the Council of Trent. The TLM was a 'most intolerable contradiction' of their (heretical) views. Ratzinger's call for the liberation of the ancient Mass, which he subsequently brought about at Pope, signalled that he had no problem with the theology of Trent, and that the Church as a whole has no problem with it. This was the necessary first step on what should be a process of the healing of discontinuities, real and perceived.

When bishops, religious superiors and indeed priests consider requests for the Traditional Mass, they would indeed do well to consider the effect that granting such a request will have on those supporters of the Mass who are tempted by the claims of radical discontinuity. Will refusing permission for the Vetus Ordo strengthen such temptations, or weaken them? The question answers itself.

The idea, in short, that denying people the Traditional Mass is an effective way of combatting the more extreme claims of some traditionalists is clearly false. The people making this argument simply can't have thought it through. It may be a way of punishing them - sure, and everyone else who would have benefited from the celebration. But in the Church punishments should be medicinal: they should aim at making things better. A punishment which makes things worse is just vindictive; it has no place in the Church.

Remember also that in giving permission, those exercising authority take control. They can determine who the celebrants will be. They can bring congregations out of private homes and irregular Mass centres. They can be visited by the Bishop, they will receive Episcopal letters to be read to the congregation. For a parish priest, bishop, or religious superior to prefer the Traditional Mass to be available only outside the official structures of the Church is... well let's just say it is extremely strange.

So the idea that the EF must sometimes be stopped because of 'extremists' is self-defeating. It is also hypocritical.

This is because of the obvious parallel with liturgical practices in the Novus Ordo. Think about when a bishop allows Altar Girls, Communion in the Hand, Communion Under Both Kinds on Sundays, and 'instituted' Extraordinary Ministers of Holy Communion: these all, remember, need the permission or intervention of the Bishop, and do so because of the dangers in them which were recognised explicitly when Rome gave permission for them. If the bishop were to ask himself: are these practices going to give comfort and support to radical liberals in the diocese who wish to undermine the teaching of the Church? the answer will very often be a very clear 'yes'.

Very little googling is needed to see liberals who want the ordination of women instrumentalising the permission for Altar Girls for their ideological ends. The connection between practices in which the Blessed Sacrament is treated with less reverence, and the undermining of the doctrine of the Real Presence, is obvious, and again these things are used by radical liberals to advance their theological agenda. It would be easy to give many more examples involving liturgical abuses which are in practice tolerated.

Do the bloggers who talk sadly about how those dreadful radical trads have made necessary the banning of the Traditional Mass in one place or another, do they go on to say that innumerable practices in the Novus Ordo have been made intolerable because of the way these are used by clearly heretical liberal extremists to further their goals? No doubt these bloggers don't entirely approve of these practices. But a sense of urgency and obviousness about how they should be immediately banned, regardless of the pastoral collateral damage, is strangely absent. They are, in short, applying different standards to traditionalists than they demand for everyone else.

But of course the parallel is not perfect. Because although banning the Traditional Mass is clearly counterproductive in opposing the claims of discontinuity used by extremists attached to the EF, banning the practices which are so useful to the projects of extremist liberals would not be counter-productive. The liberals' arguments make use of the fact that the practices in question have been officially approved. Again and again they say: Altar Girls have been officially approved, and this shows that that the traditional position on the role of women was just time-bound misogyny; any day now the Church must and will approve women priests. If Altar Girls were banned in more dioceses, this argument would lose its force.

To summarise: the argument that the official Church is today in radical discontinuity with the Tradition is strengthened by banning the TLM; the argument that soon the Church will allow the ordination of women and give up on the Real Presence would be weakened by banning the above-noted practices of the Novus Ordo which, it would seem, there is absolutely no appetite on anyone's part to ban. The claim that radical trads have to be slapped down by stopping celebrations of the Traditional Mass is, then, not only self-defeating but also hypocritical.

--------------

Here, as promised, is the classic expression of this argument, that moderate traditionalists should be punished for the misdemeanors of anyone who likes the Traditional Mass who expresses extreme views. It is from Bugnini's The Reform of the Liturgy pp295-7, talking about the very earliest days of the implementation of the Novus Ordo Missae.

'Not all traditionalist groups accepted the extreme conclusions of the most fanatical. Some [Eric de Savanthen and the FIUV] limited themselves to petitioning that "[the Traditional Mass] may have its place among the universally recognised rites for the celebration of Holy Mass." These groups regarded the Holy See's rejection of the petition as excessively harsh.'
...

'If there had not been the danger of seeming to approve the opposition between the Tridentine and Pauline Missals, as though the former, unlike the latter, was a symbol of orthodoxy, the Holy See would certainly have taken a more lenient attitude.'

That's right: kick the cat to punish the dog.

The Death of the Reform of the Reform, 5: 1965?

The Psalm Judica: crossed out in 1965

Guide to this series:

Part 1: Death of the Reform of the Reform, Introduction

Part 2: The Liturgical Movement

Part 3: Falling between two stools

Part 4: Novus Ordo in Latin?

Part 5: 1965?

In my last post I discussed the Novus Ordo celebrated in Latin. This is an example of the 'Reform of the Reform' whose value is now being questioned by a number of people, prompting a return to first principles. So let us accompany them to these first principles.

One reason why many good-hearted people wanted a 'Reform of the Reform' is that some kind of reform was called for by the Second Vatican Council in Sacrosanctum Concilium ('SC'). Now that some of them have given up on the project of tinkering with the Novus Ordo, an alternative would seem to be going back to the 1962 Missal and using the Council's criteria to make the reform again. To undertake the Reform We Should Have Had. Fr Somerville-Knapmann suggests it might look like the transitional Missal of 1965. Fr Mark Kirby says very much the same thing with more detail.

The first thing to note is that this wasn't a new edition of the Missal, but just a set of provisional revisions made by the Instruction Inter Oecumenici. There was another lot in 1967, and then the new Missa Normativa came out in 1969. Inter Oecumenici says about itself that it

authorizes or mandates that those measures that are practicable before revision of the liturgical books go into effect immediately.

Again:
Until reform of the entire Ordo Missae, the points that follow are to be observed: ...

The most striking of these 'points' are that the vernacular is allowed for most of Mass (the rest followed two years later), a number of silent prayers are said aloud, the Psalm Judica in the Prayers at the Foot of the Altar, and the Last Gospel (and Leonine Prayers), have gone, and Mass is encouraged facing the people. It is interesting to note that, apart from the 'wider use of the Vernacular', none of these changes find direct support from the Council.

Rubrics erased in 1967

On these changes, what can one say? The animus against silence in the liturgy has undergone a complete reversal since 1965. Pope Benedict pointed out in one of his World Communication Day messages that

It is often in silence, for example, that we observe the most authentic communication taking place...

In the Spirit of the Liturgy he says, of the silent prayers of the Mass,

The number of these priestly prayers has been greatly reduced in the liturgical reform, but, thank God, they do exist.

Not exactly a ringing endorsement of 1965. (And see the FIUV Position Paper.)

Mass versus populum is, perhaps the aspect of on the reform which has come under the most sustained attack by those otherwise committed to the 1970 Missal. Cardinal Ratzinger's critique in The Spirit of the Liturgy is simply blistering. The FIUV Position Paper refers to a remarkable sermon of Cardinal Schönborn, preached to Pope John Paul II, all about the importance of worship 'obviam sponso', facing East: and Schönborn is no trad. Fr Michael Lang's book on the subject, with a foreword by Cardinal Ratzinger, reveals the seriously deficient historical scholarship which was used to support the versus populum position.

The Psalm Judica and the Last Gospel are now back in the liturgy of the Anglican Ordinariate. The consensus of the 1950s and early 1960s that these were useless accretions to the operative Eucharistic liturgy has collapsed, even in the Congregation for Divine Worship.

On each of these issues the old consensus was based on a functionalist approach to the liturgy. You identify what the liturgy does, and clear out the bits which don't do it. The same era gave us functionalism in other areas of life too: functionalist buildings which eschewed decoration or even elegance, because these things aren't necessary for a building's function of keeping you warm and dry. It wouldn't be such a stupid idea if the theorists didn't have such a narrow view of functions. (Is that really all that buildings do?) But it's old hat now, in any case: it belongs in the history books. Are we really going to live by the discarded theories of the 1960s? Can't we benefit from all the scholarship which has been done since then?

Fr Kirby suggests that at the time the 1965 changes were understood as 'the reform', complete, but this is contradicted by the very text of the document implementing it, and by the fact that no new edition of the Missal was printed. He quotes the then Cardinal Secretary of State Cicognani as saying that: “The singular characteristic and primary importance of this new edition is that it [the revisions of 1965] reflects completely the intent of the Council’s Constitution on the Sacred Liturgy.” Unless he was being deliberately misleading, or had been misled, Cicognani must surely have meant 'as far as it goes.'

Last Gospel: crossed out in 1965

Indeed, the poor mugs in the pews were deliberately misled by Cardinal Heenan (as he later admitted) to stop them rioting. But in those days ordinary Catholics did not have easy access to the official documents.

Again I have to disagree with Fr Kirby and Fr Somerville-Knapman about 1965's connection with the norms of the Council. As already noted it goes beyond them in some ways; in others it doesn't fulfil them. For example it hadn't caught up with the multi-year lectionary which SC explicitly mentions. Again, changes later justified by reference to the Council's talk of 'noble simplicity' and texts 'not difficult to understand', and the rejection of 'useless repetition', have not been applied in 1965; some came in 1967.

But it is no mystery why. 1965 represents not a purer level of the reform, before the bad people took over. It represents exactly what it says it represents: those changes which were easiest to implement, from a purely practical point of view. It didn't require the printing of a new Missal, the approval of new texts, or the construction of a complicated multi-year lectionary. It just needed few minutes annotating the old Altar Missal with a felt-tip pen. When Inter Oecumenici was issued work on the 'entire Ordo Missae' was already in progress. For example, the principles of the new lectionary were decided at a meeting of the Concilium in April 1964. Fathers! Get out your copies of Bugnini's Reform of the Liturgy and see for yourselves. It is recorded on p410.

-----------------

As I noted at the start of this post, a major motivation for seeking solace in 1965, as with the whole Reform of the Reform movement, is the idea that, because the Council called for liturgical reform, we are obliged to show our loyalty to the Council by having a reform of some kind, even if it not the kind which actually happened. The loyalty to Mother Church here is noble, and I don't want to criticise that. But we must keep in mind two things.

First, the Council's Sacrosanctum Concilium is a compromise between what quite radical reformers wanted, and what the Fathers of the Council would accept. (The radicals were already practicing versus populum, handshakes at the kiss of peace, wide use of the vernacular and so on.) This means that we are never going to establish to everyone's satisfaction what the clear meaning of the document is.

Second, any proposal for reform is necessarily a matter of prudential judgement. The Council Fathers were not stupid, and their advisers were not evil. They were nevertheless subject to all the difficulties involved in hugely complex prudential judgements, where the ultimate consequences of different proposals are impossible to predict. The type of reform envisaged was something, remember, that the Church had never before attempted.

A massacre of signs of the cross in 1967,
and changes to the Words of Consecration
in 1969

In sum, we are not obliged under pain of sin to undertake a reform of the 1962 books because it was called for by the Council. If that were the case, Pope Benedict's Motu Proprio Summorum Pontificum would have been impossible. He not only allows us to continue to enjoy the ancient liturgy, but, in the letter accompanying it, he actually places an obligation upon us:

It behoves all of us to preserve the riches which have developed in the Church’s faith and prayer, and to give them their proper place. 

This post concludes the series. No doubt the debate will continue.

You can get all the posts of the series (annoyingly, in reverse order) under this label.

Photos: a mutilated Altar Missal. The owner tried to keep up with Inter Oecumenici in 1965, and Tres annos abhinc in 1967, and even the changes to the Roman Canon in 1969. The 1967 changes eliminated almost all the genuflections, signs of the cross, and the kissings of the Altar.

The Death of the Reform of the Reform, 4: Novus Ordo in Latin?

Guide to this series:

Part 1: Death of the Reform of the Reform, Introduction

Part 2: The Liturgical Movement

Part 3: Falling between two stools

Part 4: Novus Ordo in Latin?

Part 5: 1965?

In my last post I said that a compromise missal, with 'the best' of the Ordinary Form and of the Extraordinary Form, could turn out to be something which doesn't allow the Faithful to engage with it effectively, in either the typical Traditional fashion or the typical Novus Ordo fashion.

The idea that you can make the Traditional Latin Mass easier to participate in by making various changes - using the vernacular, having silent prayers aloud, having the priest face the people - is based on the idea that there is only one kind of meaningful participation, and that is an intellectual, verbal participation: a comprehension of the liturgy by a grasp of the liturgical texts word by word, as they are said.

But, as I argued, this is not so. There is another form of participation, which makes use of a much broader range of means, and communicates not only at an intellectual, verbal level, but at a range of non-verbal levels. Anyone familiar with the Traditional Mass knows what 'Ecce Agnus Dei' means, for example, or 'Nobis quoque peccatoribus': these things work at the verbal level. We may agree that you can get a lot more verbal communication by translating the whole thing into banal English and amplifying it, but this will wreck the sense of the sacred, and you will actually end up with less communication, overall, verbal and non-verbal, than before.

I also warned that something similar can happen from the other direction. If you take the Novus Ordo and put it into Latin, for example, you instantly take away much of the intellectual, verbal engagement for which the 1970 Missal was designed. Will you create a sense of the sacred to compensate? Perhaps. But the whole rite has been set up wrong, from that point of view, and most Catholics in the pew will not find it at all obvious how to allow themselves to engage with it at the appropriate way, in the context of the mixed signals they are getting from the ceremonies and texts.

So let's think about the Novus Ordo in Latin. I went to this for years before I discovered the Traditional Mass. Like many people I found the insistent demands of the standard Novus Ordo, to engage with it 'actively' in various ways, off-putting, and the English translation jarring. The Latin NO dimmed the interrogator's lamp a bit. But the form of engagement we were encouraged to have with this was still very much intellectual. We all had little Latin-English booklets and the words were all aloud, with the optional exception of the Offertory. (Actually there are still a few other lines of silent priestly prayer in the Novus Ordo, but the average pew-sitter won't even notice them.) We were prepared for the Latin Canon, in fact, by a typically 'engaging' Liturgy of the Word, in English, with bidding prayers and lay readers and all the rest. And as soon as the Consecration had taken place, we had to make the 'Eucharistic Acclamation'. There was no time for silent adoration.

For me, it was in some ways a preparation for the Extraordinary Form, which was (as far as I knew) not locally available. It got me used to to idea of a liturgical language, for example, and familiarised me with a number of the texts. But while popular with a particular constituency, I was conscious that most Catholics didn't like it. And its constituency had easily identifiable characteristics. I don't want to deal in stereotypes, but the fact is that English Catholic parishes are plagued by the phenomenon of different Masses on Sunday being colonised by different social groups and classes, who then fail to mix with each other. I will just say that the Latin Novus Ordo option didn't exactly help.

The English Novus Ordo is an intellectual exercise, but it is a very easy one. The Latin Novus Ordo is an intellectual exercise, and a much harder one. It really helps if you've got a bit of Latin, for example; if you don't you'll struggle to find your place in the booklet. It is easy for people to assume that the Traditional Mass, which is of course has even more Latin, is on this same spectrum, but a lot further along in the direction of 'difficulty'. I don't want to disparage the efforts of those who over the decades have kept the tradition of liturgical Latin alive in the Church, but I have to say it.

The Latin Novus Ordo can very easily put people off the Traditional Mass.

Actually, I know that it has done, I know people of whom this is true. Nine times out of ten, when someone talks about 'elitist' liturgy he is, in fact, basing his assumptions on the Latin Novus Ordo.

The Latin Novus Ordo can be a bridge between the English Novus Ordo and the Traditional Mass: perhaps it was for me. But for other people it can be something else, something more like the 'false light' put up by wreckers to distract ships from the lighthouse and lure them to their doom. It can put people off the whole idea of a Latin liturgy in same way that overzealous evangelical Protestants can put people off the whole idea of Christianity.

The TLM is not, in fact, more 'difficult', and by the same token it is not more exclusive. You can test the hypothesis for yourself by going to a few regular EF Sunday Masses: you will generally find a complete social and educational mix in the congregation, and unless it is at a non-child-friendly time, you will find lots of children there. The children won't lie to you: talk to them and you will find that they can engage with the liturgy at their own level. Knowledge of Latin is of course a good thing, but lack of Latin is no more a bar to participating in the ancient Mass today than it was for our ancestors, for the simple reason that this form of the Mass uses a broad range of verbal and non-verbal means of getting the message across.

If we are going to talk about the future, of what there is some chance of really working with the bulk of ordinary Catholics, the Reform of the Reform is based on a terrible mistake. The mistake is to assume you can preserve what is attractive about one Form while combining it with what is attractive about the other. You can't, because they are incompatible. As I said in an earlier post in the series, and as a series of Position Papers have argued, in the EF it is precisely those things which impede verbal communication which facilitate non-verbal communication: Latin, silence, worship ad orientem and so on. An attempt to ramp up verbal communication in the EF will destroy what makes it attractive.

Similarly, an attempt to bring in more 'sense of the sacred' in the OF will radically reduce its big selling point: the ease of verbal communication. I'm not saying that it's not a good idea to try, I'm just saying you need to be terribly careful. The easiest thing in the world is to turn your parish Novus Ordo into something which for the average pew-sitter seems a bit of a struggle. For example, are you seriously going to ask them to make Latin responses which vary between three options, on no very predictable basis (the 'Eucharistic acclamations')? Do you want to make it impossible for them to become familiar with the Canon by having four (and in theory many more) different options? Do you want them to wonder if they'll be expected to say 'Peace be with you' to their neighbours in Latin (or should it be, 'Et cum spiritu tuo')?

If you want something with the potential to attract the broadest possible range of people, we already have it in the Traditional Mass. It is perfectly true that some people who attend it for the first time don't like it: they try to use the usual Novus Ordo form of participation and it falls flat. This is why it can take a bit of getting used to, and it is also why it is important to talk about participation and counter the assumption that the only form of participation is word-by-word intellectual comprehension. The answer is definitively not to adapt the TLM to accommodate this form of participation, because you will simply destroy what you are trying to promote.

The reality is that a much higher proportion of people will see the point of it if they attend a few times. This is why it is often so successful to have the TLM alongside the Ordinary Form in a parish, so parishioners can try it out from time to time; gradually, more and more come to like it. If this were the situation across the country, we would be, in terms of liturgical restoration, in business. At the moment, of course, only a tiny minority of Catholics have the chance to attend it at all.

Tomorrow, in the final post of this series, I will talk about another Reform of the Reform option: the transitional liturgical books used in 1965.