The letter sent to clergy and seminarians (in PT’s formatting) is here.

Read more here: http://www.miamiherald.com/2012/02/03/2622603/thousand-attend-first-latin-mass.html#storylink=cpy

In Koch’s view, the readmission of the celebration of Mass in the preconciliar form is “only the first step,” but “the time is not yet ripe” for further steps. Rome can take further actions only when there is readiness among Catholics to consider new forms of liturgy “in service of the Church.”

According to Koch, “the pope suffers from accusations” that he wishes to go back on the Second Vatican Council (1962-1965). On the contrary, the pope wishes to take up statements of the Council on liturgy which have not yet been implemented.

Koch maintains that not everything in today’s liturgical praxis can be justified by the texts of the Council. He named as an example the priest facing the people during the celebration of the Eucharist, about which the Council said  nothing.

In Koch’s opinion, further development of liturgical forms is necessary for an inner renewal of the church. “If the crisis of church life today is above all a crisis of liturgy, then the renewal of the church must begin with a renewal of the liturgy,” he said.

The cardinal’s remarks provoke several reflections.

It is not the case that the Second Vatican Council exhaustively defined the parameters of liturgical reform. Much of this was left to the Consilium to carry out after the Council closed. The Council never mandated versus populum (priest facing the people), nor has any Church document since the Council, but this doesn’t necessarily mean that the practice an illegitimate development. Scholars such as Fr. John O’Malley have demonstrated that there is a “spirit of Vatican II” opening up new vistas for the Church. It is to be expected that responsible and creative implementation of the Council would lead to possibilities not yet foreseen at the Council itself. Whether versus populum is one of these can remain an open question. Which is to say, the fact that it isn’t mentioned by the Council doesn’t really answer the question.

I suppose it’s inevitable that any interpretation of Vatican II will emphasize some passages more than others. Ratzinger and Koch and others can point to a few statements of the liturgy constitution (Gregorian chant is to have pride of place, Latin is to be retained) to buttress the claim that they wish to implement the Council’s statement that have been ignored up until now. Fair enough – but specific directives of the Council have to be ever reevaluated in within the broader context of ongoing liturgical development. Within this context, it is difficult indeed to see how the Council fathers ever intended that an unreformed rite of Mass would remain in use alongside a reformed rite. And there is no denying that Liturgiam authenticam, the 2001 Roman document on translation, introduced centralism and thereby undoes the explicit directive of the liturgy constitution that translations are to be prepared and approved by bishops (not Rome).

Finally, I would be very interested in the cardinal’s thoughts on liturgy and ecumenism, not least because he is the head of the Holy See’s ecumenism department. How does he understand his liturgical proposals to contribute to the work for church unity? Some theologians believe that Roman decisions in recent years have been a setback for the cause. What would Cardinal Koch say?

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There are factual errors of which Somerville seems blithely unaware. I am no linguist but examine Somerville’s statement that since “Catullus was a contemporary of Caesar Augustine, the Latin in which he wrote would have been about the same as that used by Romans during the time Jesus lived on earth”. Even though this author is herself a poet she does not seem able to distinguish between poetic speech and everyday talk. It is hard to imagine ordinary Romans speaking in hendecasyllabic or elegiac couplets. And are we suggesting that Jesus spoke Latin?

Somerville alleges that the “Eucharistic Prayer may not be a poem in a technical sense, but it functions as one.” There may be a good point buried here, but what kind of poetic function is she talking about? I would have thought that the EP should instead consist of a ritual language, i.e., one that expresses (repetitively) truths that are already deep within the assembly—which includes the people in the pews, and therefore must “come across the footlights”, as the theater world say. As far as I can see this form is therefore quite different than most poetry.

That said, I do agree with some main points of Somerville. The new language does seem “stiff and unwieldy,” as she says. And I think it is silly for Church to say that, in the United States, the word “men” today still means men and women. This is quickly becoming a dead usage, and it certainly is out of place in a time when women are at last being recognized as equals to genetic “men”. I would agree that “chalice” is an awkward substitution for “cup.” It caters too much to the monarchical phase of the Church. And finally, I believe that the reversion to “for you and for many” is simply trouble-making. Again, I am no scholar in this, but those who pleaded with the Pope to allow at least “the many” as making good and proper sense in English were right. Somerville unfortunately labors the obvious but unthinkable interpretation that Jesus died for one group of people but not for any others. If anyone sees a valid reason for such wording, I hope we hear from them below.

I don’t get this business with the Tridentine Mass. I should get it. I was in ninth grade at Cathedral High School when the first English translations were introduced. As a boy, I learned the Latin responses to the prayers at the foot of the altar and the other parts proper to the altar server. I could sing the proper parts of the Mass with our St. Rose of Lima School schola, as well as the ordinary parts, and I could pronounce Latin far better than I ever understood it.

I have but rarely presided at the liturgy in Latin. A couple times, as a pastor, I worked to convince parishioners that we should celebrate at least one Mass on Pentecost Sunday in the lingua antiqua and sing the Missa de Angelis, Mass VIII. Afterward, even daily-Mass Catholics would say, “Well that was a nice enough look at a museum piece, but I don’t need to do that again.”

Still, I recently scheduled Mass in Latin for students at the college where I teach. They should know, or at least experience, that part of the tradition. At least that’s what I told them. One of the most rigorously orthodox of our students said sweetly, succinctly, and accurately the morning after: “It was nice to be in touch with our tradition and to experience the Mass as did our grandparents, but there was a layer of meaning entirely absent.” Her own experience was a far better teacher than any explanation I might have offered.

Catholic folks born in the 1950s often assert that they know Latin. Few actually know it. Some will say, “I speak Latin.” Or “My mother speaks Latin.” Then they greet me: “Dominus vobiscum.” I may be large, but I do not take the plural.

I recently attended the wedding of a delightful and delightfully traditional young couple who wanted part of their wedding liturgy sung in Latin. They did not recognize that the setting they employed for the Sanctus and Agnus Dei was from the Requiem. Mentioning this to another traditional young guest there, I was asked, “What, exactly, is a Requiem?”

Praying in Latin is not easy. Neither fond nostalgia for an era one never knew nor spending a couple semesters in Rome and ordering spaghetti carbonara in Italian gives one the ability to pronounce or understand the complexities of an ancient language one has never studied. One of my colleagues, a Latin professor, went one day to a local celebration of the Eucharist according to the extraordinary rite, the rite we usually refer to as Tridentine. Coming back to campus, shaking his head, the professor sad sadly, “I don’t know what that was, but it was not Latin.”

So what are the issues involved in restoring the Tridentine liturgy? Lisa Takeuchi Cullen (“I Confess, I Want Latin,” Time [June 30, 2007]) wants “to experience the joy of communion without the anguish of our modern-day differences.” She thinks that in the Tridentine Mass, when the priest has his “back to the congregation and [is] speaking in a dead language,” she will be spared homilies based on the priest’s “Netflix queue.” Good luck to her with all that. Even back in the day, the homily or sermon was not in Latin. Ms. Cullen could seek out a parish that celebrates the liturgy in another language unknown to her — Vietnamese, maybe, or Tagalog or Eritrean. She could then get what she seeks: “an hour-long meditation in the community of the faithful, reaffirming ancient beliefs in familiar but inscrutable chant.” She opines, “I’m not so sure that isn’t what the Apostles intended.” There is scant evidence to suggest that the apostles were big into inscrutability. Perhaps her opinion reveals a different desire: to decide herself what the apostles intended rather than trust the church in magisterial authority to interpret and mediate both Scripture and Tradition with the wisdom of the ages.

The church, in the wisdom of the ages, prompts us to pray in languages we understand. Those who sentimentalize another reality should not seek to press it on others among the people of God.

But, Can We Keep Paul V’s Missal?
In an earlier [article], I pointed out that the folks who were most surprised by Pope Benedict XVI’s decision to loosen restrictions on the celebration of the Tridentine Mass (the extraordinary rite) may have been those of us just old enough to remember chanting the Requiem and the Missa de Angelis back in the glory days of booming, burgeoning Catholic schools. While we may sometimes celebrate the Novus Ordo in Latin when in Rome, or at home on Pentecost for old times’ sake, we tend to agree that there is a layer of meaning entirely missing when the church at prayer employs the lingua antiqua.

My earlier caution, I think, bears repeating. The priests I know who intuit a pastoral need for the old rite did not grow up with it. Because the Mass in any language can and should be celebrated with reverence, the need for the old rite seems unclear. Those who celebrate it cannot, on Monday morning, gather at the water cooler with other Catholics and a variety of other Christians and discuss the Scriptures they heard the day before; Trent’s missal is different from today’s lectionary, with fewer Scripture pericopes and scant attention to the Old Testament.

When the Tridentine crowd prays on Good Friday for “the perfidious Jew,” the rest of us know with certainty that God will hear what we ask, but we trust that he will give us what we truly need. This will surely not include perfidy, either among Catholics or Jews. A caution is in order here, however. We cannot be sure of the accuracy of all the translations of the Mass; prudence would dictate, I think, that those who seek to pray in Latin use only the Latin text, eschewing all other translations in an effort to avoid that which may be unseemly, inaccurate, or irreverent. But I digress.

The point is that we should not regard as Cafeteria Catholics those who seek to reclaim the 1950s. Instead, we should see them as a model for the emerging church. In fact, recent reports suggesting that Benedict granted permission not just for the Tridentine liturgy but other rites — the Ambrosian, for example, celebrated in Milan (“Motu proprio allows use of several old rites,” The Tablet [June 6, 2009]: 31) — is surely an early announcement of hope for those priests or parishes who have felt some anxiety about the coming translation of the liturgical prayers. Clearly, the precedent seems to be set: those who may not approve of the new translation will be under no obligation to use it but can instead either petition for or presume permission to continue using the present books. Maybe I am incorrect. Let’s break into discussion groups on this idea, with both our canonists and liturgists as guides.

Together in the big tent that is the church, may we continue with faithfulness and good humor (and in all the languages of humankind) the church’s unbroken tradition of coming “together to celebrate the paschal mystery: … giving thanks ‘to God for his inexpressible gift’ (2 Cor 9:15) in Christ Jesus, ‘in praise of his glory’ (Eph 1:12), through the power of the Holy Spirit” (Constitution on the Sacred Liturgy, 6).

—

Rev. William C. Graham, a priest of the diocese of Duluth in Minnesota, directs The Braegelman Program in Catholic Studies at the College of St. Scholastica. His latest books include A Catholic Handbook: Essentials for the 21st Century (Paulist) and Clothed in Christ: Toward a Spirituality for Lay Ministers (Twenty-Third Publications).

This article originally appeared in the February 2011 issue of Ministry & Liturgy, a publication of Resource Publications, Inc. It is reprinted here with their kind permission.

The bishops who were the fathers of the council from the United States came home and made changes too quickly. They shouldn’t have viewed the old liturgy, what we call the Tridentine Mass or Missal of Pope John XXIII, as something that needed to be fixed. Nothing was broken. There was an attitude that we had to implement Vatican II in a way that radically affects the liturgy.

What we lost in a short period of time was continuity. The new liturgy should be clearly identifiable as the liturgy of the pre-Vatican II Church.

Yup, he really said that nothing was broken in the “Tridentine” (pre-Vatican II) Mass and nothing needing fixing!

The “continuity” ideology is in full swing now. As we see above, its proponents do not shy away from making patently false and manifestly absurd statements.

Any respectable attempt to interpret Sacrosanctum concilium, the liturgy constitution of the Second Vatican Council, must take into account both its statements calling for continuity and preservation and its statements calling for reform and change (aka “fixing”).

For those like Bishop Slattery who want to emphasize continuity with the past, here are the most notable continuity/preservation statements of Sacrosanctum concilium [SC] to appeal to:

• SC 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.”
• SC 36: “Particular law remaining in force, the use of the Latin language is to be preserved in the Latin rites.”
• SC 54: “Steps should be taken so that the faithful may also be able to say or to sing together in Latin those parts of the Ordinary of the Mass which pertain to them.”
• SC 116: “The Church acknowledges Gregorian chant as specially suited to the Roman liturgy; therefore, other things being equal, it should be given pride of place in liturgcal services.”

But unfortunately for the bishop, there are numerous statements in SC clearly calling for liturgical reform and change :

• SC 1 lists, among several aims of the council, “to foster whatever can promote union among all who believe in Christ.” “Whatever” could in principle include liturgical adaptations making our rites more similar to those of Eastern Orthodoxy, Anglicanism, Lutheranism, and the various Protestant churches.
• SC 14: “In the restoration and promotion of the sacred liturgy, this full and active participation by all the people is the aim to be considered before all else.” This article could mean that active participation (however that is understood) is more important than preserving Latin or Gregorian chant or tradition. In principle the door is opened to ritual changes if that is thought better for achieving the highest goal of active participation.
• SC 21: “The liturgy is made up of immutable elements divinely instituted, and of elements subject to change. These not only may but ought to be changed with the passage of time if they have suffered from the intrusion of anything out of harmony with the inner nature of the liturgy or have become unsuited to it.” Liturgical history shows that very little of the words and rites of the liturgy is of divine institution, and the larger part by far grew up in the course of the centuries. The council did not say that everything not divinely instituted should be changed. But in principle any of the human elements of the liturgy are candidates for change.
• SC 21: “In this restoration, both texts and rites should be drawn up so that they express more clearly the holy things which they signify; the Christian people, so far as possible, should be enabled to understand them with ease and to take part in them fully, actively, and as befits a community.” The wording suggests thorough-going change of the texts and rites – they are to be “drawn up” according to the criteria given.
• SC 23: “As far as possible, notable differences between the rites used in adjacent regions must be carefully avoided.” This article suggests that there will at time be differences between rites in adjacent regions when it states that the differences should not be “notable.” This can only mean that the Roman rite will not necessarily be uniform in all the regions of the world.
• SC 31: “The revision of the liturgical books must carefully attend to the provision of rubrics also for the people’s parts.” Considering that the pre-Vatican II order of Mass had not one single rubric regarding the people, it is difficult to see how the “careful provision” of such rubrics could be anything but a rupture with the past.
• SC 34: “The rites should be distinguished by a noble simplicity; they should be short, clear, and unencumbered by useless repetitions; they should be within the people’s powers of comprehension, and normally should not require much explanation.” The rites of the pre-Vatican II liturgy are anything short, clear, and unencumbered by useless repetitions. It is difficult to see how SC 34 could be carried out in continuity with the preconciliar liturgy or without bringing in noticeable changes.
• SC 38: “Provisions shall also be made, when revising the liturgical books, for legitimate variations and adaptations to different groups, regions, and peoples, especially in mission lands, provided that the substantial unity of the Roman rite is preserved.” The call is for unity, not uniformity, and the door is left open to local variations.

Back in 1963, the fathers of the Second Vatican Council were clear: the church’s venerable old liturgy needed fixing.

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I think he gives a pretty good summary of the rationale one typically hears for ad orientem, with all its strengths and weaknesses.

Strengths: it underscores that this ancient practice should not be seen in terms of the priest “turning his back” on the people, but of priest and people having a common orientation during worship. He also stresses the eschatological symbolism of this practice, which to my mind is the strongest argument in its favor.

Weaknesses: it mis-diagnoses, I think, what it is that people like about versus populum orientation. It is not the desire to see the priest’s face, but to see his actions and, in particular, to see the consecrated species. As a part of this misdiagnosis, it makes what I consider one of the worst arguments for ad orientem worship. I am deeply troubled by the idea that our common orientation should be toward the crucifix (even though I know that Joseph Ratzinger has endorsed it), which is simply a humanly fashioned symbol. Shouldn’t our common orientation be toward Christ really present in the Eucharist? Here we have not simply a symbol, like the crucifix, but an efficacious sign — not an object we have made, but a person who has made himself present to us.

If I were to put this polemically, which of course I would never do, I would say that identifying the crucifix rather than the Eucharist as the point of orientation skirts the edge of idolatry. This point seems so obvious to me that I wonder what is going on with those who continue to put forward the idea of common orientation toward the crucifix. Could this be a case of a poor idea gaining momentum simply because it has been suggested by an authoritative source (i.e. Pope Benedict).

Of course, if one drops the crucifix argument, it becomes apparent that whether the priest is on the same side of the altar as the people or on the opposite side, the entire assembly is “oriented” toward Christ present in the Eucharist. One is then left to make the argument on other grounds. I think there are arguments to commend either practice, and I see no need to denigrate those who prefer the versus populum orientation as self-enclosed narcissists, as Bishop Sample seems to imply.

One reason for the delay is that the longest letter published in the 24 September issue was from me. I was initially hesitant about self-publicity, and when Fr Anthony asked me to put the text up here, I wanted to publish a slightly fuller version. I was responding rather sharply to a piece by Fr Allen Morris (whom I don’t know), until recently secretary of the English and Welsh bishops’ liturgy office. On 17 September, he had written a letter defending against a critic what is said in a UK edition of the new texts, namely that the bishops had been overseeing their gestation for about 20 years. As readers of this blog will be aware, there are some controversial events being elided here. For Fr Morris, it was nevertheless all one process, even if it had taken some unexpected turns.

As I read this piece from the new-translation-free zone that, happily, is still the USA, it seemed to me that an answer was called for, and so I wrote as follows:

Fr Allen Morris (Letters, 17 September 2011), in connection with the discarded 1998 Missal translation, rightly reminds us that there is a difference between true episcopal consensus and majority canonical vote. He also implies, equally correctly, that one of the functions of Roman primacy is to promote true consensus. However, it is far from clear that these ideas can help us address the decidedly unconsensual situation in which we now find ourselves.

Fr Morris is effectively challenging the narrative current among the new translation’s critics. This account is bleak indeed. According to the chair of ICEL in the late 1990s, Bishop Maurice Taylor, all but one Anglophone episcopal conference voted overwhelmingly for the 1998 text, and even the US episcopate voted by a two-thirds majority in its favour. Subsequently Liturgiam authenticam appeared, written by a small circle of officials in the Congregation for Divine Worship, without even the episcopal members of that congregation being consulted. It was made clear to bishops’ conferences that if they did not approve the work of the reconstituted ICEL, Rome would insist on its imposition anyway. And then, after the conferences duly complied, even this work, done faithfully and consistently according to the conventions laid down, was hacked about, secretly, incompetently and arbitrarily, by officials in the CDW before the final text appeared.

Now, this account is only what is generally believed. If it is wrong, then someone in authority needs to set it right, because such a sad story seriously undermines any confidence that the disruption occasioned by a new text is for the better. But if the received story is substantially correct, then there is no meaningful sense in which we are dealing with an episcopal consensus about the new translation. It seems more promising to read the torrid history in terms of Rome, out of concern for Catholic unity, requiring local churches to change their translation policies. Precisely as Catholic Christians, we need to be sensitive to needs beyond our local experience. Central authority may properly call us to behave in ways we would not spontaneously choose of our own accord. There is a place for obedience to Rome’s authority and primacy.

I do not think this argument, in this context, an attractive or cogent one, but I can recognize its basic honesty, its coherence with Catholic tradition, and the sincerity of people like Cardinal Napier (Letters, 23 July) who believe in some version of it. Such a way of thinking might, if we work at things, help loyal Catholics attached to post-Conciliar norms negotiate their way through what initially seems an impossible trilemma: that between withdrawal from the Eucharist, public disobedience, and collusion with authority’s abuse.

If we are to work through the present liturgical tensions well, we need a catechesis couched not in ambiguous subtleties but in plain speaking. If even its advocates are squeamish about saying why the new translation is being visited upon us, something is seriously amiss.

This piece is, of course, compressed and coded. At least one distinguished and knowledgeable reader was worried that I had lurched into an uncharacteristic ultramontanism, and suggested to me that I was really stretching charity too far. The truth is that as a priest, I’ve got some responsibility for helping people cope with this situation, and indeed for trying to make things work—so I am clutching at straws to put the best possible interpretation on our predicament, in line with classic teaching on religious obedience.  And I do genuinely think that we Anglophones, with our economic and cultural power, need to be sensitive to how our ways of doing things play internationally.

I still have no real idea how I shall actually operate once I have no more escape from the new English texts. I have decided not to decide until it happens (a privilege open to me as a religious with an academic ministry), and I am enjoying working and worshipping with Spanish-speaking communities over here. But of one point I am certain: I’d rather stretch charity than pretend that our bishops, had they had any real say, would have landed us with anything like this new text. Such a claim is true only on the most empty readings of collegiality. Piety and loyalty should never be excuses for lying in public.

An afterthought: Is the US bishops’ decision to impose the new text in one fell swoop more or less prudent than their counterparts’ option to move in stages? Maybe I am moving in the wrong circles, but I am struck by how I’ve heard nothing about it in the parishes I have visited. Most people seem to be burying their heads in the sand.

Pope Benedict XVI has transferred responsibility for two very precise administrative procedures from the Congregation for Divine Worship and the Sacraments to the Roman Rota, a church court.

The Vatican newspaper, L’Osservatore Romano, published the papal directive Sept. 27 giving the Rota responsibility for handling procedures involving a marriage that was celebrated validly but not consummated and for cases involving the nullity of an ordination.

Pope Benedict said he made the change so that the congregation for worship could “dedicate itself principally to giving a new impulse to the promotion of the sacred liturgy in the church, according to the renewal willed by the Second Vatican Council.”

Story in Catholic Review here.