Cardinal Walter Brandmüller, the 97-year-old German church historian and former president of the Pontifical Committee for Historical Sciences, has issued an appeal for peace in the liturgical disputes, urging all sides to “lay down your weapons”.
Writing in Diakonos on February 24, His Eminence insisted that it was not the Council’s Constitution on the Sacred Liturgy, Sacrosanctum Concilium, that caused the deep rift across much of the Catholic world, but “the implementation of the liturgical reform after the Council”.
That implementation, he argued, was responsible for “an unhealthy conflict between ‘progressives’ and ‘reactionaries’”, which has caused difficulties for ecclesial authorities for decades.
“It was not Sacrosanctum Concilium,” he wrote, “but rather the post-conciliar implementation that opened a rift in much of the Catholic world.” The resulting “liturgical conflict”, he added, simply demonstrates “the central place that the liturgy holds in the lives of the faithful”.
His Eminence pointed to the reforms introduced in Orthodox Russia in the 17th century and to bitter arguments in the West during the Enlightenment over hymnody and rites. Such conflicts, he suggested, often concern not dogma but the “rites, the customs, the concrete forms of everyday piety” that shape the daily life of faith.
Turning to the reform of the Roman Missal under Pope Paul VI, he acknowledged that it “was not without its flaws” and that some criticism was understandable. Yet the cardinal was clear that the Missal promulgated by Pope Paul VI “had to be accepted in obedience despite legitimate criticism”. “If Christ’s obedience unto death is made present in the Eucharist,” he wrote, “it cannot be celebrated in disobedience.”
At the same time, His Eminence asked why the reform of Paul VI had been perceived by many as a break with tradition, especially when earlier reforms had not provoked comparable turmoil. He recalled that when Pope Pius XII reformed the Easter Vigil in 1951 and the rites of Holy Week in 1955, the changes were widely welcomed and implemented without serious resistance. By contrast, the later reform coincided with a period in which, after the pontificate of Pius XII, “the hour of theological individualism and farewells to everything then labelled ‘outdated’ had struck”.
“The consequences for the liturgy were serious,” he wrote. “Arbitrariness, proliferation and unbridled individualism led in many places to the replacement of Mass with personal compositions.” In some cases, he said, the liturgy was reduced to texts “compiled in spiral notebooks prepared by the celebrants”. The outcome was “liturgical chaos and an unprecedented exodus from the Church, a phenomenon that continues to this day”.
Yet the cardinal did not reserve his criticism for one side alone. While some judged the reforms insufficient and continued to improvise liturgies “born of personal creativity”, others clung rigidly to what they described as the “Mass of All Time”. This, he said, ignored the historical reality that “the rite of the Holy Mass has unfolded and transformed over the centuries”. In truth, he continued, “the only ‘Mass of All Time’ is simply the words of consecration”, which themselves appear in varying forms in Scripture.
He warned that the “absolutising of the Mass’s convivial character”, an excessive emphasis on its communal dimension, “has led, and continues to lead, to serious liturgical abuses, sometimes even bordering on blasphemy”. Such abuses, he argued, stem from “fundamental misunderstandings about the mystery of the Eucharist”.
In many cases, he observed, “it almost always falls to the individual priest to decide whether Holy Mass will be celebrated faithfully according to the Novus Ordo or whether the celebrant’s subjective ideas will be given free rein”. Episcopal interventions against abuses, he noted, “have been rather rare”. The resulting “dissolution of liturgical unity”, he warned, is caused by “uncertainty, even the loss of authentic faith”, and poses a threat to the unity of faith itself.
If “fatal fractures in ecclesial unity” are to be avoided or healed, he said, “it is therefore necessary … to achieve peace, or at the very least a truce, on the liturgical front”. For that reason, he invoked the title of Bertha von Suttner’s pacifist novel, “‘Die Waffen nieder!’ – Lay down your weapons!”
“This means that, above all, language must be defused when discussing liturgy,” he wrote. “Mutual accusations must cease; neither side should question the seriousness of the other’s intentions.” Put more simply, he added, “tolerance is essential, and polemics should be avoided”.
Both sides, he insisted, must ensure that the liturgy “scrupulously adheres to their respective norms”. His warning, he stressed, applies “not only to innovators but also to those who adhere to the ‘Old Mass’”.
Finally, he urged Catholics to return to the Council’s own text. “Both sides should impartially study Chapter II of Sacrosanctum Concilium in order to critically examine subsequent developments,” he wrote. Only in this way, “in silence and with great patience”, can the Church work towards a “reform of the reform” that truly corresponds to the Council’s provisions.
Cardinal Brandmüller’s appeal for a liturgical “truce” is neither misplaced nor a nostalgic lament from a curial conservative. It is a plea to address one of the Church’s most enduring post-conciliar wounds. His central contention remains that it was not the Second Vatican Council’s Constitution on the Sacred Liturgy, Sacrosanctum Concilium, but its implementation that fractured Catholic unity. That contention raises a harder question: what precisely occurred between the Council chamber and the promulgation of the new Missal?
There is little doubt that the Constitution itself received overwhelming approval from the bishops of the world. Its relator, the Jesuit scholar Fr Josef Jungmann, assured the Council Fathers that “due care was being taken to preserve the substance of the rites”. The text did not propose doctrinal revolution. It spoke of organic development and noble simplicity. It reaffirmed the sacrificial nature of the Mass and the centrality of Christ’s Paschal Mystery. It cannot lightly be dismissed as an act of ecclesial vandalism.
Nevertheless, the Missal promulgated by Pope Paul VI in 1969 differs markedly in form, tone and ritual from that codified by Pope Pius V after the Council of Trent. The difference is not merely aesthetic but experiential. The older rite’s silent Canon, multiple signs of the Cross, genuflections, additional prayers and ritual repetitions conveyed a distinct theological atmosphere from the simplified rubrics and expanded lectionary of the newer form.
The question, therefore, is whether this divergence represents legitimate development or a practical deviation from conciliar intent. Sacrosanctum Concilium itself prepared the ground for significant alteration. It called for rites to be marked by “noble simplicity”, to be “short, clear, and unencumbered by useless repetitions”. It mandated a more ample use of Sacred Scripture in the liturgy and permitted extended use of the vernacular where pastorally advantageous. These provisions reflected a mid-20th-century liturgical movement keen to render the rites more intelligible and participatory.
To implement the Constitution, Paul VI established the Consilium in 1964 under the leadership of Archbishop Annibale Bugnini. Its mandate, confirmed in the motu proprio Sacram Liturgiam, was to revise the rites and prepare new liturgical books. The process unfolded incrementally. The 1964 instruction Inter Oecumenici introduced vernacular readings proclaimed facing the people, removed the Judica me at the foot of the altar, permitted the Prayer of the Faithful and simplified Communion formulae. Ecclesiae semper in 1965 authorised concelebration and Communion under both kinds, emphasising the communal dimension of the Eucharist. Musicam Sacram in 1967 encouraged congregational singing in a manner that, in practice, hastened the eclipse of Gregorian chant. Tres abhinc annos extended the vernacular to the Canon and further streamlined vesture and ceremonial. By the time the new Missal appeared in 1969, much of the transition had already occurred.
Once the reforms were set in motion, they gathered their own momentum. The Council’s language of “noble simplicity” and “active participation” proved elastic. In many places, legitimate adaptation slid into improvisation.
At the same time, it would be historically careless to suggest that the Tridentine rite emerged fully formed from apostolic antiquity. The Roman liturgy developed across centuries, absorbing Gallican elements, codifying medieval usages and standardising diversity after Trent. Organic growth is not foreign to Catholic worship. The difficulty lies not in development as such, but in the speed and scale with which change was introduced in the late 1960s. What had once unfolded gradually over generations appeared within a handful of years.
The practical path forward for Cardinal Brandmüller’s call to “lay down your weapons” will not be found in rhetorical escalation. It will require examination of whether post-conciliar practice has consistently conformed to the Council’s own stipulation that no innovations be introduced unless the good of the Church genuinely and certainly requires them. It will also require recognition that obedience to lawful authority is intrinsic to Eucharistic worship, even when prudential judgments remain open to debate, as the cardinal himself attested.
