Sixty years ago today Pope Paul VI offered Mass in St Peter’s Square before presiding over the ceremonies formally closing the Second Vatican Council. “The Mass was not the kind of solemn pre-conciliar ceremony once sung by the Pope and the Julian choir,” one observer remarked, “but a simple sung Mass to which the entire assembly responded.” “It was a reminder of another fruit of the Council, its Constitution on the liturgical renewal” (Council Daybook, III, p. 284).
For December 1965, such an assertion seems quite reasonable. The verbal participation in the Gregorian chant of the more than 2,400 Council Fathers (i.e. the world’s bishops) and of the numerous others present would have been quite an impressive change, and not necessarily a bad one, especially for a Mass outdoors. After all, widespread participation in the Church’s Latin chant was an early and sound goal of the liturgical movement from the beginning of the twentieth century. Experiencing this at a Papal Mass on such an historic occasion would certainly have conveyed a sense of progress and of true achievement according to the mind of the Council.
1965 had seen much progress in the liturgical reform. In January the Holy See officially published a new Order of Mass, instructing that it be included in all future editions of the Missal. The language of its promulgation, and its widespread reception at the time, suggested that this was the reform of the Mass called for by the Council. The changes it made were foreseen at the Council, and none of the world’s bishops would have been surprised by it. Herder & Herder even published a sturdy volume entitled The New Liturgy introducing it and documenting its genesis.
At the Council itself the Fathers, having been assured that “the current [i.e. 1962] Ordo Missæ, which has grown up in the course of the centuries, certainly is to be retained”, approved the simplification in the number of signs of the cross, the kissing of the altar, bows, etc; the shortening of the prayers at the foot of the altar; the reading of the readings facing the people towards whom they were to be announced; the introduction of an offertory procession as in the Ambrosian rite; the revision of the offertory prayers so as to be more sensitive to the offering of the gifts after the Consecration; the praying of the super oblata prayer aloud; an increase in the number of prefaces; the praying of the Doxology at the end of the Canon aloud with the people responding “Amen”; the abolition of the signs of the cross in the Doxology and reduced throughout the Canon itself; the reciting of the Embolism following the Pater Noster aloud, as also the Fraction prayer and its conclusion; the Fraction and the Pax were to be rearranged in a more logical manner; restrictions on which faithful may receive Holy Communion in which Masses were to be abolished; Holy Communion was to be distributed with the formula from the Ambrosian rite: “Corpus Christi. Amen”; and the end of Mass was to finish with the blessing followed by the “Ite missa est”. A simplification of the rubrics, including in pontifical rites, was also foreseen, as was the extension of the possibility of sung Mass with a deacon (without a subdeacon) beyond the Holy Week ceremonies for which this practice had been authorised in the 1950s.
It is noteworthy that the practice of celebrating Mass facing the people or the reception of Holy Communion in the hand were never proposed to the bishops at the Council, nor was the complete vernacularisation of the Mass: Latin was to be retained, whilst the local language was to be permitted for some parts of the rite.
Looking back, the list above may seem to contain quite a lot, and indeed it does. Perhaps that is why the 1965 Order of Mass did not include all of its provisions. But whatever we may think now, after the fact, at the Council the world’s bishops accepted these specifics with the assurance that “the current Ordo Missæ, which has grown up in the course of the centuries, certainly is to be retained”. In truth, looking at the 1965 Order of Mass, however we feel about its particular details, one can see that this is the Order of Mass that grew up over the course of centuries, albeit pruned and simplified according to the mind of the Council.
It was this rite that Paul VI celebrated in a Roman parish church on 7 March 1965, enthusiastically stating that “Today we inaugurate the new form of liturgy in all the parishes and churches of the world.” The new form of liturgy. The Pope did not regard it as a transitional phase – a mere stop along the way to a “brave new liturgical world” in the future.
Of course, the March 1965 event was not so much about the ritual simplifications of the rite as it was about the use of the vernacular. Paul VI offered this Mass almost entirely in Italian, which was revolutionary at the time. Indeed, this was little more than a year after promulgating the Council’s Constitution on the Sacred Liturgy which stipulated that “the Latin language is to be preserved in the Latin rites”, whilst allowing “the limits of its employment” in 1963 to “be extended”. Bishops’ conferences were to decide what extensions were desirable and to request the Holy See’s confirmation. By March 1965, it seems, the Italian bishops had been very busy indeed and had received enthusiastic confirmation from the body responsible for implementing the liturgical reform of the Council, whose Secretary, Father Annibale Bugnini CM, would later boast: “It cannot be denied that the principle, approved by the Council, of using the vernaculars was given a broad interpretation.”
The March 1965 Papal Mass was concelebrated: the rite for that, and for the possibility of receiving Holy Communion under both kinds, were only dated 7 March 1965 – seemingly a busy day for the Pope. Even at the closing Mass for the Council that December, concelebration en masse as we know it now was unknown. Indeed, concelebration was limited to a small number of priests or bishops at determined times, whilst Holy Communion could be received under both species only on specific occasions – and it would be another four years before the possibility of receiving Holy Communion in the hand would be considered tolerable.
Thus, the Mass that closed the Council sixty years ago today would not have given the Council Fathers cause for concern. Even Archbishop Marcel Lefebvre, founder of the Traditionalist group the Society of Saint Pius X, is on record as accepting the need for some simplification and some use of the vernacular. Rather, as said above, they would have been quite satisfied that the moderate reforms they approved had begun to be implemented.
1965 had also seen much “progress” in the work of the body charged with implementing the liturgical reform – the Consilium – and of its study group (n. 10) charged with the reform of the Order of Mass. When the world’s bishops returned to their dioceses in December this body, which regarded the January 1965 Order of Mass as a merely temporary measure even before its publication, was well advanced in the drafting of what came to be known as “the normative Mass”.
These drafts, which contained no sign of the cross or Confiteor at the beginning of Mass, no Orate fratres prayer at the Offertory (indeed, no prayers actually suggesting any “offering”), and which toyed with reforming the Roman Canon itself, or even with introducing new ones, were not concerned with retaining the Ordo Missæ which had grown up in the course of the centuries, but used it as merely one resource amongst others in constructing what Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger would later decry as “a construction, a banal on-the-spot product”. “In the place of liturgy as the fruit of development came fabricated liturgy,” the Cardinal explained. “We left the living process of growth and development to enter the realm of fabrication. There was no longer a desire to continue developing and maturing, as the centuries passed, and so this was replaced – as if it were a technical production, a construction, a banal on-the-spot product.”
Thus, as the Council itself receded into history and the Consilium continued apace with its construction of a new liturgical edifice, so too the “Mass of Vatican II” with which the Council Fathers had been so content suffered “death by a thousand changes” officially – and even more unofficially – and was soon forgotten, despite the protests of many bishops when the new product was “demonstrated” at the 1967 Synod of Bishops.
By April 1969 the new Order of Mass was promulgated containing additional Eucharistic Prayers (something the Council never, ever envisaged), theologically vapid offertory prayers and a truly radical reduction, rather than a simplification, of ceremonial gestures. The “intransigent” Paul VI personally intervened to insist on the sign of the cross at the beginning of Mass, a Confiteor, the retention of the Orate fratres and of the Roman Canon. Of course, the Confiteor and the Roman Canon were mere options, and were effectively abolished in many places thereby. The Roman Missal published in 1970 revealed a body of proper prayers for each day of seasons or feasts severely theologically edited or entirely reconstructed to remove sentiments that might be offensive to that chimera of the age called “modern man”. And of course, by then absolutely everything could be (and usually was) in the vernacular.
This is not to deny that new prefaces were added to the Missal or that the Lectionary was expanded, but even here there is evidence of ideological editing and, indeed, of a failure to respect the truly ancient annual cycle of Sunday Epistles and Gospels. The “new” calendar, constructed by what Louis Bouyer described as “a trio of maniacs”, is another issue in itself, as is the question of the doctrinal fidelity of vernacular translations.
In 1974 Cardinal Heenan wrote in his memoirs that “subsequent changes were more radical than those intended by Pope John and the bishops who passed the decree on the liturgy”. A little over two decades later, whilst there was still time, I wrote to those Fathers of the Council still living seeking their opinion on the matter. Whilst some held the party line of perfect contentment, others spoke freely. Perhaps Bishop Ignatius Doggett OFM, a retired missionary, was clearest. The implementation of the Council’s Constitution was “Horrible”, he replied, “if we judge the debate on the liturgy as we have it today. Very few bishops would be proud to say they had a hand in it. Communion in the hand was never mentioned in the debate, neither was the word table (mensa) to take the place of altar – place of sacrifice... In my opinion the Debate on the Liturgy has been hijacked. The Council was… to reform, not to change completely,” he insisted.
In marking the sixtieth anniversary of the closing of the Council it is important that we are clear about the facts. The Mass promulgated in the Missal of 1970, its successors and their various vernacular translations included, is not that which was called for or authorised by the Second Vatican Council. It is the product – duly authorised by the Pope, and sacramentally valid, but a product nonetheless – of a group of enthusiasts whose Secretary would later boast in respect of their work: “Fortune favours the brave.” In other words, what we have in our parishes in the modern rites, even faithfully celebrated, is not what the Council called for. It is in some part a broad interpretation of the Council’s Constitution on the Liturgy and in other parts an ideologically and politically motivated flagrant departure from what it authorised, as many Council Fathers, such as Bishop Doggett cited above, have testified.
If we understand this we can see why it is possible to question and even reject the modern rites without being disloyal to the Council. Indeed, out of loyalty to the Council itself many, Cardinal Ratzinger included, have spoken of the desire for a “reform of the reform” – something of a missed opportunity in the pontificate of Benedict XVI himself, and dismissed widely today as undesirable by those who idolise the Missal of Paul VI as well as by those who reject it.
Ironically, today it is often in the celebrations of the older, pre-conciliar rites that we find what the Council Fathers truly desired: the full, conscious, actual and utterly fruitful participation in the Ordo Missæ which has grown up in the course of the centuries, as well as in the other liturgical rites. That is to say that the primary liturgical goal of the Council – bringing about the fruitful participation in the Sacred Liturgy – did not and does not necessarily require ritual reform. That is not to say that people cannot and do not participate fruitfully in the rites promulgated by Paul VI; but it is to say that they are not necessary for such fruitful participation.
Many will find this assertion controversial if not shocking, but it is true. The early twentieth-century liturgical movement knew this perfectly well. It was only later that the idea that some moderate reform was desirable came to be aired (and it was) and then became the obsession with reform that possessed the “brave” Father Bugnini and his merry band of men, leading them to create an entirely new liturgy from which the Mass of Vatican II is, sadly, absent.
In March 1965 Pope Paul VI hailed his celebration of the new liturgy as “a great event, that shall be remembered as the beginning of a flourishing spiritual life, as a new effort to participate in the great dialogue between God and man.” Alas, as all the indicators show only too clearly, that flourishing has not come to pass. For all his sincerity and good intentions it is perhaps more accurate to quote William Buckley’s assessment: “The tragic epitaph of Pope Paul’s reign is the half-filled American Church on Sunday” (11 August 1978). Unfortunately, almost five decades on the statistics still bear out this judgement.
The liturgical reform desired by the Fathers of the Second Vatican Council – and glimpsed by them with satisfaction sixty years ago today – quickly became a runaway train. Its engineers took it far beyond its intended destination, and those who attempt to control it today are unwilling and/or unable to get it back onto the tracks the Council laid down for it. Indeed, many seem to be enjoying the ride!
It is important to reiterate that this does not mean that the new rites cannot assist those who actually still practise the Faith in encountering God, but it does mean that the Mass and other liturgical rites that masquerade under the Council’s name are simply not that which the Second Vatican Council called for or authorised. They are products created afterwards according to a different set of principles.
All of this begs the question of whether today, or in the future, it is or shall be possible to find what the Council Fathers actually desired. Without a full-scale reform of the reform it seems unlikely in the usus recentior – the modern use of the Roman rite.
But that the full, conscious, actual and fruitful participation in the Ordo Missæ which has grown up in the course of the centuries, and the other liturgical rites, can be found in the usus antiquior – the older use of the Roman rite – as they are celebrated today, is unquestionable. It may well be that many of the Council Fathers present in St Peter’s Square sixty years ago today would more than understand those who – and particularly the young who are searching for God – given everything that has happened since, turn to the older rites and discover in them treasures that are old yet ever new.
Dom Alcuin Reid is the Prior of the Monastère Saint-Benoît in Brignoles, France, and a liturgical scholar of international renown. His principal work The Organic Development of the Liturgy (Ignatius, 2005) carries a preface by Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger.
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