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.
