Fifty years ago today, Pope Paul VI promulgated the Second Vatican Council document, Sacrosanctum Concilium, the Constitution on the Sacred Liturgy.
To mark the occasion, most “conservative” commentary seems to be centered on those faithful portions of the text that have been largely ignored; e.g., “Particular law remaining in force, the use of the Latin language is to be preserved in the Latin rites” (SC 36).
I, however, think it far more important to acknowledge the shortcomings of this document; to come to terms with how these have contributed to the protestantization of Holy Mass.
This sacred Council has several aims in view: it desires to impart an ever increasing vigor to the Christian life of the faithful; to adapt more suitably to the needs of our own times those institutions which are subject to change; to foster whatever can promote union among all who believe in Christ; to strengthen whatever can help to call the whole of mankind into the household of the Church. – SC 1
This unfortunate nonsense about “fostering union” as a goal to be achieved by way of the liturgy’s reform set the stage for removing from the rite anything that might be found objectionable to the heretics; the first thing to go being the Offertory, since, after all, “it smacks of sacrifice” as Martin Luther so correctly observed. And we wonder where our sense of the sacred went…
To promote active participation, the people should be encouraged to take part by means of acclamations, responses, psalmody, antiphons, and songs, as well as by actions, gestures, and bodily attitudes. And at the proper times all should observe a reverent silence. – SC 30
Seized upon by progressives, this statement has been leveraged as a command to dole out liturgical activities, as if “doing something” is the equivalent of active participation.
Although the sacred liturgy is above all things the worship of the divine Majesty, it likewise contains much instruction for the faithful. – SC 33
Offered under the heading “Norms based upon the didactic and pastoral nature of the Liturgy,” this underdeveloped proposition has given rise to treating Holy Mass as a teaching moment. Yes, the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass contains what we might call “instruction” in that it forms the faithful to the likeness of Christ who redeems us, but it is not, properly speaking, a venue for teaching.
The Council footnotes the Council of Trent here, but this is what Trent said:
“Although the Mass contains great instruction for the faithful people, nevertheless, it has not seemed expedient to the Fathers, that it should be everywhere celebrated in the vulgar tongue … Pastors are encouraged to expound upon some portion of those things which are read at mass, and that they explain some mystery of this most holy sacrifice, especially on the Lord’s days and festivals.”
The Fathers of Trent are talking about the homily, not about treating the rite itself as if it were a time for catechesis.
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. – SC 34
The phrase “noble simplicity” is not new; it had previously been used to describe the traditional rite, and yet, the above directive has served to embolden those who desire an impoverished liturgy, a rite sufficiently brought down to earth such that it is “within the people’s powers of comprehension,” a ludicrous notion given the nature of Holy Mass.
On a similar note:
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. – SC 21
The idea that the mystical encounter with the Lord effected at Holy Mass can be “understood with ease” is utterly ridiculous.
Even in the liturgy, the Church has no wish to impose a rigid uniformity … rather does she respect and foster the genius and talents of the various races and peoples … Anything in these peoples’ way of life which is not indissolubly bound up with superstition and error she … sometimes in admits into the liturgy itself, so long as they harmonize with its true and authentic spirit … 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 … In some places and circumstances, however, an even more radical adaptation of the liturgy is needed, and this entails greater difficulties. – cf SC 37-40
It is thanks in part to this encouragement to promote “variations, adaptations,” and even “more radical adaptations” that the Mass has been so customized that even in any given diocese there are as many variations of the Novus Ordo as flavors at Baskin Robbins.
In conclusion, while it is important to point to those all-too-often ignored faithful expressions found in Sacrosanctum Concilium, we are far better served facing head-on the leaven of unorthodoxy contained therein, as most assuredly the entire lump has been corrupted.
Christopher Ferrara has analyzed the Liturgy Constitution from a lawyer’s perspective:
Sacrosanctum Concilium: A Lawyer Examines the Loopholes
by Christopher Ferrara, Esq., American Catholic Lawyers Association
For nearly 30 years, traditionalists have listened to “conservatives” argue that the postconciliar devastation of the Roman Rite has nothing whatsoever to do with language of Sacrosanctum Concilium, the Second Vatican Council’s document on the sacred liturgy. (I shall refer to this document throughout as SC)
As we know, most “conservatives” are constitutionally incapable of recognizing that Vatican II opened the way to the greatest debacle in the history of the Catholic Church, producing a state of affairs which makes the Arian heresy look like a Catholic revival by comparison. To this day, the “conservatives” steadfastly maintain that Vatican II – with its peculiar “pastoral” purpose and its strangely fuzzy documents, the likes of which no other Council had ever produced – did not in any way cause the unprecedented ecclesial crisis which followed. Sure.
This denial of reality is why “conservatives” continue to insist that if only SC were implemented “as the Council intended,” why then we would have an “authentic reform of the liturgy” in the “true spirit of Vatican II.” But “conservatives” have little to say about Paul VI’s declarations in November 1969, echoed by John Paul II on the 25th anniversary of SC, that the New Mass is precisely what SC authorized and therefore precisely what the Council intended. This fact is very difficult for “conservatives” to acknowledge. For if both Paul VI and John Paul II agree that the provisions of SC warranted creation of a new vernacular rite of Mass, then the “conservatives” must either agree with the Popes’ reading of SC – in which case the “authentic reform” of the liturgy has already occurred – or they must accuse two Popes of erring gravely in their authoritative interpretation of a Conciliar document. Quite a quandary.
A few years ago, having grown tired of hearing the “conservative” line on SC, I did what I should have done long before: I sat down and read the document – line-by-line, word-by-word. It was a classic jaw-dropping experience. Anyone with a modicum of perspicuity can see (at least in retrospect) that SC was designed by its principal draftsman, Annibale Bugnini, to authorize a liturgical revolution, while giving the appearance of liturgical continuity. It is a nest of deadly ambiguities which the Council Fathers can only have approved in the confidence that the liturgical tradition of the Roman Rite could not possibly suffer a dramatic rupture, because it had never happened before.
A lawyer knows that the dangers in a contract from his client’s perspective lie not so much in what the terms of the contract provide as in what they permit the other party to do. The danger is in the loopholes. Quite simply, SC permits all manner of drastic things to be done to the Roman liturgy. It is one long collection of loopholes. If a lawyer entrusted with the task of protecting the Roman liturgy from harmful innovation had drafted this document, he would be guilty of gross malpractice.
It is amazing that anyone who claims to have read SC thoroughly could still maintain that its “true” interpretation precludes the liturgical innovations which have been inflicted upon us. Paul VI and John Paul II certainly did not think so. Neither did I, once I had actually studied the document instead of simply accepting the “conservative” line at face value. Ladies and gentlemen, we’ve been had. And so was the Council.
The following, then, is a brief discussion of what can be called the “conservative” and “liberal” norms of SC. This discussion does not pretend to be authoritative; it represents only a commonsensical analysis of the document from the perspective of a prudently skeptical reader, looking for loopholes and trying to figure out the real intention of its draftsman – in this case, Bugnini, who was also given the task of supervising SC’s implementation as Secretary of Paul VI’s Consilium.
Two Themes
I ask the reader to focus on the two themes of the SC which are apparent from the quoted provisions: (a) open-ended authorization for liturgical reform on what is potentially a vast scale, but without requiring that any particular reform of the liturgy be enacted or avoided; and (b) “democratization” of the liturgy by ceding effective liturgical control to the “ecclesiastical territorial authority” of each country, and the liturgy commissions to be established in each diocese. These two themes are couched in language which seems to inhibit the scope of potential reform in the light of tradition, but does so in a way which always admits of immediate exceptions to suit local needs, conditions and circumstances as determined by “territorial ecclesiastical authority,” subject only to Rome’s approval or ex post facto confirmation – which has rarely been withheld. The playing out of these two themes over the past 30 years has meant nothing less than what Msgr. Klaus Gamber (with Cardinal Ratzinger’s approbation) called “the real destruction of the Roman Rite,” with the consequent loss of unity of cult in the Western Church. The results speak for themselves.
The prudently skeptical reader of SC can readily see that SC is composed of both “conservative” and “liberal” norms, the latter serving to undermine and negate the former. In reading the “liberal” norms of SC, the reader will no doubt wonder how the Council Fathers, including the late Archbishop Marcel Lefebvre, could have been induced to approve such an open-ended document. As Msgr. Gamber observed in Reform of the Roman Liturgy: “The Council Fathers, when publishing the Constitution on Sacred Liturgy, simply did not expect to see the avalanche they had started, crushing under it all traditional forms of liturgical worship, even the new liturgy they themselves had created . . .” [p. 21] As we have seen, today’s “conservatives” evince a similar blindness, even though they, unlike the Council Fathers, have had the benefit of seeing the document interpreted and implemented by two Popes, with manifestly disastrous results.
In retrospect we can now see quite clearly that the unprecedented language of SC permitted the unprecedented reforms which followed. Again, we were reminded of this fact by Pope John Paul II’s address on the 25th anniversary of SC, in which he praised the document and “the reforms which it has made possible,” noting that “the liturgical reform is the most visible fruit of the whole work of the Council.” As the Holy Father’s remarks should make clear, SC can no longer be made to serve any agenda but that of its drafters, which agenda has been carried out. Given the past 25 years of liturgical reform, all of it approved by the Holy See as consistent with SC, any search for an “authentic” interpretation of the document which differs from the Holy See’s constant reading of it must now be abandoned as quite pointless. If our Latin liturgical tradition is restored, it will not be restored under some newly discovered interpretation of SC.
More at salbert.tripod.com/SClel.htm
The Roman Rite has devolved into almost as many rites as there are priests. Fr. Joe’s rite, Fr. Tim’s rite, etc.
I was blessed to be a member of an old parish with a very devout pastor. We had the NO in Latin every Sunday, Forty Hours, St. Joseph and Sacred Heart Novenas, Communion only at the rail and only under one Species.
Even the NO celebrated by this very humble, devoted priest seemed clumsy. It seemed that the priest was always waiting for the choir and the choir waiting for the priest. The Mass was very long and actually annoyed some people. The beauty of the sung Ordinary and Propers was wasted.
Father said a daily noon Mass, NO in English. His devotion was always present and true to his task. But, I still bristled when I said “Christ has died. Christ has Risen. Christ will come again,” when Christ was right there, on the Altar. And, “behold the Lamb of God, (true), happy are those who are called to His Supper.” Supper? And, in the Preface,
I grew up in the Church of Christ, and I miss it. The New Mass is a mockery to anyone who believes in the Most Holy Sacrifice of the Altar.
Well done, Louie, brilliant take on SC. Until these gaping wounds in the docs of Vatican II are really addressed there will be no true evangelization. Just more years of the Church bleeding away to the point of being on life-support. The texts you quoted inflicted the wounds that are now badly infected and I am afraid the new Apostolic Exhortation just aggravates the wounds even further. The Catholic Church thrives on the universality of her doctrine and discipline. We dismantle that to our eternal peril.
Video of “an even more radical adaptation of the liturgy in some places and circumstances”:
Misa y homilía de Bergoglio en el incendiado taller esclavo de Luis Viale
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g8UkGyfLGVo
Ferrara said: ” composed of both “conservative” and “liberal” norms, the latter serving to undermine and negate the former.” This MO is the concilliar MO – is the faith fracturing monologue of the current drive-by pope and his favourite predecessors. Why to they call God a Rock Why did Christ call St Peter the Rock – so that we could stand secure, safe, through the storm of the world and win the crown. Anyone who preaches standing on sand and inviting in the world is the world. The Church invites souls to salvation. That’s it. Anyone can be nice. Only the Church can save souls. And here we have two generations now of shepherds insisting that souls don’t need saving , and that the worldly commandment of ‘be nice/pc’, this ‘doctrine’ of the ‘new evangelisation’ is presented as a sublation of the New Covenant and every Truth and Command revealed to us through the Holy Trinity.
Louie, Your comments on this document are insightful. Though it will be a monumental task, I hope you plan on a similar analysis of Evangelii Gaudium. Keep the Faith!
Let me put it to you this way:
The Novus Ordo Mass is a Polyglot Liturgy of Protestant Elements(Versus Populum & Vernacular), supposed Greek Catholic & Orthodox Practices including the “Prayers Of The Faithful”(Lame Rendition of the Beautiful & Incomparable Litanies of The Byzantine Rite) & standing for Holy Communion(As if a Snack Line), a greeting prayer which is the Preface to the Canons of the Byzantine Rite, Holy Communion A Mano(In The Hand) & readings used by Protestants, from a format abandoned by Pope St Gregory The Great.
The UNNECESSARY Presentation of The Gifts, which was tried in Eutope & The US without Vatican Authorization & condemned by Venerable Pope Pius XII in 1952, only to be part of the NO Mass by 1969, the Lutheranized Cranmerized version of The Confitior(Minus The Saints), turned this Mass into the Polyglot Liturgy of Today, not truly Catholic & the Abolishment of The True Offertory with a Passover Seder Prayer, so as not to offend Heretics who recognize neither Priesthood nor Sacrifice, RUINED Catholic Belief in The Eucharist.