Novus Ordo - Fabricated or Organic?
After Bishop Rifan’s visit to these shores in May 2003, which alarmed many liberals, a lively controversy broke out in the columns of The Tablet regarding the relative merits of the new rite and the traditional rite, in which the LMS stoutly argued its case. Here, Philip Goddard develops the argument.
Apologists for the Novus Ordo tend to defend it on one or other, and occasionally both, of two grounds. Firstly, they claim that it represents a return to the Eucharistic rite of the first few centuries of the Christian Church. Thus we read in an editorial in The Tablet, 31 May 2003, that, “Most Catholics are agreed that the new rite of the Mass introduced by Paul VI after the Second Vatican Council represents a welcome return to the roots of the liturgy.” (The editor does not explain exactly how most Catholics, who have little, if any, acquaintance with liturgical history, have managed to arrive at this conclusion). The second argument is that the Novus Ordo is not really a different rite from the preceding one, but merely a reformed version of the same rite, arrived at by eliminating undesirable elements which have crept into it in the course of time. Thus Mgr Anthony Boylan, a well-known apologist for the Novus Ordo, in a letter published in the same issue of The Tablet, calls the new Mass, “the reformed version of the Roman rite”, and the so-called Tridentine rite, “the previous version of that liturgy”.
The first thing that strikes one about these arguments is that they are not entirely consistent with each other. The Novus Ordo might represent the restoration of the rite known to the earliest Christians or it might be just a reformed version of the immediately preceding Roman rite, but it is hard to see how it could be both simultaneously. However that may be, is there in fact any substance in either of these arguments? In my view there is not, for reasons which I hope to explain in this article.
Return to the roots?
Starting with the first argument, let me quote the words of J.A. Jungmann, who is acknowledged to have been one of the foremost liturgical scholars of the twentieth century. In his magnum opus, The Mass of the Roman Rite, Fr Jungmann has this to say: “The beginnings of the Latin Mass in Rome are wrapped in almost total darkness. The oldest documents to register such a Mass are nearly all the work of diligent Frankish scribes of the eighth and ninth centuries, and even with all the apparatus of literary criticism and textual analysis, we can hardly reconstruct any records back beyond the sixth century, certainly not beyond the fifth. For the most part whatever is here transmitted as the permanent text – especially the canon, but likewise the major portion of the variable prayers of the celebrant, and the readings – is almost identical with present-day usage”. Fr Jungmann wrote this in 1948, and by “present-day usage” he meant of course what we know as the old Roman (or Tridentine) rite. No documents have come to light since 1948 which in any way alter or modify this statement. In other words, the Roman liturgy of the first few centuries is almost totally unknown to us, and the earliest Roman Mass liturgy of which we do have any detailed knowledge is in every important respect identical to that in use before the Second Vatican Council. So much for the Novus Ordo being “a welcome return to the roots of the liturgy”!
Old and new are the same?
There are two important considerations driving the second of these two arguments, both derived from principles laid down in the Constitution on the Sacred Liturgy. In this document the Council Fathers say that “Holy Mother Church holds all legitimately recognised rites in equal right and honour, and… she wishes them to be kept and fostered unreservedly for the future.” (CSL para. 4). If the old Roman rite and the Novus Ordo are two separate rites, then this statement clearly applies to both of them, and the suppression of the old rite must therefore be contrary to the wishes of the Council Fathers. In order to justify their desire to deprive traditionalists of access to their preferred rite, therefore, the modernists are compelled to argue that they are not two different rites, but an older and a newer version of the same. Secondly, we also read in the Constitution on the Sacred Liturgy that “Innovations should not be made unless when a real and definite advantage will accrue to the Church and when due care has been taken to ensure that the new forms shall, as it were, grow out organically from those already existing” (CSL para. 23). Clearly, what the Council Fathers had in mind was a conservative reform of the old rite, not its abolition and replacement with a completely new rite, and in order to demonstrate that the liturgical reform which followed the Council was not in conflict with their intentions, it is necessary for its apologists to argue that the Novus Ordo is not in fact a new rite at all.
Traditionalists can, of course, simply point to the words of Cardinal Castrillon Hoyos, who, in the course of his homily at the celebration of the traditional Mass in St Mary Major’s basilica on 24 May 2003, quoted paragraph four of the Constitution on the Sacred Liturgy and applied it specifically to the old rite, stating that, The ancient Roman rite therefore retains in the Church its right of citizenship in the bosom of the multiplicity of Catholic rites both western and oriental”. No doubt modernists will argue that Cardinal Castrillon Hoyos has got it all wrong, and, like Mgr Boylan in his letter mentioned above, that the Council Fathers were thinking principally of the rites of the Oriental churches, not of the Roman rite. But this is to put words into their mouths, words which are simply not there in the Constitution. And if there is any doubt as to how we should interpret their actual words, we must surely abide by the principle of “in dubiis libertas”. (“Where there is doubt, there is freedom”).
The new rite analysed
If the Novus Ordo, therefore, is neither a return to the Eucharistic liturgy of the early Church, nor a reformed version of the old Roman rite, what exactly is it? The answer, as I hope to demonstrate in the remainder of this article, is that it is a hotchpotch of elements, some completely novel, and others culled from a variety of rites, both Roman and non-Roman, because they happened to appeal to the post-conciliar liturgical reformers. Not only were a large number of novelties introduced by them into the liturgy, but many genuinely ancient survivals were suppressed. Let us therefore undertake a brief review of some of the principal features of the Novus Ordo:
The Penitential Rite. The classical Roman Mass liturgy does not include a penitential rite and never has done. What then, we might ask, of the so-called prayers at the foot of the altar? The answer is that they are not part of the Mass liturgy, which begins with the Introit. They originated in prayers said privately by the ministers in the sacristy, and only at a later stage of development were they transferred to the foot of the altar. At a High Mass or Missa Cantata they are recited sotto voce by the ministers while the choir sings the Introit; they are inaudible to the congregation, and are meant to be. The penitential rite which has been incorporated into the Novus Ordo is a complete innovation without precedent in the Roman Mass liturgy.
The Kyrie. This was never part of any penitential rite, but formed the introduction to a litany (as it continues to this day at the Easter Vigil). A litany is still sung at this point in the Eastern rites, but in the Roman rite it died out, for various reasons, at an early date, leaving only the Kyrie. In the Novus Ordo it is, quite incorrectly, tacked on to the new penitential rite.
The Collect. The collects of the 1962 missal come for the most part from three early sacramentaries (the Leonine, the Gelasian and the Gregorian), dating from the sixth and seventh centuries, though of course later ones composed for feasts which did not exist when these sacramentaries were compiled are also found. Many of these early collects have either been dropped altogether from the new missal of Pope Paul VI or, where they have been retained, have been rewritten to reflect the theological opinions and didactic preoccupations of the post-conciliar reformers (any reader interested in following this up is referred to a paper by Professor L. Bianchi in the Proceedings of the Fifth International Colloquium of CIEL).
The Readings. As in the case of the Collects, most of the readings in the 1962 missal are identical to those found in the earliest known lectionaries, except of course in the case of feasts which have been added to the calendar at a later date. The new lectionary, however, introduced a three year cycle of readings, a novelty wholly unprecedented in the history of the Roman rite. Few of the ancient readings survive on the days for which they were originally appointed. The addition of another reading as well as the Epistle on Sundays and solemnities is a genuine return to an ancient practice, which died out at a very early date. However, where the reformers came across instances where more than one pre-Gospel reading had survived on weekdays, for example on Ember days and certain weekdays in Lent, they actually suppressed them! Only on Good Friday was the original pattern retained, and even here different readings have been substituted for the ancient ones.
The Creed. This is a late addition to the Roman rite. Although found earlier in the Gallican liturgy, it was not adopted into the Roman rite until the year 1014. It certainly qualifies as a “medieval accretion”. The post-conciliar reformers retained it.
The Bidding Prayers. This is a genuine return to the ancient practice of the Roman rite, which had survived only on Good Friday. The primitive pattern, which readers familiar with the pre-1970 Holy Week liturgy will remember, was for the intention of each prayer to be announced, after which the congregation would be invited to kneel for a brief silent prayer, and finally the petition would be summarised in a collect. This primitive pattern was suppressed by the reformers.
The Offertory. It was the custom in the earliest times for a psalm to be sung during the presentation of the offerings, and a relic of this remains in the 1962 missal in the shape of the offertory verse, sung by the choir. The reformers abolished it, thus removing the last vestige of the ancient practice. The offertory prayers which followed, recited silently by the priest, have a complicated history but were in the main fairly late medieval additions to the liturgy. The reformers duly abolished them, but the prayers which they inserted to replace them, although based on ancient Jewish blessings, have never formed part of any Mass liturgy, in either the East or the West, and are entirely modern innovations.
The Eucharistic Prayer (Canon of the Mass). The core of the Roman Canon is certainly not later than about AD 365, and the intercessions were added during the following century. Here, if anywhere, you would have thought that reformers intent on a return to the roots of the liturgy would have left well alone. Not a bit of it. The only reason why the Roman Canon has survived comparatively intact is because the reformers fell out amongst themselves over the extent to which it should be rewritten. The matter was referred to Pope Paul VI, who decided that it should not be altered. The so-called “memorial acclamation of the people” is, however, wholly foreign to Rome; its source appears to have been certain Eastern rites.
Of the remaining Eucharistic prayers, the second contains an anamnesis and some thematic material from a third century prayer (the anaphora of Hippolytus), and the fourth (in itself, it has to be said, a fine prayer) is an adaptation of the Eucharistic prayer from the ancient Egyptian Liturgy of St Basil. The others are all purely modern compositions. It should, however, be noted that, since they all contain both the words of consecration and an epiklesis, there can be no doubt that, provided that there is no defect of intention on the part of the celebrant and that, in a vernacular Mass, the translation is accurate, they are valid consecratory prayers.
The Pater Noster. As St Gregory tells us in one of his letters, the primitive practice was for this to be said by the priest alone. Not long after St Gregory’s time we find the first reference to the custom of the congregation joining in the final petition (“Sed libera nos a malo”). The practice of the congregation joining in the recitation of the entire prayer is a twentieth century innovation.
The Embolism. The prayer which follows the Pater Noster in the 1962 missal is an ancient one, going back certainly to before the time of St Gregory. Again, you would have thought that the reformers would have wanted to retain it. Once again, you would be wrong. They did not like the ancient Embolism at all. Its request for the intercession of the saints came, in their view, too soon after a similar request in the Canon, and two such requests were in their eyes one too many. The fact that neither St Gregory the Great nor St Pius V thought so did not impress Bugnini and his colleagues in the slightest, so they cut it out.
The Sign of Peace. This was originally exchanged between the ministers in the sanctuary, between the laymen standing to one side of the nave and between the laywomen standing to the other. It was not exchanged between these groups. Nor was it a handshake but a formal kiss or bow. It was omitted on Maundy Thursday (because the many references in the liturgy to Judas’ kiss of betrayal made it inappropriate on that day) and at Requiem Masses. The current practice of shaking hands on every occasion with everyone within reach is unknown in any liturgy before 1970.
The Oratio super Populum. This was a sort of second Postcommunion prayer, which in the earliest times was said on every day in the year. By the time of the Council of Trent it survived only on the weekdays of Lent. Instead of restoring the earlier practice, the reformers abolished it on the weekdays of Lent also.
Fabricated liturgy
I conclude with the words of Cardinal Ratzinger on the Novus Ordo: “After the Council… in place of the liturgy as the fruit of organic development came fabricated liturgy. We abandoned the organic, living process of growth and development over centuries, and replaced it, as in a manufacturing process, with a fabrication, a banal on-the-spot product”. I hope this necessarily brief overview will help readers to appreciate the truth of Cardinal Ratzinger’s comments.
[Taken from the Latin Mass Society's May 2004 Newsletter.]
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