Based on Father Adrian Fortescue's famous work The Mass: A Study of
the Roman Liturgy, the little book gives a compact history of the
Roman Rite of the Mass from the Last Supper to the Traditional Mass
("Tridentine Mass") as it is said today. Michael Davies - the
foremost author in English on the changes in the Catholic liturgy -
explains the origin of Low Mass, of Sacramentaries, of the Gallican
and various other Western Rites, etc. He highlights the reforms of
Pope St. Gregory the Great (590-604) and Pope St. Pius V (1566-1572),
showing how neither "reform" produced a "new" liturgy; rather the
liturgical texts were always treated with the upmost reverence, and
revisions were always minor. Michael Davies points out that "the very
idea of composing a new order of Mass was and is totally alien to the
whole Catholic ethos" and that "The Catholic tradition has been to
hold fast to what has been handed down and to loOk upon any novelty
with the utmost suspicion." Yet this unbroken Catholic tradition was
breached in 1970 when the Roman Missal was subjected to radical
revision.
The reader will come away from this book with a totally new
appreciation for the "Tridentine Mass" as being our sacred and
life-giving liturgical heritage - passed down to us from Christian
antiquity and intended to be passed on to all Catholic generations yet
to come!
