Category: Liturgy

For very understandable reasons, a number of people are today celebrating the seventh anniversary of Summorum Pontificum (SP), though the document didn’t enter into force until September 2007. I already wrote some thoughts on SP here. Contrary to certain claims, I do not believe SP is a flawless document, but my quibbles with it are minor. In fact, they are so powerfully overshadowed by the real problems of SP’s implementation and the active hostility of bishops, priests, and layfok toward the Tridentine Mass that I really see no point in discussing them. Were SP met with open arms by the hierarchs of the world and every diocese on earth committed to offering the vetus ordo regularly, I doubt very much that anyone, even nitpicking traditionalists, would care that much about SP’s marginal tensions. But that is not the case. I can’t remember a week going by since I entered the Catholic Church in 2011 where I didn’t read or hear some Catholic, conservative or otherwise, popping off about SP, the Tridentine Mass, those who attend it, or all of the above. Their criticisms, more often than not, were visceral, not intellectual. And in those rare circumstances where some degree of intelligence was applied to the alleged “problem” of the old Mass, the arguments often rested on rickety premises (“Only old people like it…”) or (potentially false) claims which utterly miss the point: “Nobody understands Latin!”; “The old Mass creates too much distance between the priest and the faithful!”; “What do you mean we can’t sing ‘On Eagle’s Wings’?”

Since I wrote “1962” a week ago, Fr. John Hunwicke has offered a few posts — peppered with his trademark wryness — on the 1962 liturgical books and slavish adherence to them: “Leading By Example,” “Prefaces,” and “Today…” As usual I find it difficult to disagree with Fr. Hunwicke’s critiques of the 1962 missal and office. In fact, as I made clear in my earlier post, I am sympathetic to individual priests and fraternities gradually shifting back toward certain pre-1962 practices and texts, especially the pre-1955 order for Holy Week.

Traditional Catholics are often accused of being uncharitable and self-righteous when it comes to their brothers and sisters in Christ who do not fall within the traditionalist orbit. In fact, traditional Catholics are routinely accused by other traditional Catholics of being uncharitable and self-righteous when it comes to their brothers and sisters in Christ who do not happen to fall within some very specific traditionalist orbit. Certain folks claim that these divisions are all part of a divide-and-conquer strategy instituted by opponents of tradition. That charge, which isn’t very plausible to begin with, is undermined by the reality that traditionalists possess no shortage of reasons to generate their own divisions without outside assistance. Even the sedevacantists—the most “hardcore” wing of traditional Catholicism—can’t keep themselves together despite their miniscule numbers. It’s really no surprise then that the rest of the traditional Catholic world is fractured along any number of lines: liturgical, ecclesiological, spiritual, aesthetic, and so forth.

On the old Opus Publicum I staged several defenses of the liturgical books approved for use with the vetus ordo (“1962 books”) against those critics, some more good-natured and well-intentioned than others, who find them wanting. Some in fact argue that the 1962 books represent a transition from the classic Roman Rite to the New Rite of Pope Paul VI, though as a genealogical matter that is a hard argument to maintain. While the modern liturgical reformers had been busy at their dark craft since the first-half of the 20th Century, the revolutionary changes to the Holy Week Rite in the 1950s coupled with a reduction of the Breviarium Romanum and the Roman Calendar did not inevitably point to the Novus Ordo Missae and the Liturgia Horarum. Besides, it is anachronistic to assess the value of the 1962 books based on what happened later in the decade, as if the slight and subtle simplifications introduced into the Missale Romanum of John XXIII eviscerated the Offertory in the New Mass and gave us Eucharistic Prayer II. The integrity of the 1962 books must be judged, if not exclusively then substantially, in the light of what preceded them.