Of course, all that follows in this post becomes irrelevant if and when this pope does abrogate or substantially amend Summmorum Pontificum
in any way. But there have been quite a few commentaries from 'traditional' bloggers on the most recent suggestions put forward by Cardinal Sarah
to improve and possibly standardize celebration of the Mass in both forms of the Roman rite. One or two have not met with the universal welcome
[by traditionalists] to his 'ad orientem' recommendation last year. While I have not posted anything of this current polemic, I shall start off
with this post by Fr Hunwicke who deals with the relatively non-controversial ones of Cardinal Sarah's recent liturgical suggestions. Fr H comments
as a priest and liturgist of the first Anglican Ordinariate, whose historically-based, Benedict-approved liturgy has remained stable and uncontroversial
in the first eight years of the experience so far.
Cardinal Sarah and the Ordinariate rite
July 27, 2017
In his latest lecture, the very admirable and very courageous Cardinal Prefect of the Sacred Congregation of Rites (Oops ... have I perpetrated an anachronism?) adds, to the suggestions he had made earlier, at least two new points for the improvement of the Ordinary Form:
(1)
The priest should genuflect immediately after the Consecration of the Host and of the Chalice.
It is, surely, unnecessary to explain why this is so desirable. I point out that it already happens in the Ordinariate Rite. (You will remember that, upon seeing a copy of our Ordinariate Missal, His Eminence wistfully commented "Why can't we have something like this?")
(2)
The holding of thumb and index finger conjoined after they have touched the Consecrated Host.
After the regime of Edward Tudor had imposed the First Prayer Book upon the suffering clergy and people of England, the tyrants discovered that the clergy were assimilating the service as closely as possible to the Sarum Mass. So draft Articles of Visitation ordered
"For a uniformity, that no minister do counterfeit the popish mass, as to kiss the Lord's table; washing his fingers at every time in the communion; blessing his eyes with the paten, or sudary; or crossing his head with the paten; shifting of the book from one place to another; laying down and licking the chalice of the communion; holding up his fingers, hands, or thumbs, joined towards his temples; breathing upon the the bread or chalice; showing the sacrament openly before the distribution of the communion; ringing of sacrying bells; or setting any light upon the Lord's board ..."
I suspect that the section I have boldened refers to the conjoining of thumb and index finger ... what, in the 1960s, trendy vandals used to call "finger pinching".
We of the Anglican Patrimony have a long experience ... centuries ... of catholicising defective liturgies imposed by soi-disant authorities. Perhaps we should set up a lucrative Consultancy to show those who want to catholicise their bog-standard Novus Ordo how it's done? No need ... if they attend a Latin Mass Society training week on the Extraordinary Form, they'll find it fairly obvious how to transfer the skills from EF to OF.
But it is Father Z who has done his best to keep track of the polemics regarding the more controversial suggestions from Cardinal Sarah, especially concerning the Lectionary – the prescribed Scriptural readings for the daily Masses and feasts of the Church. His posts on the topic are very useful because he cites the major arguments put forward by a few of the major commentators on the Sarah proposals, so I do not need to post his references in toto, though I have provided the links to the full articles…
Cardinal Sarah’s proposals for 'mutual enrichment'
July 21, 2017
There are strong debates going on over many important issues right now. One of those which most interests me has been stoked by the 10th anniversary of Benedict XVI’s monumentally important Summorum Pontificum. I called it the “Emancipation Proclamation”, and have dubbed it a foundation block of his “Marshall Plan” for the revitalization of our Catholic identity and a bulwark against the dictatorship of relativism.
For the 10th anniversary, the great Robert Card. Sarah, Prefect of the Congregation for Divine Worship, wrote an article for the French magazine La Nef. The text was hard to find (I have it now). I was also sent a good English translation which I read as a PODCAzT. I didn’t agree with everything the Cardinal suggested about the future path of Benedict’s desired “mutual enrichment” of the two “forms” of the Roman Rite. However, I have prayerfully engaged them.
Fr. Raymond de Souza (he’s been busy lately), not an enemy of traditional expressions of worship but not a strong supporter, wrote an endorsement of Card. Sarah’s suggestions at the UK’s best Catholic weekly (for which I also write)
The Catholic Herald: “Cardinal Sarah’s challenge to traditionalists".
[Fr Z proceeds to quote excerpts, adding his comments in red.]
Sarah proposes that efforts be made to have a shared calendar and a shared lectionary, so that both the EF and OF would celebrate more feasts together and have the same Scripture readings at Mass. [Additions of saints to the traditional calendar is not terribly problematic. The addition of a new lectionary would introduce the serious problems of coherence that the Novus Ordo experiences, at least on Sundays. Also, I am not entirely sure that everyone would agree that the new Lectionary has been 100% successful. That said, yes, it would be easier for priests to have the same readings in both forms, especially when they – as I frequently do – say both forms on a Sunday. But easy isn’t a good objective in worship.]
That poses a twofold challenge. First, it requires the EF community to acknowledge that some aspects of the OF, particularly its reformed calendar and its lectionary – which includes far more Scripture than the EF one – are actual improvements and possible enrichments for the EF. [That isn’t apparent.]
There are certainly some in the EF community who are happy to acknowledge this and would be pleased to see a shared calendar and lectionary. [Again, these are two different issues.] But others, not an insignificant part, consider the entire OF to be an impoverishment with little, if anything, enriching to offer. [It would be good to put together the bullet points of what riches the OF would bring to the EF. That could be a helpful starting point for discussion.]In the background, of course, is the Society of St Pius X, which would be deeply suspicious of any talk of changing the EF Roman Missal, 1962 edition…
Moving towards Cardinal Sarah’s vision begins, though, not with practicalities but with a change of heart. That is likely why he chose the term “reconciliation”. Reconciliation requires a change of heart, a willingness to see the good in the other, and an openness to make things different in order to accommodate that good…
I think we all can agree that at the heart of most instances of reconciliation, especially in the life of the Church, all parties need a “change of heart”.
However, I must of observe that,
for decades, many of the traditional-leaning have experienced their hearts being torn from their breasts and stomped on by the other side, as it were. Their hearts have again and again been bruised and riven. If a change of heart is at the heart of reconciliation, then so are apologies. So is a time for healing.Talking about a change of heart is easy.
That brings me to another reaction to Card. Sarah’s 10th anniversary article, in dialogue with Fr. de Souza, by Prof. Joseph Shaw of Oxford and of the Latin Mass Society, who wrote a piece called
“Why Cardinal Sarah’s liturgical ‘reconciliation’ plan won’t work“.
http://www.catholicherald.co.uk/commentandblogs/2017/07/21/why-cardinal-sarahs-liturgical-reconciliation-plan-wont-work/
Firstly, Shaw recaps what Card. Sarah suggested for the mutual enrichment of the two forms. For example, Sarah proposes introduction – no –
re-introduction into the OF of the ff: reception of Communion on the tongue while kneeling (which should be the norm anyway); the Prayers at the Foot of the Altar; options for using the old Offertory prayers; quiet canon; and the so-called ‘canonical digits’ (the priest's fingers). [But Shaw questions] adoption of the Novus Ordo Lectionary (as Fr. de Souza praised) and what I consider a less problematic closer alignment of the calendars, so long as this is restricted to the addition of modern saints, etc. Shaw then tackles the issue of the Lectionary:
The new lectionary is sometimes held up as obviously superior to the old, but not everyone committed to the reformed Mass agrees. The Toronto Oratorian Fr Jonathan Robinson wrote in (The Mass and Modernity, 2005, p332): "I think the diversity, rather than enriching people, tends to confuse them… This may be because the selections, as has been noted by others, were drawn up more to satisfy the sensibilities of liturgical scholars than on traditional liturgical principles." [My old boss at “Ecclesia Dei” remarked that the addition of a third reading on Sundays lent an undesirable element of “didacticism” to Mass. And if there is greater variety of Scripture readings in the Novus Ordo, the yearly repetition of the same readings on Sunday and Feasts in the trditional Mass ensured that the faithful came to know them well. Today, ask people what the readings were as they walk out of Mass.]
However, another question is raised by Cardinal Sarah’s proposal: Can the lectionaries of the two Forms simply by swapped over? The short answer is ‘no’.
To take the most obvious problem, the 1969 Lectionary has no readings for the season of Septuagesima, because that season does not exist in the 1969 calendar. Were the ‘Ordinary Time’ cycle simply extended to this period of three Sundays before Lent, its penitential orations would conflict with readings which can be used after Pentecost as well as before Lent. [How about the reintroduction of the pre-Lent readings to the Ordinaey Form? How’s that as the step to mutual enrichment?]
Variations on this problem arise throughout the Church’s year. Many of the EF’s proper texts of feast days, and a good many Sundays, refer to the readings. The choice of readings in the Ordinary Form is so different from those in the Extraordinary Form that the discordance would be particularly jarring. [Moreover, there is often a strong resonance between the readings and the antiphons in Mass formularies that would be disrupted, as it has been in the Novus Ordo with it’s three year Sunday cycle.]
Shaw has more on the issue of the Lectionary. Then, however, Shaw make a strong argument, which I endorse.
Above all I would like to suggest that the Church has nothing to fear from a varied liturgical landscape: a landscape becoming more varied as Eastern Rite Catholics flee to the West. Vatican II reassured us on this point (Unitatis redintegratio 17): "…from time to time one tradition has come nearer to a full appreciation of some aspects of a mystery of revelation than the other, or has expressed it to better advantage. In such cases, these various theological expressions are to be considered often as mutually complementary rather than conflicting." This, surely, is the direction from which ‘liturgical reconciliation’ should come.
YES! The Church even in the West has had a varied and rich liturgical tradition of Rites. Pius V acknowledged and supported this by “grandfathering” in regional Rites to exist along side the Roman Rite which became the universal Rite for the Latin Church. Over time, the Roman Rite became stronger even in those places which had its own Rite…
over time. With the sudden and brutal imposition of an artifically crafted Novus Ordo Missae in 1969, came the heart-breaking suppression of what was “sacred and great”.
I have argued for decades, ever since an article in Catholic World Report in 1992 (I think), that we have nothing to fear from side by side celebrations of Holy Mass in the traditional form and in the Novus Ordo. Card. Ratzinger wanted that contact, to help jump start
the organic development of liturgy which, as the freezing of mustum halts its fermentation into wine, interrupted the centuries-long evolution of our liturgical prayer.
Sound liturgical changes take time… a lot of time. Impatience and imprudent imposition broke hearts and ruptured our Catholic identity, so enervating the Church that we are now experiencing crises in virtually every sphere of her global mission.
Back in the early 90s I was already arguing that we shouldn’t be afraid of side by side Missals. Over time, we would see the results. Eventually, however, there would emerge a tertium quid – as I was used to call it then – from the dialogue between the rites. This I got straight from Card. Ratzinger in chats and from reading his work.
One thing that the Extraordinary Form has already benefited from comes mainly from the ars celebrandi of priests who have had an experience of the Novus Ordo:
there is a greater awareness of the presence of and role of the congregation now than ever before. I think that factor alone, if nothing else, has already produced great benefits for the EF. That’s not a change to the Rite itself. That’s a change within the mind and the heart of the priest celebrant.
Benedict XVI spoke eloquently of a priest’s ars celebrandi in his Sacramentum caritatis 38 ff., as the best way to foster the (properly understood) “active participation” of the congregation in the way that the Council Fathers hoped for in Sacrosanctum Concilium.
Who says that we can’t have unity in diversity? In this, Shaw agrees with another great churchman on another 10th annversary. Back in 26 October 1998, St John Paul II, addressed members of the Priestly Fraternity of St Peter who had come to Rome for the 10th anniversary of the his Motu Proprio
“Ecclesia Dei adflicta” (which was superseded… or rather brought to fruition… by
Summorum Pontificum). John Paul said:
In order to safeguard the treasure which Jesus has entrusted to her, and resolutely turned towards the future, it is the Church’s duty to reflect constantly on her link with the Tradition that comes to us from the Lord through the Apostles, as it has been built up throughout history. According to the spirit of conversion in the Apostolic Letter Tertio millennio adveniente (nn. 14, 32, 34, 50), [to which Card. Sarah could appeal] I urge all Catholics to perform acts of unity and to renew their loyalty to the Church, so that their legitimate diversity and different sensitivities, which deserve respect, will not divide them but spur them to proclaim the Gospel together; thus, moved by the Spirit who makes all charisms work towards unity, they can all glorify the Lord, and salvation will be proclaimed to all nations.
There is true unity in legitimate diversity.
I say, we need a long period of stability of the two forms side by side. We must work to establish more and more celebrations of the older, traditional form so that there is a greater opportunity for, not only mutual enrichment, but also the healing of a deeply wounded Church.
We are our rites. The rupture of our rites created the wound in our identity. It was the abrupt tinkering with our rites that made the wound in the first place.
Moreover, there is so much
illegitimate diversity in the way that the Novus Ordo is celebrated, with odd variations and liturgical abuses, that a great deal of work is needed on that side of the Roman Rite before the reconciliation and mutual enrichment desired by everyone can get off the ground and pick up speed! Let’s learn from our mistakes.
We must take the prudent path of growth and stability for the Extraordinary Form and of first stabilizing the Ordinary Form and then letting it be what it is according to the desires of the principles enunciated by the Council Fathers.
Meanwhile, to further Card. Sarah’s call for reconciliation, keep in mind the old but true chestnut, often but wrongly attributed to St. Augustine:
In necessariis unitas, in dubiis libertas, in omnibus caritas. (Let us have unity in necessary things, liberty in doubtful things, and in all things charity.)
Fr. De Souza responds to responses about
'reconciling' the EF and the OF Masses
July 25, 2017
Some discussion about the “mutual enrichment” hoped for and promoted by Benedict XVI with
Summorum Pontificum has been generated by Card. Sarah’s article in the French magazine
La Nef for the 10th anniversary of the promulgation of that Motu Proprio’s text .. Cool reactions followed quickly. For example, scholars Joseph Shaw of the Latin Mass Society in England
http://www.catholicherald.co.uk/commentandblogs/2017/07/21/why-cardinal-sarahs-liturgical-reconciliation-plan-wont-work/
and Gregory DiPippo of New Liturgical Movement
http://www.newliturgicalmovement.org/2017/07/when-can-mutual-enrichment-begin.html#.WXXQfbpFw2w
.
A warm embrace came from Fr. Raymond de Souza
http://catholicherald.co.uk/issues/july-21st-2017/cardinal-sarahs-challenge-to-traditionalists/
I had the impression that he thought that
there should be a large-scale revamping of the traditional form and some tweaking of the newer form with traditional elements.
Inter alia, he made the claim that
the post-Conciliar Lectionary was universally accepted as being superior to the older, traditional use of Sacred Scriptures in Holy Mass. Card. Sarah had written that there should be a reconciliation of old and the new. The aforementioned Shaw and DiPippo, however, made substantive arguments against such a move. I added my own observations.
Fr. de Souza has issued a new piece in which he doubles down on the Lectionary issue but seems to back away from the large-scale revamping of the traditional form.
http://www.catholicherald.co.uk/commentandblogs/2017/07/24/traditionalists-reject-cardinal-sarahs-liturgical-reconciliation-plan-but-thats-not-a-problem/
In fact, Father says:
"The more pressing issue by far is the enrichment of the OF, which can happily be done independent of any changes in the EF.”
I warmly agree.
It is by far more pressing to deal with the OF, since it is dominant right now. It is attractive to think about the elements from the EF that might be introduced to the Novus Ordo. I suppose, however, they would be introduced as “options”.
Something that, for sure, could be started unilaterally, would be to clean up many of the abuses inflicted on the Novus Ordo, which, alas, is rather open to abuse.
Concerning the Lectionary, de Souza pushes his point:
I wrote that the superiority of the OF lectionary was a matter of broad consensus. I understated that, actually; it is nearly a unanimous position even in conservative liturgical circles, but evidently leading voices in the EF community do not think so.
While there are clearly some weaknesses in the OF lectionary – the prologue of St. John’s Gospel is never heard by most Catholics [It is the final feature of the traditional Mass, read after the 'Ite, missa est' and the priest's blessing to the congregation] – its more ample inclusion of Scripture is surely an improvement. It may be here that Cardinal Sarah’s warning about treating the EF as a “museum object” is most on the mark."
Why, Father, the snarky dig at at the end?
Fr. de Souza also wrote that this blog [Father Z's] has “a pugilistic style”. And his dig isn’t pugilistic?
While I grant that one cannot make extended elaborations in short pieces online, Fr. de Souzasidestepped the substantive arguments brought up by Shaw, DiPippo, et al., about the alleged superiority of the new Lectionary.
Fr. de Souza seems to think that the sheer quantity of Scripture used in the Novus Ordo is enough automatically to warrant superiority.
Fr. Finigan at his fine blog
http://the-hermeneutic-of-continuity.blogspot.com/2017/07/cardinal-sarah-reconciliation-and.html
made sound observations about Fr. de Souza’s views (my emphases and comments):
One problem is that of experience. Most of those Catholics who regularly participate at Masses celebrated in the usus antiquior have experienced the modern rite; most Catholics who regularly participate in the modern rite have not experienced the usus antiquior at all, and do not really understand its attraction or its salient features when compared with the rite that they know. [That is certainly the case with most younger priests.]
Some regular experience of celebrating the usus antiquior would lead most priests (or Cardinals) to understand the impossibility of forming a common reformed rite that would really be the usus antiquior which Pope Benedict understood as being attractive to many people, and which he said could not be suddenly considered forbidden or harmful.
This is a good point. The discussion about the interplay of the two rites would change dramatically were the priests involved well-versed also in the traditional form. When opining about their Roman Rite it is better to know the Roman Rite… which by definition includes the traditional Form.
Fr. Finigan goes on to address the Lectionary issue:
I would also gently urge that there needs to be greater awareness of the real work that is being done on the liturgy by traditionalist scholars.
To take an example that is relevant to the current debate: only last year, Matthew P. Hazell published what is volume I in Lectionary Study Aids: Index Lectionum: A Comparative Table of Readings for the Ordinary and Extraordinary Forms of the Roman Rite. His blog 'Lectionary Study Aids' has other resources that would be useful for anyone interested in actually studying the question. His book has a Foreword by Peter Kwasniewski and consists of comparative tables by which the lectionaries of the modern rite and the usus antiquior can be compared to see which passages of scripture are included or omitted.
Thanks to Matthew Hazell, it is no longer necessary to rely on feelings or impressions when forming an opinion about the lectionary of the modern rite and it is possible to go beyond the simple assessment that it has lots more verses of the bible and therefore must be so much better.
In the Foreword, Peter Kwasniewski makes a brief start on analysis of the modern lectionary, looking at, among other problems, Old Testament omissions, loss of Johannine material, omission of morally demanding texts (notoriously 1 Cor 11.27-29), and reductive redistribution.
Those who would defend the superiority of the modern lectionary cannot simply default to the position that “everybody” knows it is better because it has a higher biblical word-count; there is a real debate to be had, and an increasing amount of source material to be used.
Fr. de Souza brings up a point I made about the period of stability that we need before tinkering with the EF: traditionalists have often been treated horribly over the last few decades:
It is unlikely that apologies are going to be forthcoming. Yet Fr. Zuhlsdorf’s point about wounds requiring time to heal is valid; he may be right that the EF community is too wounded just now for reconciliation. A challenge though is to ensure that wounds are not passed down to younger devotees of the EF who were not around to have their hearts riven.
Cardinal Sarah’s intervention has made clear that even when friends of the EF – Sarah himself, or Cardinal Raymond Burke – speak about enrichment of the EF by the OF, they lack for supportive listeners in the EF leadership.
First, I had in truth written that “many” of the traditional community have been wounded. It is inaccurate to lump all those who prefer the traditional form of the Roman Rite into one group and them imply that “they are too wounded now for reconciliation”.
Fr. de Souza acknowledges that there are “younger devotees” who are frequenting the old form of Holy Mass (who did not personally experience the wars of previous decades), and hopes that they won’t get shot up in the crossfire. Fine.
However, start messing around too deeply and too quickly with the older form, start tinkering in an artificial way with the older form, and we will see in the 2010’s what we saw in the 1960-70’s: wounds.
Moreover, he seems to be saying that, “Those poor people over there are psychologically too fragile to do the work I think ought to be done.” That’s not at all pugilistic… Okay, in fairness, perhaps I read him wrong and he isn’t being dismissive.
Moving on,
it seems to me infra dignitatem to pit “EF leadership” against Card. Sarah and Card. Burke in the way that Fr. de Souza did. I, for one, commented that, while I didn’t agree with everything Card. Sarah wrote, I was taking his suggestions to prayerful consideration. Does anyone seriously believe that “EF leadership” are against Cardinals Sarah and Burke just because they don’t want have their arguments swept aside and then see massive, sudden, artificial changes imposed on the EF?
I firmly believe in and have for decades argued for what Ratzinger/Benedict promoted: We must allow a way through “mutual enrichment”, or what I like to call a “gravitational pull” of two forms, to jump-start the organic development of sacred worship interrupted by the brutal imposition of an artificially created order. HOWEVER, we have to avoid the mistakes of the past and resist the temptation to start tinkering too quickly and too deeply.
Suddenly impose artificial changes on the EF, and a tremendous opportunity will be lost. We need a significant period of stability before we legislate changes.
Let the older rite take root and become, again, part of the warp and weft of our lives. Let the newer rite be cleaned up and implemented without wide-spread abuses imposed on it.
There are already mutual enrichments going on, which are not a result of tinkeritis. I think that reasonable and well-informed traditionalists understand that changes will result over time, nolens volens. That’s the way of things. That’s what happened over the centuries. If we force the process too abruptly, however, there will be problems.
We, especially we clerics, have to avoid the trap and resist the temptation to tinker, to “fix stuff”, into which Fr de Souza may have fallen… with many others.
We don’t have to be afraid of the side-by-side celebration of these two forms of the Roman Rite. Just let them be offered in the very best way possible and we will see what happens over time.
In any event, I welcome Fr de Souza’s additional comments, especially because they occasioned a thoughtful response from Fr. Finigan. I imagine that others will follow and a fruitful dialogue will continue.
[Modificato da TERESA BENEDETTA 30/07/2017 06:22]