This is Part 2 of a series of yet undetermined length on the reaction to a leaked letter from the office of the Bishop of the Catholic diocese of Charlotte which would have established liturgical norms for masses in the diocese. The letter was never published so no norms have yet been officially implemented, although the talking heads on youtube sure sound pissed.
In Part 1, in order to understand the dilemma that our hypothetical norms might create, we traced very briefly the history of the mass. Jesus instituted the mass at his last supper, and in the A.D. 500s uniformity of the mass for the Roman church was enforced by Pope Gregory (of calendar fame). Minor modifications were made for roughly 1500 years, but the mass remained largely unchanged.
The missal of 1962, the book of instructions and prayers for the mass, promulgated by His Holiness Pope John XXIII, crystallized the changes that had gone before. Having discusseed its development, I want to give a few notes on what mass was like accorrding to the 1962 missal of John XXIII...
In the 1962 missal, as in all masses since the 500s, the text was Latin. Period. No concessions for the vernacular, even for scripture readings. The homily, or sermon, was rarely preached (which, frankly, I like the sound of), but remained an option. During the Eucharist, the part of the mass where Jesus's last supper is reenacted and his body, blood, soul, and divinity are made present on the altar and then offered as a sacrificial Victim in atonement for the sins of the world, the priest faced away from the people in the pews.
The priest facing away from the people follows the tradition of celebrating ad orientem, toward the east, toward the Holy Land, where Jesus is expected to make his triumphal return. It wasn't so much that the priest was turned away from the people, but that everyone was facing east, waiting for Jesus together. Ironically, St. Peter's Basilica was constructed such that the sanctuary end of the church faces west, so at the Vatican ad orientem means you face the people in the pews.
But in any other church you couldn't see the priest's face. You couldn't see what he was doing hunched over a stone table whispering at a crucifix. There are a few times in the 1962 missal that the priest is instructed to turn and face the people, and in an audible voice say "Oremus" ("Let us pray") or . Other than that, you couldn't hear what he was saying because there was no amplification. And, if we're honest, he wasn't talking to you anyway.
In fancier masses, many of the parts would be sung by the choir, e.g. the Creed, the "Glory to God in the highest," the "Lamb of God," but they were sung in Latin. So even though you could hear them you still couldn't understand them.
And there was nothing for the faithful, the people in the pews, to do. Well, nothing much. You would stand during the gospel reading (although it's in Latin so you won't understand it, but you heard the Alleluia just before, which is of course in Latin but is pretty recognizable so you would know that the gospel was coming). If you wanted to know when the bread and wine became Jesus's body and blood, you waited for the sanctuary bells to chime. Then the priest would hold the bread or the cup over his head to give the faithful a moment to reverence and adore Jesus in the Blessed Sacrament. But the priest still didn't turn around.
Somewhere in there, the priest would receive communion himself, then would turn toward the people and say "Behold the Lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world," and invite the faithful to receive communion who would then come forward and kneel at the altar rails. The priest would place the consecrated bread (the "host", the body of Christ) directly on the recipient's tongue and say:
Corpus Domini nostri Jesu Christi custodiat animam tuam in vitam aeternam. Amen.
Which is, of course, Latin but means "The body of our Lord Jesus Christ keep you safe for eternal life. Amen." And, of course "amen" is actually Aramaic, not Latin. But everybody uses it.
A couple more prayers, the first couple paragraphs of John's gospel are read (in Latin), thus ended a mass that Pope Gregory himself would be proud of. Fifteen hundred years (roughly) of tradition and consistency.
B.U.T...
By the 1960s, Pope John XXIII saw a rising number of "revolutions" facing the modern world: the feminist revolution, economic and social revolutions, the rise of communism in the Far East, hippies, global civil unrest, a burgeoning outrage at the war in Vietnam, and, of course, the sexual revolution. In his response to the modern world, the Holy Father unwittingly kicked off a Liturgical Revolution.
John XXIII convoked the Second Ecumenical Council of the Vatican (or, Vatican II) in 1962 in order that the Catholic Church might determine by what means she could better engage with the modern world. Often this is phrased as "the Church tried to figure out how to make itself relevant in the modern world," but this is not an accurate choice of words. When the Church lives up to her true vocation, relevance is not her focus. Proclaiming the Gospel is, whether the contemporary culture cares for it or not. The Church, like her divine Bridegroom, is a sign of contradiction. She's supposed to be counterculture. In a very real way.
The Council's approach was: see what you can update without ditching the past. There are fancy Latin words for this, but I don't know them.
Early on in its proceedings, the Council turned its attention to the liturgy, most importantly the mass, and in December 1963 the Council, in its constitution on the sacred liturgy Sacrosanctum Concilium (SC), promulgated its determinations on how the liturgy should be reformed in order that the "faithful should be led to that fully conscious, and active participation in liturgical celebrations which is demanded by the very nature of the liturgy" (SC 14). And further, when reforming the liturgy, "this full and active participation by all the people is the aim to be considered before all else" (ibid.).
The idea of participation by the faithful comes from a strand of thinking that winds its way through the Council and is eventually formulated as the "common priesthood of the faithful" (Lumen Gentium (LG) 10). In the Council's most explicit description of how the faithful should participate in this common priesthood, the Council writes, "by offering the Immaculate Victim, not only through the hands of the priest, but also with him, they should learn also to offer themselves" (SC 48).
Did you catch that? The mass should be reformed such that the faithful can participate by offering the sacrifice of the mass "not only through the hands of the priest, but also with him." That's truly full, active participation. But what does that look like?
To make the people feel more like priests, the Council lays out various principles by which the mass should be reformed. A few include:
- Simplify the rites (with "due care being taken to preserve their substance");
- Make the connections between the various rites and other parts clearer;
- Get rid of old crap that we don't need anymore;
- Bring back old crap that we shouldn't have gotten rid of;
- Gregorian chant gets pride of place musically speaking;
- We're keeping Latin (SC 50).
About Latin, the Council was clear. In no uncertain terms, everything else being equal, "the use of the Latin language is to be preserved in the Latin rites" (SC 36.1, my emphasis). But the Council did express concern for the vernacular, what they called the "mother tongue," and how it could be useful to the faithful. Because the vernacular "frequently may be of great advantage to the people, the limits of its employment may be extended," especially for the "readings and directives, and to some of the prayers and chants," and also to "apply in the first place to the readings and 'the common prayer,' but also, as local conditions may warrant, to those parts which pertain to the people" (SC 36.2; 54, my emphasis).
However, the Council didn't recommend a complete rewrite of the mass text into English (or other language for that matter), but rather insisted that Latin would still be the language of the mass, but opened the way for the extended use of the vernacular in circumstances where it would be advantageous to the faithful. In fact, in order to help retain Latin as the main language, the Council insisted that "steps should be taken so that the faithful may also be able to say or to sing together in Latin those parts of the Ordinary of the Mass [the standard parts of the ritual] which pertain to them" (SC 54).
Did you catch that? The people should learn their parts in Latin. The Council is assuming that ordinary people are smart enough to learn bits of other languages. I agree. Take a quick look around at the ethnic diversity of people not from the United States nor from North Carolina nor from the Charlotte diocese but who live here, and who speak their native languages fluently and at least some part of English language, and it will seem pretty damned obvious that people are smart enough to learn a little Latin. And it should come even easier to those persons who speak any variety of natural language that evolved from Latin, e.g. Spanish, French, Romanian, Italian, Portuguese. And given the number of Latin words that crept into English itself after the Norman Conquest (I know, I know... everybody blames the French), it should seem obvious that the majority of humans on the planet can learn short snippets of Latin like Et cum spiritu tuo, or Sanctus, sanctus, sanctus Dominus Deus sabaoth in order to participate fully in what is the source and summit of their Christian lives.
So, given the direction of Vatican II to reform the liturgy in order for the faithful to better participate in their common priesthood, Pope Paul VI (John XXIII had died before the Council closed) appointed a commission to implement liturgical reform according to the Council's direction and following its guidelines. And in Part 3 we shall discover the result...
