Dr Kwasniewski

'I am sure that, being human, there must be times when Dr Kwasniewski is wrong. But I have not, so far, noticed any examples of my a priori assumption.' Nor have I!

From Fr Hunwicke's Mutual Enrichment

I am sure that, being human, there must be times when Dr Kwasniewski is wrong. But I have not, so far, noticed any examples of my a priori assumption.

And I agreed with his fine recent piece about the counter-Reformation propers of Saints in the Missale Romanum (1962). As well as possessing their own richness and strengths, they are indeed part of the organic, evolving, Tradition which the Church has brought down to us ... perhaps rather like a glacier carrying with it geological specimens from the variety of different milieux through which it has passed and from which it has enriched itself. 

When people remark that very many of the formulae in the post-Conciliar liturgy do have origins in the ancient Roman Sacramentaries, my response is that the processes of selection, adaptation, and elimination employed in the 1960s have left a rather culturally monochrome piece of liturgy ... redolent, embarrassingly, of ... the 1960s! The old rite is, culturally, much more of a pluriform miscellany. This is one of its many glories.

I would add one or two comments.

(1) One reason why I favour the New Look which the CDF is currently giving to the 1962 Missal is that it allows a greater degree of selection. I would like this to go further: I would like to be allowed, on weekdays, more often to be allowed to get out green vestments and to use the ancient, deliciously Roman, Sunday propers (perhaps with the Sarum alternative readings on Wednesdays).

(2) As Dr K points out, Counter-Reformation Confessor Bishops feature large in the 1962 Calendar. Fair enough. We are our history. Dioceses push their great bishops; religious orders push their Founders. But Byzantine Calendars (the Ukrainian version hangs a few feet from my desk) exhibits a different ethos: there seem to be so many more Martyrs; some very ancient; others, the New Martyrs.

The old Roman martyrs are, of course, still there in 1962. But they are submerged beneath the later stratum of Grand Bishops. Happily, the new CDF rules often enable us to dig them out and to use their old propers (but one could soon grow tired of the Pius XII Mass Si diligis...). And, of course, the last century has provided us Latins with our own generous crop of neomartyres.

(3) One particular detail. The Mass for S Pius X (1954) has psalm-texts from the Bea psalter. I used to think that this was another valuable example of the coexistence of the Latin Church and her Liturgy down the ages with a rich variety of different fashions. I used to imagine a small child, a thousand years from now, asking her Father: "Papa, why does the psalmus in the Introitus of S Pius X begin Gratias ... rather than Misericordias Domini ...?" And I imagined her Father answering: "Well, my dear, once upon a time there was a man called Cardinal Bea ..." etc..

But, last year, I typed out the pre-Bea texts ... and got out my glue-pot ...

Num peccavi?