Against Arbitrary Liturgy

Mr Coulombe points out that the highhanded clericalist destruction of the Liturgy did not begin under Pius XII, but under St Pius X with his 'reforms'. 

From Crisis

By Charles Coulombe, STM, KCSS

The papal tinkering of the liturgy, begun by Pope Pius X, has had unfortunate consequences not foreseen by any 20th century pope.

Writing this column in early May, I am aware of three very ancient feasts that are not being celebrated this year even in most Latin Mass communities: the Finding or Invention of the Holy Cross on May 3, St. John Before the Latin Gate on May 6, and the Apparition of St. Michael (at Italy’s Monte Gargano) on May 8. Although each commemorates a dramatic and noteworthy event, their summary ejection from the calendar received little attention when it happened. Moreover, this was not during the great mangling of the ecclesiastical calendar in 1969, but by Good Pope John in 1960—hence their absence from the 1962 Missal used by the FSSP, ICKSP, SSPX, and the like.

Now, to be sure, the Church calendar has always been one of the most changeable and diverse things about the liturgy. New saints are constantly being added to it for one thing; and as there are only 365 days in the year, Church authorities have only so much time to work with. Moreover, in addition to the Eastern Catholic Churches, each of which operates on its own calendar, the various countries, dioceses, and religious orders of the Roman Rite have their own peculiar observances in addition to those prescribed on the General Roman Calendar. Nor is it only a question of the Missal but also of the Divine Office. Any way you look at it, administering the Church’s calendar is a complex affair.

St. Pius X was a great one for regularizing, as was shown with the initiative that led to the 1917 Code of Canon Law, which, although completed under his successor, was begun under his auspices. His dealing with the liturgy was similar. His simplification of the intricacies of the Psalter as used in the Breviary also had repercussions in the calendar sphere. For one thing, a great many Sundays were taken up with feasts of various kinds, with only a commemoration made of the Sunday; similarly, there were only 18 ferial days in the whole year (as a result, green vestments were rarely seen). He reduced the number of such Sundays to three.

Now, while this was done for what may be considered defensible reasons, it did establish a sort of precedent. By the time World War II ended, there was a sort of malaise detectible in the Catholic Church. Obviously, the experience of two World Wars and the occupation of half of Europe by the Soviets were all rather unpleasant. But there was a feeling, partly fueled by those experiences, that there was something deeply wrong in the Church—a lack of enthusiasm, a feeling of irrelevance of the Church on the part of many—especially in the light of totalitarian horrors on one side and technological advances on the other. Where, between the possibility of a man-made apocalypse on the one hand and seemingly miraculous advances in medicine and psychiatry on the other, was there room for the Church and her God?

To be sure, there was indeed such a problem, and with 2020 hindsight and the vision of the current Church leadership, formed in those far-off days, before us, we can see what it was. In short, a large part of the Church’s theological establishment had lost its faith in the Salvific nature of said Church and her Lord and Founder due to Modernism and the shock of the two World Wars. This, in turn, damaged the confidence of a large part of the hierarchy—including, to some extent, Pius XII himself. According to Life magazine, he declared toward the end of his life that he would be the last pope to hold the entirety of Catholic doctrine, but he would hold it. Certainly, in Humani Generis and Mediator Dei, he warned forcefully of current doctrinal and liturgical errors that, after his time, would become almost universal in the Church—and are certainly dominant today.

By the same token, however, Pius, too, looked for the ultimate answer to the Church’s root problems anywhere other than where it was—in the fears of himself and some of his closest collaborators, and the doctrinal treason of many of the theological establishment. So, for all of these, where must it lie? Doubtless, in the liturgy, which according to such as Pius Parsch and Ildefons Herwegen had become too removed from everyday life and from the people. Impressed by these authorities, the pope appointed Annibale Bugnini as secretary to (and therefore effective head of) the newly minted Commission for Liturgical Reform.  

Now, in the early days of the Liturgical Movement, even such as the great Benedictine Abbot Dom Prosper Gueranger had advocated one major change to the Latin Rite’s celebration of Holy Week. Originally, the ceremonies of Maundy Thursday and the Easter Vigil had been offered at night and those of Good Friday in the afternoon. But, over the centuries, they had all been celebrated earlier and earlier in the day until they were all morning services by the 19th century. 

This did not jibe too well with the actual texts of the rites, nor with the symbolism of such actions as the lighting of the New Fire. Dom Gueranger and his collaborators advocated returning the various services to their original times and making the Tenebrae services, correspondingly, morning events once more rather than the evening rites which they had become. But they did not advocate any changes at all in either texts or actions for the Holy Week Rites.    

Nevertheless, Bugnini and his henchmen began a rather radical set of changes, starting with the Easter Vigil in 1951 and culminating with the rest of Holy Week in 1955. That same year, they made huge alterations to the rubrics of the Mass and office; most of the Church’s octaves and a number of vigils were suppressed and the first vespers of most feasts abolished. The pace of liturgical changed picked up ever faster under John XXIII, who—apart from adding St. Joseph to the Canon of the Mass and introducing yet another slew of changes to the calendar rubrics, set to work on reducing the feast days. 

Now, there is much I love about St. John XXIII, not least his apostolic constitution Veterum Sapientia (which required the continued use of Latin in the Church) and his beautiful devotion to the Precious Blood. But his attitude to the calendar was motivated by a dislike of “redundant” and “repetitive” feasts. Generally speaking, it meant that if a saint had more than one observance in his honor, it had to go—no matter how venerable nor how prized by the laity. But in this, after all, he was simply carrying on as Pius XII had begun. This attitude would run rampant in the pontificate of his successor, until the Catholic liturgy of the Roman Rite—Missal, Breviary, Rituale, and Pontificale—was unrecognizable. 

Leaving aside the various theological and political issues in all of this, which so many other writers have covered in great detail, what interests us here is the conscious or unconscious attitude toward the laity on the part of the hierarchy that all of these changes revealed. This is quite apart from the fact that several Catholic publishing houses went bankrupt attempting to keep up with the changes—having to commit entire printings to be pulped, as the latest alterations rendered their stock obsolete. Obviously, such mundane considerations were beneath the notice of some of the Church’s higher minds.

The liturgical observances of the octaves, vigils, and “redundant” feasts that were so cavalierly discarded in pursuit of an elusive goal were beloved by the laity in innumerable places. Around them had grown up all across the Catholic world a whole web of paraliturgical practices that were extremely dear to the laity. To cite one or two examples, the joyous Second Vespers of All Saints were intimately linked to the mournful First Vespers of All Souls—a celebration of eternal life made way for the somber vespers for the dead. These concluded, the faithful then lit candles on the graves of their loved ones and, in many places, went home to a dinner in honor of the deceased—which would be given to the poor the next day, when they would return to the Churchyard to clean the graves, pray, and reminisce—and, in some places, picnic. 
The candle-lighting remains in many culturally Catholic areas across the planet, but it is now severed entirely from the liturgy and can sometimes even assume a non-Christian character as a result. Similarly, the May 3 Feast of the Invention of the Holy Cross gave birth to the Fiesta de las Cruces in Spain and Hispanic America (Santacruzan in the Philippines)—a whole web of processions, celebrations, and observances in public and at home which bring intense joy and wonder to the participants. But now these, too, are generally severed from the official liturgy and thus, sadly, often enough from an active participation in the Faith.

Of course, this writer well remembers the active war against popular devotions that took place in many areas in the wake of the post-Conciliar changes. Novenas, the Rosary and other Marian devotions, the Sacred Heart and the Precious Blood (John XXIII was as ignored in this as he was with regard to Latin), and even Eucharistic Adoration and Procession were often enough summarily dismissed by pastors and even bishops. In truth, it was so scandalous that St. John Paul II felt obliged to apologize to the Catholic people for what had happened in the last-named case in his 1980 Dominicae Cenae: 

I would like to ask forgiveness—in my own name and in the name of all of you, venerable and dear brothers in the episcopate—for everything which, for whatever reason, through whatever human weakness, impatience or negligence, and also through the at times partial, one-sided and erroneous application of the directives of the Second Vatican Council, may have caused scandal and disturbance concerning the interpretation of the doctrine and the veneration due to this great sacrament. And I pray the Lord Jesus that in the future we may avoid in our manner of dealing with this sacred mystery anything which could weaken or disorient in any way the sense of reverence and love that exists in our faithful people.

This kinder, gentler way of dealing with both the reverence due Almighty God, His August Mother, and the saints would continue and grow, culminating in the 2002 Directory on Popular Piety and the Liturgy. It would grow under Benedict XVI, who in his Summorum Pontificum attempted to maintain peace in the Church by ending liturgical injustices while leaving their perpetrators unmolested—a charitable solution that has been quashed in the past few years. 

But that action and all the others we have been surveying were done with absolutely no care or interest as to what the real-world effect on the laity would be—let alone what they might want or need. An interesting development occurred during the post-Summorum Pontificum liturgical peace: the “Restore the ’54” movement. Back when St. John Paul II first started the liturgical normalization with his bitterly opposed (by bishops, that is to say) 1985 indult, those of us then concerned were grateful to have access to the 1962 Missal, calendar and all. 

But as the years passed—accelerating after Benedict’s motu proprio —a desire for the rites of the pre-1955 calendar emerged, primarily among the laity of the Latin Mass communities, who had begun to lead normal lives outside of the trenches into which the higher clergy had thrust them. The reason was simple: there is a naturalness to them, the result of centuries of organic growth among laity and clergy alike. But as recent developments have shown, the post-Conciliar clericalist mentality roared back to life in the current pontificate and has done its best to derail the work of Pope Benedict.

This shall not last, to be sure; when those of the hierarchy still firmly committed to 1968 have left this vale of tears, the quiet work of the Holy Ghost shall resume—indeed, despite everything, it already has in some quarters, despite punishments and other nastiness. What remains, however, is the same old unresolved problem successive popes struggled with unknowingly: a hierarchy unsure of its salvific mission, bedeviled by unbelieving theologians, presiding over a poorly catechized laity. We must pray that the same Holy Ghost who has sustained us over the past century shall mastermind the hierarchy’s regaining its sense of evangelistic mission and apostolic fervor. Such a pontiff and episcopal college shall be amazed at the speed with which a well-led laity answer the call to make disciples of all the world.