Defending the Traditional Mass with Just Arguments -- Theological and Legal

'Essentially, we are in the presence of another Mass'. If you don't believe Fr Barthe, go to either Mass with a Missal of the other and compare!

From Rorate Cæli

By Fr Claude Barthe

Those who devote themselves to the defense of traditional things (liturgy, catechism, resistance to deleterious doctrines) often hesitate to say that we are currently faced with an atypical ecclesial situation. Especially when it comes to the liturgy. Even if they assert that it is not for reasons of sensitivity but of faith that they attend the old liturgy, they feel they can effectively defend their position against the proponents of the new liturgy as a legitimate free choice. It is true that arguments of this kind can work quite well with Catholic opinion in general, for whom liberalism has become an unsurpassable horizon; but the fact that it is permissible to take tactical advantage of this state of mind does not mean it is justifiable.

Paradoxically, they even sometimes twist traditional doctrine to defend it. One example is the extreme reduction of the doctrine of obedience to ecclesiastical authorities and their teachings. Since, in many respects, submission to the authorities is untenable in conscience today, they practically come to affirm that free examination was the common doctrine of the Church, with each person deciding what is Catholic in the name of the “tradition” of which each is ultimately the custodian. Or they proceed to disembowel the doctrine of Roman infallibility by asserting that the First See has frequently issued heterodox doctrines. In other words, the abnormality of what is happening now is transferred to the Church of old.[1] And the anti-modernists become modernists.

We will deal here only with arguments in defense of the traditional Mass. In particular, we would like to consider two that are often used to justify the free option in favor of the traditional missal:

(1) The invocation of the bull Quo primum of 1570, insofar as it states that the missal it promulgates may be used “in perpetuity”. And 

(2) the fact that the Church has always recognized the legitimacy of a diversity of rites.

In principle, they are all relevant, but only if we avoid using them as if the circumstances that call for their habitual use were those of today:

“This missal [the Tridentine missal] may be followed [...] in perpetuity.” (Bull Quo primum)

St. Pius V's prescription must be seen in context. His two bulls concerning the breviary and the missal, issued in application of the wishes of the Council of Trent, were intended to establish the pre-eminence of the books of the Roman Curia over all the particular usages of the Latin world, which could nevertheless survive if they could prove to be at least 200 years old. “In perpetuity," all Roman clerics were to use the missal and breviary promulgated by the Pope. Or, if he was in a local church where a particular missal or breviary had been used continuously for at least two hundred years, he could still use the Roman book “in perpetuity” (with the proviso that, if the Office was to be chanted in choir, a common rule had to be laid down by the bishop and canons).

In fact, most dioceses and congregations in the Latin world could establish that their own books, particularly in cathedrals and collegiate churches, dated back beyond the 14th century. However, most bishops and chapters preferred to align themselves with the breviary and the missal, partly for reasons of economy and bookshop convenience, as it was difficult and expensive to publish diocesan books.  Roman books were therefore generally adopted, even in France at first (it was only in the last third of the 17th century that the right to specific diocesan books, later described as “neo-Gallican”, was invoked, starting with the Vienne Breviary in 1678).

Apart from the Visigothic or Mozarabic rite, preserved in a few places in Spain, could we really speak of non-Roman Latin rites in the diocesan or religious churches that preserved their usages? Only the Ambrosian rite, although very close to the Roman, had sufficiently important particularities to qualify as a specific rite. This was not the case for the Lyon[2], Carthusian, Dominican, or Premonstratensian rites. Nor were the practices of many cathedrals, sanctuaries and religious orders, which had their own Masses, prefaces, hymns and sequences.

St. Pius V's two texts thus read:

The Bull Quod a nobis, July 7, 1568, for the publication of the Roman Breviary: “Except for the aforesaid institution or custom exceeding two hundred years [...], all those who must say and chant the canonical Hours, according to the custom and rite of the Roman Church [...] will henceforth be absolutely bound in perpetuity to say and chant the Hours by day and by night, according to the prescriptions and ordinance of this Roman Breviary.”

The Bull Quo Primum, July 14, 1570, for the publication of the Roman Missal: “We concede and grant that this same Missal may be followed in its entirety in the Mass sung or read, in any church whatsoever, without any scruples of conscience and without incurring any punishment, condemnation or censure, and that it may validly be used freely and licitly, and that in perpetuity”.

But if the supremacy of the use of the breviary and the Roman missal was established “in perpetuity,” and despite the clause by which the pope stipulated “that nothing be added, subtracted or modified” to the missal he had just edited, Rome was always free to revise the books it thus gave to all Latin priests, always in the case of modest modifications. Despite these modifications, the breviary and missal were considered to remain essentially the Tridentine editions of St. Pius V, as the bulls Quod a nobis and Quo primum, always printed as prefaces, attested. The text of the Quo primum bull was printed at the head of the missal until 1965, in the first missal of the Paul VI reform.

Pius V's immediate successors, Clement VIII (pope 1592) and Urban VIII (pope 1623), introduced revisions (Vulgate Latin for epistles and gospels, new offices). 

In addition to the feasts of new saints, new masses and prefaces were added on several occasions (i.e., the preface of the deceased, that of St. Joseph, that of the Sacred Heart, that of Christ the King and, under Pius XII, that of the Chrism Mass on Maundy Thursday). It should also be noted that a significant body of Latin liturgical works (masses, proses, hymns) continued to exist until the French Revolution, and were easily integrated into local liturgies. Cardinal de Bérulle, for example, composed an Office de Jésus for January 28, the feast day he set for the Congregation of the Oratory of Jesus, and for the octave of this feast day, without anyone objecting. It was not until the 19th century that liturgical additions and modifications were the exclusive responsibility of Rome.

The most important changes to the breviary and missal took place in the 20th century: St. Pius X overhauled the distribution of the psalms, returning to the recitation of 150 psalms a week, and more firmly established the primacy of the temporal over the sanctoral (which also affected the missal); and Pius XII reformed Holy Week, lightening the ceremonies and re-establishing the “truth of the hours” (Holy Thursday mass in the evening, Good Friday ceremony in the afternoon and Easter Vigil ceremony on Saturday night, instead of Thursday morning, Friday morning and Saturday morning respectively), made possible by the relaxation of the Eucharistic fasting discipline. While the two reforms of Pius X and Pius XII may have led to the disappearance of a few venerable texts and usages, no one ever contested the fact that, in terms of form and content, the Breviary and Missal ceased to be Tridentine books.

The granting of the 1568 and 1570 books “in perpetuity” did not prevent variations, some of which were significant but not revolutionary. The justification for not using the new Mass can therefore only be a substantive one, emphasizing that it constitutes an upheaval -- a theological justification, arguing that the new Mass weakens the expression of the Eucharistic sacrifice, and especially the expression of the doctrine of the Mass as a propitiatory sacrifice.

This is also, in fact, the reason why Joseph Ratzinger legalized the subsistence of the old liturgy sanctioned by the texts of 1984 (Quattuor abhinc annos), 1988 (Ecclesia Dei adflicta), and 2007 (Summorum Pontificum). Without explaining himself to the end, he criticized the violent and radical way in which the transformation was carried out: “The old building is being demolished in order to build a new one, admittedly making extensive use of the material and plans of the old one.”[3].\

A juridical justification explaining that the Novus Ordo Missæ is not a lex orandi in the strict sense of the word, a law in the strict sense of the word, quite simply because, all things being equal, this new Ordo, which is highly fluid and as little ritualized as possible, recognizes only a relative authority for itself (which is in itself a fundamental problem). In fact, it includes an infinite number of possible variations and choices in its rites and formulas, including for the most important one, the Eucharistic prayer.

Essentially, we are in the presence of another Mass, different from the traditional Roman Mass in important respects. With this truly fundamental clarification, it is perfectly possible to use the traditional Roman missal “in perpetuity” - albeit in a completely different context from that of 1570, and using it in a way that Quo primum had obviously not foreseen (except for the use of traditional missals from other rites or other Latin usages, such as the traditional Ambrosian missal, the traditional Lyonnais missal, the traditional Mozarabic missal, the traditional Dominican missal, etc.[4])

It is highly probable that Summorum Pontificum, in 2007, by qualifying the ancient liturgy as usus antiquior, is implicitly referring to the rule laid down by the bull Quo primum, which authorized the survival of usages that could prove two hundred years of existence. Except that this was not a question of survival for a particular Church or group of particular Churches, but virtually for the whole Roman Church. Thus, it was the missal promulgated by Quo primum that in turn benefited from the exception of antiquity provided for by this bull...

The Church has always recognized the legitimacy of a diversity of rites

This argument, which is ultimately similar to the previous one, is based on the fact that there has always been a diversity of rites, all of which are recognized as Catholic, even if they lack the normativity of the rite of the Church of Rome, pure of all error.

The reasoning is that, just as the Roman rite has always coexisted with distinct Eastern or Latin rites (Mozarabic, Ambrosian), and indeed, after the promulgation of the 1570 missal, some Churches kept missals if they could prove that they had been in use for more than two hundred years, so the Paul VI missal can coexist with the Tridentine missal.

But this coexistence of the same rite in its earlier and later states is without precedent in history. Unless we agree that the liturgy of the Paul VI reform is a new rite, or something other than a rite. Indeed, any reform of a rite normally results in the new state being imposed in place of the old if the new state is given as obligatory.[5] Thus, in the Roman rite and in modern canon law, since the Tridentine editions, the books used for worship must conform to those printed by the competent Congregation and promulgated by decree. These are referred to as typical editions, which are like benchmarks, with a new typical edition simply replacing the previous typical edition. In the traditional liturgy, the latest typical edition of the Breviary is dated February 4, 1961, that of the Missal June 23, 1962, that of the Ritual 1952, that of the Bishops' Ceremonial 1886, that of the Pontifical 1961 and 1962, depending on the volume.

As the changes from one typical edition to the next were minimal (with the exception of the 1911 breviary and the 1951-1955 Holy Week, mentioned above, the scope of which did in fact prepare minds for a far more extensive reform), they were easily imposed: no one would have imagined refusing to celebrate Christ the King on the last Sunday in October after Pius XI introduced this new feast of the Lord. And it would never have occurred to anyone to consider a Roman missal published under Leo XIII as distinct from those published under Pius XI or Pius XII.

However, to put it mildly, a kind of eclectic traditionalism can be useful in rediscovering the vast swathes of local customs, pieces, texts and interpretations that were forgotten as a result of Tridentine Romanization and, above all, the restorations that followed the French Revolution. Indeed, the reconstruction of the 19th century was based solely on Romano-Solesmian books. It is certainly excellent to revive this treasure trove of traditional cathedral and abbey musical pieces, practices and repertoires.  For example, the Hungarian musician Laszlo Dobszay (1935-2011), an outspoken critic of the new liturgy,[6] has worked with the Capitulum Laicorum Sancti Michaelis Archangeli (CLSMA) to recover forgotten treasures of the Hungarian Latin liturgy. It is within this framework that, in certain places, the cautious revival of Holy Week prior to the 51-55 reform may take place.

In any case, up until the present liturgical situation, the new, again very modestly and in perfect continuity with the old, replaced the part of the old that it modified. Here again, in order to justify in a perfectly coherent way the possibility of choosing the pre-Council missal, we need to do so on the merits:

Theologically, by noting that the Novus Ordo Missæ, “if we consider the new elements, open to very different assessments, which seem to be implied or involved in it, departs impressively, both as a whole and in detail, from the Catholic theology of the Holy Mass as formulated at the XXth session of the Council of Trent”. [7] Or, at the very least, by agreeing with Joseph Ratzinger that “the old edifice” has been demolished “in order to build a new one.”[8]

Legally, by pointing out that Novus Ordo Missæ is no more intended as an intangible precision of the lex orandi than Vatican II is as an indisputable clarification of dogma.

We can therefore invoke the traditional coexistence of various rites in the Church, with the caveat that in the present case we are in the presence of a new liturgy which intends to follow on from the old liturgy by lessening the expression of substantial doctrinal points in the rites and texts. This means that Paul VI's reform has created an atypical liturgical situation, insofar as the progress it sought to achieve has, on the contrary, led to a kind of involution of the lex orandi, with the new cultic expression of the Eucharistic sacrifice regressing in relation to that which Trent had enshrined.

Father Claude Barthe

Res Novae

____

[NOTES]

[1] For example, Fr. Jeffrey Kirby, in an article entitled “The Rise of the Ultramontanists”, published in The Catholic Thing on April 14, 2024, paradoxically echoes the words of anti-infallibility liberals, who caricatured ultramontanism as asserting that everything a pope says is true, and went so far as to say that the decree Pastor Æternus had actually limited the scope of the pope's infallibility.

[2] Until the 18th century, Lyon usages, like those of other French churches, may not have represented a non-Roman Latin rite such as the Mozarabic rite, but rather a remnant of the historical state of the Roman liturgy in Carolingian times, when it incorporated specific features of the Gallican liturgy it replaced. Lyonnais practices largely disappeared when “neo-Gallican” books were adopted in Lyon in the 18th century. However, when the latter were replaced by the Roman books in the 19th century, a particularist reaction emerged in Lyon, and Cardinal de Bonald, archbishop from 1839 to 1870, although very ultramontane, managed to preserve a number of specific Mass usages (confession prayers, proses, proper offertory prayers, particular solemnity of the pontifical mass, pontifical concelebration of Holy Thursday by the archbishop with six canons-priests, Venite populi as a chant of fraction, etc.). ). These Lyonnais practices give an idea of what the rich customs of cathedrals under the Ancien Régime might have been like.

[3] Joseph Ratzinger, My Life. Souvenirs 1927-1977, Fayard, 2005, p. 134.

[4] All these missals have either been simply replaced by the Paul VI missal, or have undergone a thorough reform along the lines of that applied to the Roman missal. For example, the Montinian reformers reformed the Mozarabic missal, used in some Spanish chapels. In this rite, preserved in a part of the Hispanic peninsula that had been isolated from the Frankish churches by the Muslim conquest, and had therefore not adopted the Roman rite in Carolingian times, there was a set of prayers equivalent to those of the Roman offertory, with a name that would make our reform experts shudder: Sacrificium. Sacrificium in the Mozarabic rite was reformed after Vatican II, and subsequently underwent a kind of “reform of the reform”. Current Mozarabic celebrations follow this missal, not the Mozarabic missal edited by Cardinal Cisneros in 1500.

[5] Bea's version of the psalms, which the motu proprio In quotidianis precibus of March 24, 1945 allowed, but did not require, to be used for private recitation or psalmody in the Office choir. This new version, since then abandoned de facto, adopted a classical Latin style, certainly of very good quality, but more Ciceronian or Virgilian than in keeping with the ecclesiastical language of late Antiquity. One could use it or not. Among the “traditionalists” who preferred the ancient version was Fr. Congar.

[6] The Bugnini-Liturgy and the Reform of the Reform - published in 2003 by the Church Music Association of America.

[7] Supplication from Cardinals Ottaviani and Bacci, June 5, 1969, presenting the Brief Critical Examination of the New Ordo Missæ.

[8] Joseph Ratzinger, My Life, quoted above.