Rev. Ralph Wiltgen: The Rhine Flows Into the Tiber: A History of Vatican II

[Stone]

THE FIRST SESSION

October 11 to December 8, 1962

Sacred Liturgy


The official news bulletin of the Council Press Office on October 22, 1962, carried only two sentences on the first debate on the liturgy, one giving the names of the prelates who had spoken that morning, the other stating, “there were twenty interventions (speeches), and all of them referred to the schema as a whole, some defending it and others attacking it.” The hundreds of journalists who had made the trip to Rome in order to inform their readers of what was being said at the Council ran their fingers through their hair in desperation as they read this scanty report.

The first speaker on that day was Cardinal Frings. He informed the Council that the Central Preparatory Commission had in fact examined a longer text than the one which was now before the Council Fathers. Some important passages had been deleted, including the important “Declarations” which explained seeming innovations, and each Council Father should therefore receive an additional copy of the schema in the complete form in which it had been drawn up by the Preparatory Commission.

Cardinal Frings’ request was a sequel to the publication on Saturday, October 20, of a six-page report by Bishop Franz Zauner of Linz, Austria. Bishop Zauner, a candidate of the European alliance, had been elected to the Liturgical Commission by over two thousand votes, the highest number received by any Council Father for any commission. He had also been a member of the Preparatory Commission on the Liturgy, and therefore knew the details of the text which that body had presented to the Central Preparatory Commission.

Bishop Zauner gave his general approval, but drew attention to eleven specific passages in the schema which he and “some other Council Fathers from various nations” wanted to have changed.

One concerned the section headed “The Language of the Liturgy.” Here the bishop asked for the restoration of the provision in the original text authorizing episcopal conferences to “set the limits and determine the manner in which a vernacular language might be allowed in the liturgy, provided these decisions were acceptable to the Holy See.” The text now before the Council read that bishops might simply “propose” such suggestions to the Holy See.

Another concerned the matter of concelebration, that is, the simultaneous celebration of the same Mass by two or more priests. The present schema allowed concelebration in only two cases: the Mass for the blessing of the sacred chrism on Holy Thursday, and large gatherings of priests. In the light of these restrictions, Bishop Zauner asserted, “concelebration seems to be something exceptional, . . . although the practice is actually legitimate and greatly esteemed by the Oriental brethren of our own day, as it was in the Roman Church in the Middle Ages.”

Another of the bishop’s major objections was to the flat statement in the schema that Latin should be retained for the recitation of the Divine Office, in accordance with the time-honored tradition of the Western Church. He asked for the restoration of the following proviso, which had been deleted from the original text: “But when knowledge of the Latin language is very insufficient, and when there is no legitimate hope of altering the situation, episcopal conferences will be allowed to establish norms regarding the use of another language for their regions.”

The proviso had originally been included by the Preparatory Commission because some of tomorrow’s priests are studying in public schools, where they receive insufficient Latin or none at all; if, therefore, they have to read the Divine Office in Latin, they will derive little spiritual benefit from it. 

As Bishop Zauner’s report became more widely known, increasing numbers of Council Fathers demanded from the floor that the text as drawn up by the Preparatory Commission on the Liturgy should be printed and distributed among them. But no official action was taken in the matter at the time.

On the day that Cardinal Frings spoke, an address was also made by Giovanni Battista Cardinal Montini, Archbishop of Milan, who a year later would be presiding over the second session of the Council as Pope Paul VI. He expressed general satisfaction with the schema, particularly since it stressed the pastoral aspect of the liturgy. It was apparent from the tone of his address that he wished to mediate between liberals and conservatives, pointing out that the schema provided a balance between two extreme points of view. On the one hand, he said, it gave no authorization to those who would introduce changes in venerable practices on a whim, thereby prejudicing important elements in the liturgy both of human and of divine origin; on the other hand, it did not endorse the view that a rite was absolutely unalterable, or that ceremonies which had arisen as a result of historical circumstances must at all costs be retained. Provided that the basic elements were safeguarded, he said, then the form in which liturgy had been handed down, and which was like a garment clothing the divine mysteries, could be changed and made more applicable to present needs. “Such changes, of course, must be carried out prudently and wisely.”

Cardinal Montini went on to say that the schema in no sense constituted a break with divine and Catholic worship inherited from the past. On the contrary, it recommended that commissions be formed after the Council “to make this inheritance more evident, more understandable and more useful to men of our day.” And he supported the statement in the schema that “bishops active in the care of souls would also have to be represented” on such post-conciliar commissions. Unknowingly, Cardinal Montini was laying down norms which he himself would later have to follow as Pope Paul VI.

As to the language of the liturgy, he said that traditional languages “such as Latin within the realm of the Latin Church” should be retained intact “in those parts of the rite which are sacramental and, in the true sense of the word, priestly.” Any difficulty experienced by the laity in understanding the instructional parts of the sacred liturgy should be promptly removed.

Cardinal Montini also declared his wholehearted support of the principle that “ceremonies must once again be reduced to a more simple form.” This did not mean casting off the beauty of divine service and its symbolic power, but merely shortening ceremonies and removing from them whatever was repetitious and overcomplicated. This principle, he felt, should guide the announced reform of the liturgy, since it corresponded so well to the temper of modern man.

On the following day, the Council was addressed in French—although Latin was the prescribed language of the debate—by Maximos IV Saigh, a venerable bearded old man of eighty-four years, the Melchite Patriarch of Antioch, who soon became known for his blunt and forceful speeches. He explained that, while he did not belong to the Latin rite, he wished to add to the discussion the testimony of a patriarch from the East “who follows with great interest the progress of the liturgical movement in the Latin Church.”

He called the schema as a whole an outstanding accomplishment; “all honor is due,” he said, “to the commission which prepared it and likewise to the liturgical movement itself, which was responsible for the schema’s coming into existence.”

The patriarch then turned to the matter of language in the liturgy. Christ himself had spoken the language of his contemporaries, he said, “and he offered the first Eucharistic Sacrifice in a language which could be understood by all who heard him, namely, Aramaic.” The Apostles had maintained this practice. “Never could the idea have come to them that in a Christian gathering the celebrant should read the texts of Holy Scripture, sing psalms, preach or break bread, and at the same time use a language different from that of the community gathered there.” The use of Latin in the liturgy of the Latin Church, he said, “seems altogether abnormal to the Eastern Church.” And even the Roman Church itself, at least in the middle of the third century, had used Greek in its liturgy, “because this language was spoken by the faithful of that time.” Greek had been abandoned in favor of Latin precisely because Latin had meantime become the language of the faithful. “Why, then, should the Roman Church cease to apply the same principle today?”

In the East, the patriarch pointed out, there had never been a problem of liturgical language. “For actually every language is liturgical, since the Psalmist says, ‘Let all peoples praise the Lord.' Therefore man must praise God, announce the Gospel, and offer sacrifice in every language, no matter what it is. We Orientals cannot 'understand how the faithful can be gathered together and made to pray in a language which they do not understand. The Latin language is dead, but the Church is alive. Language is a medium of grace . . . The language used must be a living language, since it is meant for men and not for angels.”

The patriarch suggested in conclusion that episcopal conferences be authorized by the schema to decide whether and in what manner the vernacular should be introduced into the liturgy. The text as it stood gave such conferences “no other right than merely to propose to the Holy See in Rome the introduction of the vernacular. But no conference of bishops is even needed for that; every single Catholic can make a suggestion.”

Archbishop Enrico Dante, Secretary of the Sacred Congregation of Rites, spoke out strongly against the schema on liturgy. Legislation on the subject, he said, must remain the exclusive prerogative of the Holy See. Latin t should continue to be the language of the liturgy; and the vernacular should be used only for instructions and certain prayers. This position was supported by three other members of the Curia: Antonio Cardinal Bacci, a member of the Sacred Congregation of Rites, who was regarded as the outstanding Latinist in the Vatican; Archbishop Pietro Parente, a consultant to the Sacred Congregation of Rites, who was also first assistant to Alfredo Cardinal Ottaviani in the Sacred Congregation of the Holy Office; and Archbishop Dino Staff a, Secretary of the Sacred Congregation of Seminaries and Universities. Giuseppe Cardinal Siri, Archbishop of Genoa, and a leading conservative, suggested that a joint commission of members from the Theological and Liturgical Commissions be appointed to revise the entire schema.

On October 30, the day after his seventy-second birthday, Cardinal Ottaviani addressed the Council to protest against the drastic changes which were being suggested in the Mass. “Are we seeking to stir up wonder, or perhaps scandal, among the Christian people, by introducing changes in so venerable a rite, that has been approved for so many centuries and is now so familiar? The rite of Holy Mass should not be treated as if it were a piece of cloth to be refashioned according to the whim of each generation.” Speaking without a text, because of his partial blindness, he exceeded the ten-minute time limit which all had been requested to observe. Cardinal Tisserant, Dean of the Council Presidents, showed his watch to Cardinal Alfrink, who was presiding that morning. When Cardinal Ottaviani reached fifteen minutes, Cardinal Alfrink rang the warning bell. But the speaker was so engrossed in his topic that he did not notice the bell, or purposely ignored it. At a signal from Cardinal Alfrink, a technician switched off the microphone. After confirming the fact by tapping the instrument, Cardinal Ottaviani stumbled back to his seat in humiliation. The most powerful cardinal in the Roman Curia had been silenced, and the Council Fathers clapped with glee.

Again and again the request was made from the floor that the schema on the liturgy should be given to the Council Fathers in its entirety, as Cardinal Frings had suggested. The feeling was widespread that some highhanded, behind-the-scenes action had been responsible for cutting down the original text to its present form. The position was finally clarified by Carlo Cardinal Confalonieri, a member of the Curia and chairman of the subcommission on amendments, a division of the Central Preparatory Commission to which all draft texts had had to be submitted. He told the assembled Council Fathers on November 5 that his subcommission alone had been responsible for the changes made.

This admission in the Council hall was regarded as another triumph for the liberals. And it was followed by an even more impressive triumph: the eventual restoration of most of the passages—including the “Declarations”—which had been deleted from the Preparatory Commission’s original draft.