Dr. Carol Byrne: A Series on the History of the Dialogue Mass

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Dr. Carol Byrne: A Series on the History of the Dialogue Mass

Finding Pretexts to Break Liturgical Tradition

Taken from here [slightly adapted - emphasis mine].

Before the 1955 reforms, Tenebrae was widely celebrated in the Church and was well attended by lay people in cathedrals, abbeys and large churches where there was an ample supply of clergy. Nevertheless, the reformers arranged for its demise by an astonishingly simple strategy: changing its time of celebration. The Decree Maxima Redemptionis prohibited anticipating Matins and Lauds on the previous evenings of the Triduum, (1) switching the time to the morning hours. (2)

Monks singing the Divine Office

This effectively threw the proverbial spanner into the work of centuries, for Tenebrae performed in the morning not only destroys its coherence as a nocturnal Office, but also the “atmospherics” of darkness on which its powerful symbolism relies in order to create the right mood. Daylight Tenebrae is, of course, a misnomer and has never been approved by the Church before the Bugnini reform.

The self-contradictory nature of this reform is also evident in the same Decree, which, in criticism of the traditional Triduum, stated that “all these liturgical solemnities were pushed back to the morning hours; certainly with detriment to the liturgy’s meaning.” How could the reformers complain when that is exactly what they did to the Office of Tenebrae?


False Rivalry between the Mass & the Divine Office

The ostensible reason for displacing Tenebrae was that the Holy Thursday Mass should be celebrated in the evening to correspond with the time of the Last Supper. Yet, for many centuries prior to 1955, this Mass had been said in the morning – the progressivists scoffed that it was the “Mass of the Lord’s Breakfast” – and the Decree accused the traditional Holy Week schedule of creating “confusion between the Gospel accounts and the liturgical representations referring to them.”

This was the first time in the History of the Church that an official document of the Holy See stood in judgement against its own approved tradition that had been hallowed by centuries of usage and condemned it as detrimental to a right understanding of the Holy Week liturgy. It was a barely concealed rallying cry for a liturgical revolution to usher in a “new understanding” of the Faith.


Is There a ‘Proper’ Time of the Day?

It might be useful to reflect that the Church had set the Triduum apart from the rest of the liturgical year as a specially consecrated season with its own traditional time-frame for the ceremonies. This was the status quo with which the Catholic faithful were familiar for centuries up to 1955.

The Church set a time for each of the Office Hours

The progressivists argued that Triduum ceremonies can only be considered truly “authentic” if their timing corresponds with that of the biblical events they commemorate. Thus, the Holy Thursday Mass must be in the evening, the Good Friday liturgy must take place at 3 p.m., and the Easter Vigil must start after sundown – as if it were just a commemoration of historic events, like the “11th hour” of Armistice Day.

But, this rests on a false premise, that of the so-called veritas horarum – the intrinsically “proper” time of the liturgy – a concept that has only ever applied to the Divine Office and its different “hours” for sanctifying the day. Ironically, they failed to apply this principle to the Office of Tenebrae.


Liturgical Chaos

It is commonly thought that the 1955 reform was successful in “restoring the liturgy to its authentic times.” But, in the highly partisan agenda of the Liturgical Movement, “authentic” meant returning to early Christian practices and rejecting the traditional liturgy of centuries.

Card. Spellman complained about the ‘revolutionary’ change to an established custom

The reformers managed to commandeer the public liturgy of the Church by dictating a sweeping change in the traditional norms of the Triduum ceremonies – indeed to destroy the very notion of traditional norms at all. They accomplished this by investing their veritas horarum with the character of an “absolute” that overrode every other consideration – the force of custom, the rights of Tradition or the wishes of the faithful. As all the services, in their estimation, had to be rearranged, the result was a total upheaval of the traditional schedule, which dealt a crippling blow to the Triduum ceremonies.

As soon as the reform was published, Cardinal Francis Joseph Spellman, in a letter to Pius XII, stated:

“It is my certain knowledge that those who applauded the Decree are in the very definite minority, while the Bishops and priests of my own region are appalled at the confusion that will be caused by the application of such a revolutionary edict.” (3)

We have seen how Tenebrae was given short shrift by the progressivists – even though it was part of the Divine Office – and subsequently fell by the wayside. Many traditional devotions were also sidelined in the reshuffle. Judging by these results, we can conclude that the purpose of “absolutizing” the concept of the veritas horarum was to isolate the Triduum from its dependence on Tradition. In this the strategy was eminently successful, but we must disagree with Pius XII who personally congratulated the reformers at the Assisi Congress.


Goodbye Allegri’s Miserere, Hello Eagles’ Wings

Another “absolute” was the “active participation” of the laity, to which everything else had to be subordinated. Fr. McManus’s explanation of the 1955 reform amply bears out the truth of this fact when he stated:

“The trained choir may lead and encourage the people – and above all, never seek to restrict the participation of the faithful. If on occasion this means that the responses, for example, may not be sung perfectly, the act of worship on the part of the assembled people will nevertheless be pleasing to almighty God. And the strong and united worship of the whole Church must never be subordinated to technical perfection of music.” (4)

But, giving priority to aesthetically poor performances heralded the end of the Church’s authentic musical tradition, its Gregorian chant, sacred polyphony and great masterworks sung by trained choirs.

An extravagent disco-style Tenebrae

In recent times, there has been a resurgence of interest in Tenebrae as a “novelty,” and some Novus Ordo parishes have staged their own performances of it, but without any experience or knowledge of its true nature. Modern Tenebrae can only be described as a miscreation – in every respect it is to the traditional Tenebrae what the Novus Ordo is to the traditional Mass, that is, a travesty. For they fail to represent the values and qualities of the original and are often performed in a manner that is shocking and offensive to Tradition.

Where Modern Tenebrae is performed, it is celebrated in the vernacular with maximum “active participation” of the laity, and neither looks nor sounds like the original. The readers enter the sanctuary, do their assigned readings facing the people who respond, extinguish one of the candles and rejoin the congregation to sing ecumenical hymns. (5)

The texts are bowdlerized and interspersed with improvised material more congenial to the spirit of the times. There are even “disco style” performances for the young, complete with colored lights and guitars.

Continued

1. The only exception envisaged in the Decree was in cathedrals where the Mass of Chrism was said on Holy Thursday morning; Matins and Lauds could be anticipated on the Wednesday evening.
2. The wording of the document was ambiguous: “mane, hora competenti” can be translated as either “in the morning at a suitable time,” presumably for the convenience of the laity to attend in daylight hours; or “in the morning at the proper hour.” which would mean reverting to the original monastic hours after midnight and before dawn, in which case the combined Office of Tenebrae would disappear from the liturgy.
3. Some who follow the 1962 Missal hold Tenebrae services in the mornings of the Triduum, while others adopt the pre-1955 custom of having them in the evenings.
4. Letter of Cardinal Francis Joseph Spellman, 28 January 1956, Archives of the Archdiocese of New York S/C 65 f 9 apud Alcuin Reid, Liturgy in the Twenty-First Century: Contemporary Issues and Perspectives, Bloomsbury Publishing, 2016.
5. F. McManus, The Rites of Holy Week: Ceremonies, Preparation, Music, Commentaries, Paterson, New Jersey: St. Anthony Guild Press, 1956, p. 32.
6. Two of the most popular are On Eagles’ Wings and Were you there? Both are frequently used at modern Catholic and Protestant services.

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Dr. Carol Byrne: A Series on the History of the Dialogue Mass

Abolishing the Mass of the Pre-Sanctified

Taken from here [slightly adapted - emphasis mine].

Another example of an ancient and venerable Holy Week ceremony abolished in the 1955 reform was the final part of the Good Friday liturgy known as the “Mass of the Pre-Sanctified.” The last time it was celebrated in the Roman Rite was April 8, 1955, after which it suffered a damnatio memoriae (1) by official decree.

A resplendent repository for the Altar of Repose

It is understandable that Crammer eliminated the Mass of the Pre-Sanctified in the 16th century so as to eradicate all its identifying marks and to cancel every trace of its existence. But for this to happen under Pius XII is beyond comprehension.

Before dealing with the chain of events that led up to its abolition, let us keep in mind a few facts about the Mass of the Pre-Sanctified that aroused intense disapproval among the progressivist reformers.

As no Mass is celebrated on Good Friday, an ancient tradition developed incorporating some of the prayers, gestures and vestments of the Mass, but without the Consecration. Holy Communion was not distributed, as the sole recipient of the Sacrament was the priest. He consumed a Host that had been previously consecrated – hence “pre-sanctified” – at the Holy Thursday Mass and reserved at the Altar of Repose. Thus, he could, as it were, prolong the experience of the previous day’s Mass at one remove.


The Altar of Repose Downgraded

As a mark of devotion to the Blessed Sacrament and a reflection of Catholic piety throughout the centuries, individual churches vied with each other to make their Altars of Repose a resplendent repository decorated with ornate hangings made from precious materials, banks of flowers and a blaze of lights. But, an Instruction from the Holy See poured cold water on this fervent competition by describing the custom as an “abuse” and recommended that it should be simplified to the point of a more befitting “severity.” (2)

The rationale behind this reform was explained by one of the reformers. Such a "triumphalist" display of honor to the Blessed Sacrament belonged to the Counter-Reformation era and was an affront to modern (read ecumenical) sensibilities. (3)

The whole symbolism of the Mass of the Pre-Sanctified illustrated the essential link between the Last Supper and Calvary and the indispensable role of the priest. It was a shining example of how the lex orandi supported the doctrine of the Mass and the priesthood, reinforcing in the priest’s mind his exalted status as an alter Christus.

A post-Vatican II downgraded Altar of Repose

So, when the reformers demanded that the rite should be scrapped, alleging it was a useless formality and had been “introduced without reason,” (4) they could not have been further from the truth. They failed to appreciate that the reason for the symbolism was to give access to mysteries of the Faith that would be otherwise inaccessible to the human mind. For the more symbolic gestures point to the numinous, the better we can approach transcendent realities; and the more they are curtailed, the less we surpass the domain of this world.

In fact, the Mass of the Pre-Sanctified is entirely composed of symbols of the sacred. First, there was a solemn procession in which the priest, accompanied by all his ministers, went to the Altar of Repose to fetch the pre-consecrated Host. This had been placed in a specially prepared chalice. (5) On his way back to the main altar, he was preceded by two acolytes walking backwards as they incensed the Blessed Sacrament, while the choir sang the Vexilla Regis.


The Blessed Sacrament Minimized

But, after the reform all this disappeared. The priest was denied his rightful privilege of carrying the Blessed Sacrament. He was instructed to sit while the task was performed by a lesser minister. Now, we have reached the point where it is done by anyone at all, including children. Also, he was denied the unique privilege of receiving Communion from the large Host (which was itself abolished for Good Friday), and was made to receive a small one instead, on a par with the people.

This slight to the dignity of the priest and to traditional norms of the liturgy was noted and commented upon at the time. Msgr. Léon Gromier, for example, observed:

“It is disrespectful to the liturgy and the celebrant to abolish the chalice and the large Host. A small people’s Host is ridiculous.” (6)

The incensing of the Blessed Sacrament and the singing of the choir were abolished, and the rather deflated procession took place in silence. We can see in this reform the beginning of a slippery slope that ended in today’s less-than-reverent treatment of the Sanctissimum, the Most Holy Sacrament.


The Vexilla Regis Abolished

As for the Vexilla Regis – the famed Hymn of the Cross par excellence – it was excised in spite of its intrinsic worth and its right to honor, which immemorial and universal usage had given it.

The Vexilla Regis hymn honoring the Cross was removed for no reason

The logic of assigning the Vexilla Regis to the Good Friday procession is clear from several points of view:

• It started life as a processional hymn when it was first sung in 569 during the reception of a Relic of the True Cross by Queen St. Radegund for the consecration of her Abbey of the Holy Cross in Poitiers.
  

• It sings of the splendor and triumph of the Cross from which Christ rules over all nations – hence its relevance to the Reign of Christ the King.
  

• Composed by St. Venantius Fortunatus when the foundations of Europe were being laid, it has particular significance for the Church’s subsequent and beneficial influence on the history and formation of Western society.
  

• It illustrates the essential bond between the Eucharist and the Cross, which is also the theme of the Mass of the Pre-Sanctified.
  

Good Friday eclipsed by Easter Sunday

Already by 1955 the new theology of the “Paschal Mystery” was being promoted to replace Christ’s Passion and Death by His Resurrection as the cause of our Redemption. (7) The road to the Novus Ordo was, thus, being paved when the expiatory Sacrifice of the Cross was being minimized. Even the last three days of Holy Week are now called the Easter Triduum .


Continued


1. It was an official sanction used in Roman times to obliterate the identity of a public figure, especially an Emperor, who had fallen out of favor. It consisted of deliberately vandalizing, mutilating or defacing any statues, portraits or coins bearing his likeness so as to eradicate his memory from the collective consciousness of the Roman people. This practice was adopted by modern totalitarian regimes, particularly the Soviet Union.
2. ‘Instruction for the Proper Celebration of the Restored Order of Holy Week,’ November 16, 1955, § 8 and § 9.
3. Pierre Jounel, "The New Order of the Holy Week," La Maison-Dieu, n. 45, 1956, p. 29.
4. Nicola Giampietro O.F.M. Cap, “Il Card. Ferdinando Antonelli e gli sviluppi della rifornia liturgica dal 1948 al 1970” (Card. Fernando Antonelli and the Development of the Liturgical Reform from 1948 to 1970), Pontificio Atteneo San Anselmo, Rome 1998, p. 59.
5. This took place during the Mass of Holy Thursday after the priest had consecrated two large Hosts, only one of which he consumed, the other being destined for his Communion on Good Friday. The second Host was placed in a chalice, covered with an upturned paten and a silk veil that was tied at the node and taken in solemn procession after Mass to the Altar of Repose.
6. Mgr. Léon Gromier, “The ‘Restored’ Holy Week,” A Conference given in Paris in July 1960, published in Fr. Ferdinand Portal’s magazine, Opus Dei, n. 2, April 1962, Paris, pp. 76-90.
7. This theological inversion runs counter to the teaching of the Council of Trent, which has defined infallibly that the “meritorious cause” of our salvation is Jesus Christ, wrought through “His Most Holy Passion on the wood of the Cross.” The Ottaviani Intervention made clear in its critique of the Novus Ordo: “Even the phrase in the Instruction describing the Mass as a "memorial of the Passion and Resurrection" is inexact [emphasis in original]. The Mass is the renewal of the unique Sacrifice, redemptive in itself; whereas, the Resurrection is the fruit which follows from that sacrifice [emphasis in original].

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Dr. Carol Byrne: A Series on the History of the Dialogue Mass

A Cabal Destroyed the Mass of the Pre-Sanctified

Taken from here [slightly adapted - emphasis mine].

If, as Orwell wrote in Politics and the English Language, obfuscatory language is designed “to make lies sound truthful and murder respectable,” the euphemisms used by the liturgical reformers to kill the Mass of the Pre-Sanctified reveal their unethical methods.

Antonelli – a progressivist perito at Vatican Council II – favored changes to the Mass

Pius XII’s Liturgy Commission turned out to be a particularly fertile ground for euphemisms, in other words, verbal sleights-of-hand to cloak the reforms in opaque language so as to make the consequences sound less devastating.

Where the progressivist reformers wanted to divest the Church of an ancient and venerable rite, they talked about “simplification” of the liturgy, cutting away “unnecessary duplications” and “medieval accretions,” as a “restoration” to original and purer meanings.

With this in mind, we can see through Fr. Ferdinando Antonelli’s verbal camouflage when he explained that Pius XII’s reform would “trim back the medieval extravagances … of the so-called Mass of the Pre-Sanctified to the severe and original lines of a great, general Communion service.” (1)

This coded language created a sense of complicity among the members of the Commission and their collaborators, but it caused perplexity and alarm among the non-initiated.


A Toxic Clique

When Msgr. Léon Gromier, an eminent authority on the Ceremonial of Bishops and a Consultor to the Congregation of Rites, stated that the Mass of the Pre-Sanctified became a “victim of a cabal,” he was immediately laughed to scorn, his criticism dismissed as unworthy of serious consideration. (2) He was publicly derided and his reputation ruined, but he was later proven to be correct.

The Liturgical Commission established by Pius XII in 1948 was staffed by only half a dozen hand-picked reformers headed by Fr. Annibale Bugnini. They worked in the strictest secrecy with a mandate to establish the groundwork for a reform of the Church’s entire liturgy. Their deliberations were printed privately in 1949 by the Congregation of Rites as an internal “Memo” and circulated among a select few collaborators of Bugnini’s choosing, thus concealing their plans from the rest of the Church.

It is noteworthy that Fr. Antonelli, who would sign the decree introducing the Novus Ordo in 1969, also signed the “Memo,” but acknowledged that it was mainly the work of his colleague in the Congregation of Rites, Fr. Joseph Löwe. And it is from this “Memo” – published for general consumption only in 2003 – that we see the Mass of the Pre-Sanctified high on their agenda, waiting, as it were, on death row for its impending execution.


Pushing the boundaries of ethics

An examination of the role that the “Memo” played in the Good Friday reform shows that the Mass of the Pre-Sanctified was given the equivalent of a show trial, condemned and promptly purged from the Church’s liturgy.

In parts of Europe the faithful would 'creep to the altar" to adore Christ Crucified on Good Friday

Fr. Antonelli mentioned in the 1948 “Memo” a historical detail about the Mass of the Pre-Sanctified – the part where the priest, without pronouncing any words, places a portion of the pre-consecrated Host into a chalice containing unconsecrated wine – and used it to insinuate a connection with superstition. He stated that this practice was introduced in the early Middle Ages at a time when some people believed that the wine in the chalice became consecrated merely by contact with the Host. In the same breath he added:

“When the Eucharist had been better studied, it was realized that this belief was groundless, but the rite remained.” (3)


An All Too Transparent Pretext

Let us read that again to savor its full implications. What he was effectively saying was that one of the oldest rites of the Catholic Church – one, to boot, that was canonized by Pope Pius V – was not worthy of respect and preservation because it was tainted with heresy and superstition.

The priests vested in black for the Mass of the Pre-Sanctified, abolished by Pius XII

That is surely chutzpah on a grand scale: It was an indictment of the principle lex orandi lex credendi on which the Church’s entire liturgy relies. It is not even an intellectually respectable argument, as it is also contrary to common sense, logic and a Catholic sensus fidei.

Fortunately, Michel Andrieu gave us an objective and, therefore, more reliable study (4) of the use of unconsecrated wine in the Pre-Sanctified rite which exposes the flaws in Antonelli’s thesis. From this study we gather that:
This usage in the Roman Rite long predated the consecration-by-contact theory, so it could not have arisen from it, as Antonelli alleged;

• The theory itself was the brainchild of a narrow circle of liturgists and speculative theologians;
  
• It was by far outweighed by official, orthodox teaching and practice that guided the belief of the faithful;
  
• It was never a serious enough problem to make waves in the Church;
  
• The controversy blew itself out so many centuries ago that the information provided by Antonelli is no longer germane to the topic of Good Friday.
  

So, why raise the issue in 1948?

A Novus Ordo dramatized 'Afternoon Liturgy of the Passion and Death of the Lord'

All of these points show that Antonelli was merely using the power of suggestion to compensate for his lack of solid evidence. We can conclude that his remarks were based on innuendo to cast aspersions, doubt and misgivings about the authenticity of the pre-sanctified rite and lead readers to the conclusion that it was superstitious. This was done by a skilful choice of words that implicitly suggest but do not assert that conclusion.

Nevertheless, a statement does not need to make a direct attack in order to smear a reputation – a defamatory implication or innuendo can be even more dangerous because the underlying message slips disarmingly into the subconscious mind. The important issue is the impression that the statement is likely to make on those reading it.

As a copy of the “Memo” was presented to Pius XII in 1949, (5) one wonders if he, too, as well as the talking heads of the Liturgical Movement, was swayed by its propaganda which was made to sound credible by specious reasoning. Tragically for the Church, it was this false and malicious innuendo instigated by Antonelli that entered the liturgical reform movement and led to the demise of the Mass of the Pre-Sanctified.


Continued


1. ‘A cinquant’anni dalla riforma liturgica della Settimana Santa’ (Fifty years after the Liturgical Reform of Holy Week), in Ephemerides liturgicae, CXX, 2006, n. 3, July-September, p. 315.
2. Msgr. Gromier delivered his criticism of the reform in a 1960 lecture in Paris, after which he was mercilessly mocked and vilified. He was subjected to a blistering attack full of personal abuse by Fr. Louis Bouyer who portrayed him, among other things, as a “drooling” and “doddery old Canon” obsessed with ancient rubrics. See La Maison-Dieu, n. 62, 1960, p. 152. Gromier lived the rest of his life under a cloud of ostracism by the Vatican.
3. Ferdinando Antonelli in Carlo Braga, ed., La Riforma Liturgica di Pio XII: Documenti, vol. I - La Memoria sulla Riforma Liturgica, 1948, Rome: Edizioni Liturgiche, 2003, p. 65.
4. Michel Andrieu wrote a series of articles called ‘Immixtio et consecratio’ which were published in the Revue des Sciences Religieuses between 1922 and 1924. They were based on the most thorough and meticulous historical research from primary sources.
5.Fr. Antonelli wrote a note in his diary, dated July 22, 1949, to say that the "Memo" was presented to Pius XII by Card. Micara and that he (Antonelli) was present on that occasion. Apud Nicola Giampietro, El Cardinal Ferdinando Antonelli y la Reforma Liturgica, Ediciones Cristiandad, 2005, p. 42, note 30. .

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Dr. Carol Byrne: A Series on the History of the Dialogue Mass

Destroyers of the Mass of the Pre-Sanctified Blessed by Pius XII

Taken from here [slightly adapted - emphasis mine].

The fate of the Mass of the Pre-Sanctified was already sealed when Pius XII appointed his Commission for the General Reform of the Liturgy in 1948 and left it in the hands of the master of the dark arts himself, Fr. Annibale Bugnini. It was as counter-productive as inviting a group of deserters or draft dodgers to rewrite the rules of discipline and loyalty in the Armed Forces. No other outcome could have been expected from a Commission that gave precedence over Tradition to a set of reforms which were merely an expression of ideological views prevalent in the Liturgical Movement.

Pius XII’s blessing for Bugnini’s reform

In 1950, with Pius XII’s permission, Bugnini chose three “experts,” Fr. Josef Jungmann S.J., Dom Bernard Capelle O.S.B. and Mgr. Mario Righetti to guide the work of the Commission. As household names in the Liturgical Movement, they would later become members of the various Commissions that devised and implemented the Novus Ordo. (1)


Thinking with Bugnini

The idea of co-opting the support of those whom Bugnini considered a “safe pair of hands,” while excluding anyone (e.g. Mgr. Gromier) who respected the integrity of the Church’s lex orandi, can be considered a blatant abuse of ecclesiastical power. This in itself shows that the reforms were driven by an oligarchy of men who had made themselves the centre and judge of the Church’s Tradition and who had no scruples about depriving the faithful of their spiritual heritage. It also disproves the claim that applauding these reforms is equivalent to “thinking with the Church.”

In fact, the precise opposite is true: the Church has always in principle rejected the idea of a general reform of the liturgy conceived out of “pastoral expediency” based on the subjective perceptions of contemporary man.

Capelle was a major player in shedding ‘new light’ on the Mass in the Liturgical Reform

Here we are concerned with one of Bugnini’s protégés, Dom Bernard Capelle, Abbot of Mont-Cesar (Beauduin’s monastery) and Professor at the University of Louvain, for as one of Bugnini’s inner circle, Capelle was in a position of unrivalled influence at the very heart of the official Liturgical Movement. We will see how, through his reputation as a liturgical scholar, whatever he said about the Mass of the Pre-Sanctified would be accepted without question by the reformers and used as a lever to topple the ancient edifice.

Where better to raise the profile of this particular reform than at the International Congress on the Liturgy held at Lugano in 1953? It was there that Dom Capelle gave a talk in which he pushed for the abolition of the Mass of the Pre-Sanctified.

Present at the Congress were two Cardinals (Ottaviani of the Holy Office and Frings of Cologne), some 15 Bishops, several members of the Congregation of Rites, many priests who were key activists for liturgical change and the ubiquitous Fr. Bugnini himself. (2)

No one else at the Congress, apart from the “in-crowd” around Bugnini, is likely to have known that Capelle was speaking on behalf of the Commission – he and the other consultors were sworn to secrecy in that connection. (3)


Capelle’s objections

He began by denigrating the traditional liturgy, accusing it of having become “weakened” and “denatured” over the centuries and said it needed to be restored to its original purity before being adapted to the mentality of modern man. (4)

Then, he brought up Fr. Antonelli’s arcane and irrelevant theory of consecration-by-contact. But, his main objection to the Pre-Sanctified rite was that it had taken certain prayers, gestures and ceremonies from the Mass: These included some Offertory prayers, the Elevation of the Host and the use of incense with its accompanying prayers as in a solemn liturgy. His words take on heightened significance when we consider that these features of the Mass were specifically singled out by Bugnini for removal from the liturgy. (5)

Capelle spoke as if with a sense of acute embarrassment, even shame, about these traditions of Catholic worship. He described them as “intolerable,” alleging that they gave “a false impression” that the Pre-Sanctified rite was a real Mass. (6) This conveys the subliminal message that it should be abolished. No wonder that the rite has ever since been regarded with suspicion and even disdain.

In its place, Capelle recommended a service of Communion for all, which, as we have seen, was Fr. Ferdinando Antonelli’s original idea.


Rome fiddles while Tradition burns

At this point, alarm bells should have been ringing throughout the Vatican. For such a proposal, when made into liturgical law two years later, would make it illicit to perform this distinctly Catholic rite that expressed the essential link between the Last Supper and Calvary. And furthermore, as history has shown, it would not be long before traditional Catholics would find themselves outlawed as well.

But, Rome had no intention of sending in the cavalry to rescue the Mass of the Pre-Sanctified from the jaws of defeat. As Fr. Antonelli recorded, not only was there a consensus among the progressivist liturgists for its abolition, but more importantly, the verdict of both the Papal Commission and the Congregation of Rites was overwhelmingly negative. (7)

Card. Micara urged reform of the Good Friday liturgy

In addition, Card. Micara, President of the Commission and Pro-Prefect of the Congregation of Rites, was absent from the Congress, but sent a message of support, urging a reform of the Good Friday Liturgy. (8) Fr. Löw, Vice-Relator of the Congregation and a member of the Commission, was also absent, but had previously expressed disapproval of those elements of the Pre-sanctified rite that were taken from the Mass. (9)

But “the unkindest cut of all” came from Pius XII himself, who did not intervene to save the “Mass of the Pre Sanctified” and allowed it to be excised from the Roman Rite. In fact, he had sent a personally signed message to the Congress, dated 9 September 1953, giving his heartfelt encouragement to the deliberations and bestowing his blessing on “each and every participant.” (10)

How many Catholics today, including traditionalists, know what the “Mass of the Pre-Sanctified” was? How could they, considering that it was abolished long before most of them were born? Some confuse its identity with the Good Friday Communion of the 1962 Missal. In other words, they do not know that there is anything to know about it – surely a very successful damnatio memoriae. Q.E.D.


Continued


1. Jungmann, Capelle and Righetti were members of the 1960 Central Preparatory Commission for the Liturgy. Capelle died in 1961. In 1964, Jungmann and Righetti were appointed as Consultors to Group 10 of the Consilium, which received the task of reforming the Order of Mass. All worked under Bugnini’s supervision.
2. A list of attendees is given in La Maison-Dieu, 37, January 1954, pp. 8-9.
3. The three consultors were required not to speak of their work to anyone else and, on completion of their observations, to return the “Memo” to the Commission. (See La Memoria sulla Riforma Liturgica, Supplement II, 1950)
4. B. Capelle, ‘Le Vendredi Saint,’ La Maison-Dieu, n. 37, January 1954, p. 93.
5. Bugnini mentioned in The Reform of the Liturgy 1948-1975 that the Consilium eliminated the Offertory prayers and attempted to do the same with the Oratre Fratres and the use of incense.
6. B. Capelle, ‘Le Vendredi Saint,’ La Maison-Dieu, p.116.
7. Antonelli stated, “Everyone [on the Commission] applauded the suppression of the so-called Mass of the Pres-Sanctified” and that “all the liturgists” agreed that it should be “eliminated.” (‘The Liturgical Reform of Holy Week, its Importance, Achievements and Perspectives,’ La Maison-Dieu, n. 47-8, 1956, pp. 229, 235)
8. Cf. La Maison-Dieu, n. 37, January 1954, p. 10.
9. He had made this statement in a speech given in Linz, Austria, shortly before the Congress. See La Maison-Dieu, n. 37, January, p. 126.
10. La Maison-Dieu, n. 37, p. 3. And there was a letter from Mgr. Montini urging active participation for the faithful. Ibid., p. 10.

[Stone]

Dr. Carol Byrne: A Series on the History of the Dialogue Mass

Procrustes, a Model for the Liturgical Reform

Taken from here [slightly adapted - emphasis mine].

Although Holy Saturday is the last day of the Sacred Triduum, it was the first target of the reformers’ aim to change the entire Holy Week liturgy. Initially, they pretended that it was only a question of changing the time of the ceremony from morning to night. (1) But we now know for certain that what was being planned by Bugnini and the Papal Commission in 1948 was far more disruptive of Tradition and takes us onto quite a different plane.


A Procrustean Reform

Whereas the other ceremonies of Holy Week were only partially affected by cuts and innovations, the Easter Vigil, as we shall see, was totally dismembered, its remaining parts arbitrarily rearranged and altered to change its symbolic meaning from a Christ-centred to a man-centred celebration.

Procrustes chopped off limbs to fit everyone to his bed

To illustrate the point by way of analogy, let us recall the story from Greek mythology about Procrustes, a rogue innkeeper and robber from Attica who had a bed that he claimed would fit anyone, no matter how tall or short the person would be. And he was right – he forced his guests to fit the size of the bed by cutting off their legs or stretching their bodies into the required shape, before robbing them of their valuables.

The analogy can be aptly applied to the new Easter Vigil, which Pius XII presented to the Church as a fait accompli in 1956 when it became obvious that the entire rite had been hacked and racked on a Procrustean bed of reform, with many of its precious assets stolen. The reformers chose “active participation” as the bed on which the traditional rite was to be measured, and decided that whatever parts of it did not conform to their ideals should be hacked off or twisted beyond recognition.


The Easter Vigil Put in the Dock

Now, we will examine the 1948 “Memo” to see what in that text was used to justify the creation of a new rite. Chapter 3 reveals the fundamental bias of the Commission against the traditional Easter Vigil, how it was put on trial and accused under false pretences of being unfit for purpose.

Fr. Ferdinando Antonelli mentioned some “problems” with the traditional Easter Vigil as a whole which, he considered, stood in need of reform. To begin with, he considered the centuries-old tradition of holding the Vigil in the morning as an aberration from the practice of the early Christians who held it at night, and recommended a return to antiquity.

There were, in his opinion, too many Old Testament readings (“profezie” or prophecies) and not enough emphasis on Baptism or scope for “active participation” by the laity. So, the remedy was to be sought in a swingeing reduction of the number of Scriptural passages – these were reduced from 12 to 4 – increased levels of activity by the laity and the introduction of a complete liturgical novelty, the renewal of baptismal promises by the congregation. (2)


Negative Stereotypes

But all these points, far from constituting evidence for a reform, simply reflected the views that were characteristic of the leaders of the Liturgical Movement. As we have seen, these views had already been doing the rounds in the German-speaking lands in the 1930s and 1940s when some progressivists such as Frs. Pius Parsch, Romano Guardini and Hans Reinhold were conducting their own experiments with the Easter Vigil in defiance of Canon Law.

In fact, there is reason to believe that what Fr. Antonelli wrote in the “Memo” about the presumed need to reform the Easter Vigil was merely the expression of his own personal opinions coupled with those of other activists for liturgical reform. The fine details of this reform were left to be hammered out by a sub-commission – in secret – and later approved by Pius XII.


A ‘Courageous Innovation’

One of the reforms that Antonelli had in mind – which is actually what transpired – was the insertion of a new rite into the Easter Vigil, which would allow the congregation to renew their baptismal promises in dialogue with the priest. He stated in the “Memo:”

Above, a reformed Saturday Vigil ceremony; below, a vigil liturgy of the Neo-Catechumenal Way

“It is a question of finding courageous men with a good knowledge of the ancient liturgy, capable of creating today a rite, a ceremony, in the sense of the primitive liturgy and in the spirit of modern life. That is one of the points that many people hope for from this long desired liturgical reform.” (3)

Before proceeding further, we must note that the “many people” were the few key progressivist reformers, mainly from Germany and France, supported by a band of zealous flag-wavers and that there was certainly no popular demand among the clergy or laity for a reform of the Easter Vigil.

Earlier in the “Memo” he stated that “the Church knows how to make courageous innovations when the supreme good of Christian life demands it.” (4)

Thus, he introduced two concepts that were foreign to the Church’s discipline: that innovation was a praiseworthy and integral part of liturgical development, and that new rites that had no precedent in liturgical history can be invented if deemed by “courageous men” – including himself (5) – to be good for the people. From that moment, the official organs of the Holy See embarked on a course of liturgical adventurism that would lead eventually to the most incongruous innovation of all: Pope Paul’s New Mass.

It is only in the light of the “Memo,” then, that we can interpret the thinking behind Article 23 of the Constitution on the Liturgy, which says that “there must be no innovations unless the good of the Church genuinely and certainly requires them,” and that “any new forms adopted should in some way grow organically from forms already existing.”

It was only in the estimation of the reformers that their innovations were considered “good.” And the “new forms” envisaged by them came not from “forms already existing” in Tradition, but from those conceived and enacted by the reformers outside Tradition, which had no right to existence in the first place. Unfortunately, Pius XII incorporated some of these into the Church’s official liturgy.


An Orwellian Moment

Suddenly the destroyers of Tradition who had been ignoring or deliberately flouting the rubrics and rebelling against authority were transformed into heroes of the Church. Received forms of worship that had been the mainstay of the spiritual life of the faithful for centuries and were instrumental in the formation of countless saints were deemed useless and cast aside by the “courageous” actions of the progressivist reformers.

But, anyone truly courageous enough to put his head above the parapet and oppose these reforms was immediately shot down in flames and subjected to a campaign of bullying, intimidation and personal abuse by members of the Liturgical Movement.

In the next section, we will deal with the 1956 reform of the Easter Vigil. It will become clear that Antonelli and his companions were acting not from the moral virtue of courage, that is, to save the traditional Vigil and prevent it from coming to harm, but rather from their own narrow, one-sided and self-serving desire to destroy it.


Continued

1. The three aforementioned “expert” Consultors of the Commission were all in favour of holding the Vigil at night , with Capelle being the most adamant about it. Memoria Sulla Riforma Liturgica: Supplement II, pp. 21-22.
2. Memoria Sulla Riforma Liturgica, nn. 73-75
3. Ferdinando Antonelli, Memoria, n. 75.
4. Ibid., n. 16.
5. In fact, Fr. Antonelli once boasted of his self-styled “courage” to Pius XII during an audience when he presented his “Memo” to the Pope. In his diary, dated July 22, 1949, he said that the Pope, having read some of the “Memo”, described the proposals for reform as “valientes” (courageous). And Antonelli replied that his “courage” was based on his confidence that he could count on the Pope’s support. As it turned out, his confidence was rewarded by Pius XII in the Holy Week reform. Apud Nicola Giampietro, El cardenal Ferdinando Antonelli y la reforma litúrgica, Ediciones Cristiandad, 2005, p. 42, note 30.

[Stone]

Dr. Carol Byrne: A Series on the History of the Dialogue Mass

The German-French Mafia behind the Liturgical Reform

Taken from here [slightly adapted - emphasis mine].

The 1948 Papal Commission was primed by key members of the Liturgical Movement to reform the Easter Vigil in response to demands by the German Bishops, among whom the last vestiges of liturgical order, discipline and loyalty to Rome had broken down. As we have seen, they had set up an autonomous Episcopal Conference for liturgical matters in 1940 independently of Rome, the aim of which was to wrest control of the liturgy from the Holy See.

Progressivist Card. Bea, confessor to Pius XII, exerted great influence over him

While promoting the dissident activities of avant-garde liturgists in their own dioceses, the German Bishops were strongly supported by their compatriot and front man in the Vatican, Fr. Augustin Bea, who was a permanent member of the Papal Commission.

Armed with this knowledge, we can easily read between the lines of their request to Pius XII concerning the Easter Vigil. It would not be simply a question of changing its timing, but incorporating all the revolutionary changes that Fr. Bea and the other members of the Papal Commission had been planning, as recorded in their 1948 “Memo.”


An Exercise in Sabre-rattling

In 1950, the German Bishops, Mafia-style, made Pius XII “an offer he couldn’t refuse”: Accept the desires of the Liturgical Movement or face an out-and-out mutiny of the combined French and German Episcopates. (1) To this we may add the implicit threat made by Padrino Antonelli, who wrote in the Introduction to the “Memo” for the Pope’s attention:

“It is recognized by all that there exists today throughout the whole Catholic world, and especially in the ranks of the clergy, the desire or rather the conviction of the necessity for a reform of the liturgy.” [emphasis in the original]

This was, of course, a complete fabrication. There was not the slightest evidence of a world-wide consensus of priests supposedly massing on the horizon and calling for revolutionary changes in the liturgy. But, liturgical revolution was precisely what the Commission had the potential to bring about. It could and did put pressure on Pius XII to abolish or alter liturgical legislation or pass innovatory laws at a stroke of a pen.


Taking Liberties with Tradition

As we work our way through the 1951-1956 Easter Vigil reform, we should note that the principle of fidelity to Tradition was starting to be replaced by the principle of destruction and innovation. The way was, thus, opened for progressivist, tendentious and prejudiced views fresh from the Committee Room to become the official policy of the Holy See and be set in juridical stone.

It would also be useful to keep in mind that only 50 years before Pius XII’s Commission applied the new revolutionary principles to the Easter Vigil reform, the Catholic Bishops of Westminster had written:

“In adhering rigidly to the rite handed down to us we can always feel secure: whereas, if we omit or change anything, we may perhaps be abandoning just that element which is essential. … to subtract prayers and ceremonies in previous use, and even to remodel the existing rites in a most drastic manner, is a proposition for which we know of no historical foundation and which appears to us absolutely incredible.” (2)

But, the incredible did happen, first in 1951 with the experimental Easter Vigil, then with the publication of Pius XII’s new Ordo of 1956 containing the full-blown reforms.


The Blessing of the New Fire was Compromised

The reformed Easter Vigil begins, as in the ancient rite, with the lighting of the Paschal fire; so far, so traditional. But, any concordance between the two ceremonies ends there. What happens next is the stuff of all revolutions. The reformed rite immediately starts, in true Procrustean fashion, on its path of racking, hammering and amputation of living, viable elements of tradition to make them fit new ways of thinking.

Novus Ordo monks light the Easter fire in what looks like a trash bin; below, a bonfire to excite the congregation

The first step in this process occurred when the reformers cut out two of the three prayers for the blessing of the new fire. Both of the eliminated prayers were rooted in Scripture and asked God to enlighten the faithful on the path of salvation as He had enlightened Moses coming out of Egypt, and to protect them from the “fiery darts of the enemy” i.e. the Evil One. (Ephesians 6:16)

It is now well established that when the Novus Ordo was created, prayers were removed, which had expressed the Church’s teaching on concupiscence (the “fiery darts”) and the necessary spiritual warfare a Catholic must engage in against the assaults of the Devil. But, the basic and indisputable fact, unknown to most, is that Fr. Bugnini started this process with the 1956 reform of the Easter Vigil by expunging this prayer from the blessing of the new fire.

With it he also expunged a vital element of Catholic doctrine expressed in the liturgy: that the items blessed by the Church’s prayers are imbued with the power of God to protect the faithful from the influence of the Devil.

This is only one example among many to illustrate how the ancient traditions possess valuable points of wisdom whose loss impoverishes the spiritual life of Catholics. If the aim of the reform was to “make the liturgy become the source of an authentically Christian life,” as its leaders have constantly proclaimed, this cannot be achieved by destroying traditions and squandering inherited resources.

For, it is axiomatic that the lex orandi shapes the lex credendi, which in turn influences how we live. When these prayers were removed from the liturgy, the faithful were deprived of the spiritual aid that the Church had lavished on them for centuries.

Also missing from the 1956 prayer of blessing the fire is the former reference to God the Father, the Son and the Holy Ghost, an omission whose significance will become clearer later in the rite.


Why Minimalized Blessings?

A parallel can be drawn with the excision of all but one of the prayers for the blessing of palms in the 1956 Palm Sunday reform.

The question arises as to why the progressivist reformers dismantled the elaborate structure of blessings, whether in the Palm Sunday or the Easter Vigil ceremonies, that the Church had built up to emphasize the very essence of Holy Week as a celebration of Christ’s work of redemption from which all blessings draw their source.

The full significance of these truncated blessings only emerged after Vatican II. They were the prelude to the phasing out of the blessing of objects (3) in the post-Conciliar period when, generally speaking, priests no longer believed that they possessed, through the Sacrament of Ordination, the power to bless material things or that there is any difference between the sacred and the profane.


Bugnini’s Not Too Invisible Hand

All the evidence indicates that, from the outset, this was the outcome desired by the members of the Papal Commission.

• Chapter 3 of their 1948 “Memo” mentions their plans for the radical reform of the Rituale Romanum;
  

• Many blessings of sacramentals were eliminated in the 1956 Holy Week rites;
  

• The Liturgy Constitution introduced a theological shift in the liturgical ministry of blessings by rooting it in the laity rather than the ordained priesthood;
  

• The 1964 Consilium (of which Bugnini was Secretary) stated that “the area in which the most radical revision and new adaptation will be needed is the sacramentals.” (4)
  

That is exactly what the “Memo” had set out to achieve in 1948. And the 1956 reform was only one stop along the road to the terminus ad quem [the final goal].


Continued


1. On November 2, 1950, the Bishops of Germany and Austria, in conjunction with France, formally petitioned Pope Pius XII to move the celebration of Holy Saturday to the night time. This request had been proposed by Romano Guardini at the First German National Liturgical Congress, organized by the Liturgical Institute of Trier in Frankfurt in June 1950. Guardini could hardly be described as a “courageous” reformer.
In a 1940 letter to Bishop Stohr of Mainz, published as Ein Wort zur liturgischen Frage (A Word on the Liturgical Question), he petulantly demanded that the German Bishops should protect the members of the Liturgical Movement from attacks against their convictions and work. But as long as he was hiding behind the skirts of the German Bishops, his agenda can be seen as both craven and partisan. So great was Guardini’s popularity in the liturgical Establishment that even Pius XII protected him and made him a Prelate of the Papal Household in 1952.
2. The Cardinal Archbishop and Bishops of the Province of Westminster, A Vindication of the Bull Apostolicae curae, London, 1898, p. 42.
3. The new Book of Blessings that replaced the Rituale Romanum has largely dispensed with blessing items for use by the faithful. The designated prayers mention blessing the people when they use the item, blessing those who made it or look at it, but not the actual item itself.
4. A. Bugnini, The Reform of the Liturgy (1948-75), Liturgical Press, 1990, p. 580

[Stone]

Dr. Carol Byrne: A Series on the History of the Dialogue Mass

Re-orchestrating the Easter Vigil

Taken from here [slightly adapted - emphasis mine].

When it comes to appreciating the traditional Holy Saturday rite, we could think of it as a grand orchestra, transposed onto the spiritual plane, in which the prayers, hymns and ceremonies, formulated centuries ago by saints and consecrated souls, are performed in a manner worthy of their composers’ intentions. Clearly, any appreciation of so ancient a rite cannot be based on abstract academic theories or the private hunches and personal preferences of a group of liturgical “experts.”

One cannot, like the modernizing reformers, overlook the accumulated wisdom, piety and sanctifying properties of the old rite with its many centuries of hallowed use. Nor can one fail to take into account that, just as in an orchestra, all its constituent parts had a definite and logical relationship not only to every other part, but also to the main structure. So, disturbing even one element is bound to disturb the internal balance and harmony of the whole.

Procession into Church on Holy Saturday morning, stained glass window in Kesgrave Church

We must also consider the wider impact of such changes on the Church itself which, before the 1956 reforms, had always appeared as a cohesive organization with an exact correspondence between the lex orandi and lex credendi. No Pope before Pius XII had ever removed parts of the liturgy pertaining to Catholic Faith and Morals, as he allowed Fr. Bugnini to do (see previous article above), so that the disbeliever would not feel “uncomfortable” – as if truth and virtue were understood to be relative to time, place or culture.

As we shall see, the progressivist reformers under Bugnini’s directorship radically re-orchestrated the Easter Vigil in 1956. However, the only similarity between Bugnini and a conductor was that both could make things happen with the wave of a hand. Judging by the results he produced, which are set out below, we will be justified in concluding that he and his Commission, to put it charitably, must not have had an ear for music.

Soon, the orchestra would be playing discordant notes out of harmony with Tradition, under the baton of a leader who was, to all intents and purposes, tone deaf.


The Blessing of the Five Grains of Incense Downgraded

The centennial custom in the Roman Rite was to bless five grains of incense – to be later inserted into the Paschal Candle – with the ancient prayer Veniat quaesumus and the antiphon Asperges me, Domine said by the priest. The Church had given this ceremony greater prominence in the Middle Ages when the art of allegorical exegesis was at its height.

As the five grains of incense represent symbolically the five wounds of Christ, they were considered worthy of a solemn blessing before being inserted into the Paschal Candle whose pure, white wax was also a symbol of Christ’s virginal Body.

However, the 1948 Commission whipped up a spurious controversy over this issue, charging that during all those centuries the Church was wrong to use the prayer Veniat for that purpose because in the early Church it was used to bless the Candle. (1)

Some detractors of medieval symbolism even suggested that the use of the Veniat in the pre-1956 rite originated from a linguistic muddle due to a misinterpretation of the Latin word incensum. This theory, implying that the Church Fathers were not proficient in Latin, strains credibility and can be easily debunked. (2)

What actually happened to the solemn blessing of the five grains incense at the Easter Vigil as a result of this pseudo-controversy constitutes another sad chapter in the 1956 reform. The accompanying prayer Veniat was not axed. But, as we shall see, the reformers used that other Procrustean operation of stretching and skewing to make it fit a different context. This left the incense grains without any ceremonial prayer for their blessing, also making the Asperges antiphon redundant.

Furthermore, according to the 1962 rubrics, even the blessing itself could be dispensed with in the rite, (3) thus providing a further opportunity to reduce the solemnity of what St. Augustine called the “Vigil of all vigils”.


Liturgical ‘thimble-rig’

Fr. Bugnini, it seems, was a past master at the old game of thimble-rig (4) in which the rapid sleight-of-hand deceives the eye. By means of abstraction, substitution and transposition he managed to radically reconstruct the entire Easter Vigil while making it difficult to keep one’s eye, as it were, on the ball.

First, Bugnini uprooted the Veniat prayer from its connection with the incense. By a process of shell-shuffling, his confederates on the Commission whisked it away to be redeployed for the blessing of the Paschal Candle, having first changed its wording (5) to fit its newfound purpose.

If we think this move was trivial and inconsequential, unworthy of prolonged attention we are much deceived by the operator of the scam.


Where’s the Ball?

As in all shell games, there is more in the move than meets the eye. It raises the question: where does that leave the Exsultet, the magnificent hymn that the Church had been using since at least the 7th century as the framework for blessing the Paschal Candle?

An Exultet manuscript dated 1030 kept in the Cathedral of Bari museum

Its function was recorded in ancient Sacramentaries as the Benedictio Cerei (Blessing of the Candle), and was faithfully handed on to us over the centuries until the 1956 reform. That, however, was before the “shells” were shuffled again by Bugnini, and the Exsultet suddenly lost its traditional function; it found itself changed from a rite of blessing and consecration of the Paschal Candle to simply a hymn of praise.

This was hardly an innocent or inconsequential transposition, given the succession of changes that logically ensued and which, therefore, must have been intended. For, if the Exsultet has lost its raison d’être in the blessing of the Candle, the ceremonial procession leading to that climactic event also loses its theological significance.

In the next section, we will look at the “Memo” to examine the specious reasoning behind these changes. It will, then, become painfully obvious that when Bugnini and the Commission had finished rearranging the “shells,” some ancient ceremonies were discontinued, having been absorbed and replaced by innovations and different liturgical forms, and some doctrinal content had simply disappeared.


Continued


1. A version of this prayer is found in the Old Gelasian Sacramentary of the 8th century. It was only one of several used in the Church at that time for the blessing of the Paschal Candle before the Roman Missal was compiled.
2. This accusation can be refuted by examining the wording of the prayers. Although incensum can mean either “lighted” or “incense,” there was no possible confusion in the original sources. Whereas the 8th century source used the masculine form “hunc incensum” for the lighted candle, the pre-1956 Missal used the neuter “hoc incensum” which could only mean “incense.”
3. The priest could bypass this part of the rite if the incense grains had already been blessed before the Vigil, i.e., he blesses them only “si non sunt benedicta” (if they are not blessed) and in silence (“nihil dicens”).
4. Equivalent of the modern shell game, it has been part of the con artist’s repertoire at fairs and racecourses since ancient Greek and Roman times.
5. The word cereum (candle) was added.

[Stone]

Dr. Carol Byrne: A Series on the History of the Dialogue Mass

False Pretexts to Disrupt the Lex Orandi

Taken from here [slightly adapted - emphasis mine].

As the content of the 1948 “Memo” shows, the Papal Commission operated as a lobby group with the evident intention to gain the ear of Pius XII so as to influence future legislation on the liturgy.

Below, using the internal evidence of the “Memo” itself, we will see how the Commission set out to achieve its aims. First, it created a fake controversy over the authenticity of the Church’s centuries-old lex orandi, making it seem that somewhere along the way the Church had made a wrong turning. Then, having cast doubt on the integrity of Tradition, it proceeded to control the terms of the debate as follows.


The Pseudo-controversy: Veniat or Exsultet?

Basically, the dispute – invented by the Commission out of thin air – was about whether the Church had erred in using the Exsultet – rather than the Veniat – to bless the Paschal Candle. Dom Lambert Beauduin had no hesitation in calling it a “profound error.” (1)

Fr. Antonelli was made a cardinal by JPII - a reward for his progressivist work

Fr. Ferdinando Antonelli, on behalf of the Commission, presented the status quaestionis thus:

“Everyone knows that in our Missals the hymn Exsultet is called the Benedictio Cerei [Blessing of the Candle], and the liturgists have posed the question as to whether the Deacon can bless the Candle. But historians of the liturgy know very well that the real prayer of blessing of the Candle is the Veniat, which today has come to be used as the blessing of the grains of incense, in spite of the fact that the same text clearly refers to the Candle and its light. The Exsultet is the real Praeconium Paschale and should be given back its original title, while the prayer Veniat should once again become the Benedictio Cerei.” (2)

We are left to marvel at how many false or tendentious remarks he could fit into one paragraph. Who the historians are is not disclosed; but from Antonelli’s account, their opinions have as much credibility as the plotline of Dan Brown’s Da Vinci Code novel insofar as both are rooted in misinformation and constitute a concealed, indirect assault on the integrity of Catholic Tradition. Let us take each of his points in turn.

Fr. Antonelli begins by challenging the Church’s right to have the blessing of the Candle during the Exsultet, and plants a seed of doubt about the deacon’s role in performing it. (3)

As any competent historian of the liturgy would know, from the early centuries of the Church, it was the deacon’s office to light the Paschal Candle, and that he was also given the privilege of performing its blessing during the Exsultet. Fr. Antonelli did not mention that this tradition was based on an immemorial custom of well over a thousand years, being attested to in the ancient Gallican Sacramentaries e.g. the 7th century Missale Gothicum, (4) one of the forerunners of the Roman Missal. Nevertheless, the Commission decided to bring it to an end in 1956 without, however, being able to offer a single good reason for the change.


From Reduced Blessing to No Blessing

Today the blessing has been simplified to one for the fire

That was how the blessing of the Candle was peremptorily transferred from the long, elaborate and impressive hymn of the Exsultet sung by the deacon in the sanctuary, to the one-paragraph prayer of the Veniat spoken by the priest outside the church.

Beauduin commented on this low-profile arrangement. He noted with satisfaction that in the 1956 reform, the blessing was carried out “privately,” by which he meant in a less visible manner and without elaborate ceremony. (5)

Once again, the progressivist reformers displayed a certain squeamishness about blessing material objects that sits ill with Catholic Tradition. Furthermore, this demotion was a transitory stage to the Novus Ordo in which the Paschal Candle is not blessed at any stage of the Easter Vigil. (6)


An Unnecessary Controversy

Was there any need to change the blessing of the Candle from the Exsultet to the Veniat? Let us examine the Commission’s claim that the Veniat was the “real prayer of blessing,” and should have been retained, while the Exsultet, which the Church had chosen for that purpose was, by implication, unauthentic.

The historical evidence shows that neither blessing was, in fact, any more or less “real” than the other. Both have an excellent pedigree, of roughly similar antiquity, in the Gelasian and Gallican Sacramentaries respectively. As the Exsultet eventually became more popular and widely used – indeed, it became the most prized of all the jewels of the Easter Vigil – it was both obvious and natural that the Church gave it priority over the other prayer for inclusion in the Roman Missal as the blessing of the Candle.

It is noteworthy that this priority arose not by bureaucratic fiat from on high – as in the 20th century reforms when the Veniat was imposed – but from the historical fact that the Exsultet proved to have more widespread popular acclaim. In other words, the blessing of the Candle was not legislated by a Commission or other tribunal, but emerged as an implicit preference among the community of the faithful. And that before the expression “organic development” was invented.


Sacrificing Truth to Power

By 1956, it is evident that unseen interests were exerting enormous control over the future of the liturgy. The text of the “Memo” was available only to “insiders” and to no one else. Under cover of secrecy, the Commission attempted – and failed – to prove that the Church had made a faux pas.

A medieval manuscript shows the deacon giving the tradition blessing for the Easter candle

We can now say that it was not simply unscholarly, but dishonest to claim that the Veniat was the “real” prayer of blessing of the Candle and that it should supplant the immemorial custom of the Exsultet. There is absolutely no evidence to support that claim, much evidence against it, and even more evidence that the liturgical “science” underpinning it was fabricated.

We can conclude, therefore, that the Commission members arrived at their judgment only by leaving out a key element of liturgical history – its “organic development” – and skewed the historical evidence to fit their a priori theory. This is a typical example of how the Commission took a counter-position against long-established, universal traditions simply on the basis of their own subjective preferences.

As with the rest of the Easter Vigil, indeed with the entire Holy Week, centuries of hallowed customs were scrutinized by members of the Commission with a view to eradicating them on flimsy or false pretexts. Thus, the lex orandi, the very locus of sanctification of the faithful and the principal means of replicating the Faith in successive generations, became a particular target of officiousness and bureaucratic control. The Commission worked to ensure that Tradition would henceforth no longer be master in its own house, but had to cede authority to abstract theories beloved of liturgical “experts” and historians.

Next, we will see how transposing the blessing of the Candle from the Exsultet to the Veniat had another unwarranted effect: it changed the theological significance of the Procession from a carefully choreographed pageant dramatizing the fact of the Resurrection as a historical event, to an unstructured melee in which the Paschal Candle (representing the risen Christ) was outshone by the People’s candles.


Continued


1. ‘Le Cierge Pascal’ (The Paschal Candle), La Maison-Dieu, n. 26, March 1951, p. 24.
2. Memoria, n. 73.
3. Lambert Beauduin (‘Le Cierge Pascal,’ ibid.) complained that “the deacon never blessed any object, especially before his superiors.” The priest is, of course, the ordinary minister of blessings. But at the Easter Vigil the deacon was given the exceptional privilege of acting as his deputy to bless the Candle, using the flame from the new fire and the five grains of incense blessed by the priest earlier in the ceremony.
4. Henry Marriott Bannister (Ed.), Missale Gothicum, a Gallican Sacramentary, London: Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana. MSS., 1917, p. 67.
5. Lambert Beauduin, ‘Le Cierge Pascal,’ p. 24.
6. The Novus Ordo rite mentions only the “Preparation of the Candle,” not its blessing.

[Stone]

Dr. Carol Byrne: A Series on the History of the Dialogue Mass

Undermining the Procession of the Paschal Candle

Taken from here [slightly adapted - emphasis mine].

For many centuries, the process of bringing the fire to the Paschal Candle was part of the complex of features that gave the Easter Vigil its unique and recognizable identity. In the Church’s immemorial tradition, this was accomplished by the deacon carrying in procession a triple-branched candlestick representing the Holy Trinity.

A symbolic act

As the procession of clergy advanced into the church, the three candles were lit successively to honor each Person of the Holy Trinity; at each lighting the deacon sang the three-fold Lumen Christi and the choir responded Deo gratias, whereupon all genuflected.

The final destination of the Procession was the sanctuary where the unlit Paschal Candle was already in place waiting for the deacon to light it from one of the three candles. This tripartite symbolism was calculated to make a lasting theological impact on the faithful. For those who were waiting inside the unlit church, this was a pinnacle moment, the climax to which the procession was leading.

It illustrated in the most visually dramatic way the doctrine that it was the Holy Trinity – represented by the triple-branched candlestick – that effected the Resurrection. It was a statement without words that Christ raised himself from the dead by His own Divine power.


Elimination of the Triple-Branched Candlestick

The Commission eliminated the ceremony of the triple candle with its Trinitarian symbolism and replaced it with a procession involving “active participation” of the laity, leaving it, as we shall see, with only secondary, if not exactly marginal, connections with the Resurrection. What this amounts to in practical terms is an attempt to censor or silence the liturgical expression of the doctrine of the Holy Trinity. It was a pattern that Bugnini replicated not only during the rest of the Holy Week reforms but also in the creation of the New Mass.

The most obvious effect of suppressing this symbolism was to give the impression that belief in the actual physical i.e. bodily Resurrection of Christ – the chief of His miracles as proof of His Divinity – is not something that should be taken too literally. This was the position of the mid-20th century progressivists, successors of the early modernists, (1) who succeeded in spreading doubts about the great supernatural interventions of God in human history. (2)

As we have seen, their influence in the Liturgical Movement was beginning to make itself felt in the Holy Week reforms of Pius XII.

We are, therefore, justified in raising the question: Did those members of the Commission who proposed reforms that accommodated the ideas of the neo-modernists hold the integral Catholic Faith? To ask the question is to answer it.

Here, however, we are less concerned with the presumed intentions of the reformers than with the reforms themselves and their internal logic. Our brief is an objective examination of certain affirmations made by Fr. Antonelli in the “Memo” and the conclusions to which they logically lead.


Returning to the Analogy with an Orchestra

Thinking of the traditional Easter Vigil ceremonies as an orchestra playing a piece of classical music composed of different movements can help us to see how much damage was done by the 1956 reforms.

The Procession itself was a masterpiece of artistry in which the lighting of each candlestick worked in counterpoint to the corresponding genuflections to produce a harmonic progression towards the crescendo, the lighting of the Paschal Candle. It was a fitting climax of honor to God that this should take place at the precise moment during the Exsultet when the text mentions the lighting of the Candle. (3)


Purpose of the Procession Undermined

But, when the reformers re-orchestrated the Procession in 1956, they cut out and added on whatever they pleased.

By suppressing the triple-branched candlestick, they upset the balance and harmony of the “orchestra.” The tripartite candle had acted as a kind of masthead identifying itself as a symbol of the Holy Trinity and displaying the purpose of the Procession, which was to light the Paschal Candle. When it disappeared, the corresponding three-fold Lumen Christi and the three genuflections were left without their intended counterpart.

As the relationship between each instrument in an orchestra is one of complementarity, this fundamentally changed the combination of elements in the symphony. The effect was like trying to play Mozart’s Flute and Harp Concerto without, say, the flute. It would be a lopsided creation, a monument to organizational failure, because the sound would be off-balance and not ring true to the composer’s original intention.

While it is inconceivable that any conductor would commit such a desecration, it transpired that the Commission actually accomplished something similar in the Easter Vigil with Bugnini at the podium.


A People-Centred Rite

What the purpose of the reformed Procession was in relation to the Resurrection is unclear. The Paschal Candle was lit, but without ceremony, before the Procession began – a comparatively poor reception for the fact of the Resurrection and a definite anti-climax to the traditional rite. Then it was carried through the church so that everyone, without distinction of clergy or laity, could light their own individual candle from its flame.

The new ceremony shifts the focus to the people

The whole process was not only an astonishing innovation in the Roman Rite, but also a considerable distraction from the main point of the Vigil, as it diverted attention away from the centrality of Christ to the people. The Paschal Candle, which was supposed to show the Light of Christ coming into the darkness of the world, was outshone by the constellation of candles in the hands of the laity illuminating the darkness far more effectively.

Yet, this was not an oversight by the Commission. The new arrangement was chosen intentionally by the reformers to make the following point. The people, by merely holding a lighted candle, were encouraged to think of themselves as the bearers of the Light they had received at Baptism, as if it could never have been lost since then.

This was confirmed by Fr. Clifford Howell S.J., one of the foremost proponents of the 1956 reform. With reference to “all the clergy and people” at the Vigil, he stated: “Their candles now shine with the flame received this night from the Christ-candle; their souls live with the life received from Christ in Baptism.” (4)

What this reform shows is that the theologically unfounded optimism about human nature, which later surfaced at Vatican II, had entered the liturgy in the mid 1950s. For all the preceding centuries of its existence, the Church had wisely emphasized the frailty of human nature, its propensity to sin and its constant need for the Light.


Continued


1. The theological modernists of the late 19th and early 20th centuries had been working to reinterpret and “demythologize” the Sacred Scriptures by explaining away the miracles and focusing on inner spiritual “experiences” instead of revealed truths. Consequently, their progressivist successors in the Liturgical Movement were determined to suppress the supernatural content of the liturgy and make it as man-centred as possible.
2. These included such miracles as the Incarnation, the Resurrection, the daily acts of Transubstantiation, among many others
3. The text states that the Candle is lit “to the honor of God” (“in honorem Dei”)
4. Fr. Clifford Howell, ‘Understanding the Exultet’, The Way, London, 1961, vol. 1, n. 2, p. 100

[Stone]

Dr. Carol Byrne: A Series on the History of the Dialogue Mass

Detaching the Lex Credendi from the Lex Orandi

Taken from here [slightly adapted - emphasis mine].

The Procession was not the only element of the reformed Easter Vigil that underwent a change of character either through modifications to its form and content or through a novel interpretation of its role. We have seen how the Exsultet lost its operative principle as the Blessing of the Candle and was reduced to a mere text, while an entirely new ceremony was invented for the Candle.

Bearing in mind that the omission or rearrangement of even one element in an orchestra, or the addition of an extraneous element, could upset the balance and harmony of the ensemble, we can conceptualize the damage done to the traditional Vigil by the omission of two-thirds of the Scriptural readings: Of the original 12 Prophecies, only four remained in 1956.

In the “Memo,” Fr. Antonelli explained the “reasoning” behind this reduction:

• In the time of St Gregory the Great, there were only 4 Prophecies.
  

• There is nothing special about the number 12; therefore, no “absolute need” (necessità assoluta) to stick to it.
  

• Having 12 readings is a “real burden” (vero onere) on everyone concerned.
  

• In our day, it is inappropriate to subject the laity to the readings in Latin (la lettura in latino)
  

It is not entirely true that the Gregorian Sacramentary had only four Prophecies: unknown to the Commission, it also had a Supplement containing 12 Old Testament readings in widespread use in the Carolingian era. (1)

Besides, there is no convincing reason why the Commission should single out the Gregorian system as the model for the 1956 Easter Vigil. At that relatively early period in its history, the Roman Rite was still in its embryonic stage, and was in the process of absorbing elements from 7th century Gallican and other sources which had many more readings. (2)

The Church finally settled for 12 – the same number as in the 5th century Easter Vigil in Jerusalem (3) – and they remained in this form over the centuries until 1956. Evidently, the Commission saw no reason to respect this immemorial tradition.

We must note a curious irony here. The Commission had set itself the task of returning the liturgy to its primitive foundations in the first centuries of the Church and cutting out whatever it considered to be later “accretions.” Yet it rejected the number of scriptural readings that had characterized the earliest known Easter Vigil, i.e. 12, for a small fraction found at an interim stage of development of the Roman Rite.

This reform is all the more reprehensible because, once the norm of 12 had become established, the Sacred Congregation of Rites had repeatedly forbidden any diminution in the number of readings, adding that “All must be sung entire.” (4)


A Concession to Anthropocentrism

The Easter Vigil reform, which started in 1951 on an experimental basis, is the earliest evidence we have that the reformed Vigil was primarily geared towards the comfort and convenience of the assembly. By characterizing the 12 Prophecies as too much of a “burden” for all concerned – it might as well have said “too long and boring” –, the Commission presented the traditional liturgy as a form of oppression from which the faithful needed to be liberated.

According to this perverse view, the faithful were incapable of deriving spiritual nourishment from the traditional liturgy, and it must, therefore, be tailored to suit their perceived needs.

Such a conclusion about the faithful is both condescending and shallow. It ignores the true method of participation whereby they engaged in understanding and praying the liturgy with hearts and minds without necessarily knowing the meaning of the Latin words.

St. Thomas: 'It is enough to understand why it is being sung - for the praise of God'

They were simply drawn to the message of the texts sung by the choir in Gregorian Chant.

St. Thomas Aquinas explained: “Although some may not understand what is being sung, they understand why it is being sung, that is, for the praise of God, and this is enough, even if the faithful do not strictly speaking sing in order to rouse their devotion.” (5)

In other words, a lively Faith was paramount and an instinct for God; little else was needed.

Before these unnecessary reforms, the whole of the Church’s liturgy, most especially in Holy Week, was imbued with the spirit of sacrifice. Yet of this indispensable requirement the Commission made not a mention. Instead, turning all previous wisdom on its head, it allowed the liturgy, for the first time in the Church’s history, to be imbued with the spirit of the world, catering to the baser human instincts for a less “burdensome” form of worship.


A Significant Omission

Although the reformed rite retained the reading from Isaiah Chapter 4, there was still something missing: Its first verse was cut out in 1956. What was so objectionable about it that modern ears had to be shielded from its prophecy? The missing verse highlighted the importance of marriage as an essentially patriarchal society established by God for the procreation of children. (6)

It is not without significance that this procreative purpose was not clearly affirmed at Vatican II as the primary end of marriage, but downgraded and conflated with other ends, contrary to both the Natural Law and the biblical teaching. But the first overtures to the radical feminist agenda had already been made in 1956 with the omission of Isaiah 4:1 from the traditional liturgy.


The Importance of the 12 Prophecies

For the ordinary Catholic, questioning why there were 12 Prophecies was superfluous. It was enough to recognize, without the need to analyze why there was that number, that it was the immemorial tradition of the Church.

The 3 men in the fiery furnace - a symbol of the death and Resurrection of Christ

The lengthy readings were chosen to emphasize that the Redemption had been predicted by the Patriarchs and Prophets throughout the Old Testament. In order to make the point most cogently, the readings were skillfully crafted into 3 distinct groups of 4 nocturns, each with its own theme, giving the full history of our Redemption from the Creation to the Resurrection.

But, in the reform, most of the accounts relating to the Resurrection were suppressed e.g. Noah and the Ark (as in the Palm Sunday blessings), Abraham’s sacrifice of Isaac, Ezechiel’s vision of the valley of the dry bones, Jonah in the whale, the three young men in the fiery furnace. Their relevance to the Church is that they were all figures of the death and Resurrection of Christ.

Significantly, the Instruction accompanying the Decree Maxima redemptionis (1955) lacks any mention of this connection. In its commentary on the Old Testament readings, it simply states that in them “the great deeds accomplished by God in the Old Covenant are commemorated, pale images of the marvels of the New Testament.” Thus, any specific reference to the Resurrection as a fact of history predicted in the Old Testament is avoided.

We are left wondering what the real reason was for the drastic reduction in the Easter Vigil readings. In their attempt to offer the faithful an “easy-riding” liturgy, the progressivist reformers detached the essential element of the lex credendi from the lex orandi which underpins it. All they succeeded in doing, therefore, was to deprive the whole Church in 1956 – and the modern day users of the 1962 Missal – of the full panoply of Prophecies which pointed to the Resurrection of Christ.

Continued

1. Jean Deshusses (ed.), Le sacramentaire grégorien, ses principales formes d'après les plus anciens manuscripts: le sacramentaire, le supplément d’Aniane, Freiburg, 1971, vol. 1, , 1971, pp. 183-185.
2. The 8th century Gelasian Sacramentary had 10 readings and 10 corresponding collects; the Byzantine liturgy had 15; the Lateran Basilica had twice as many as it appeared because they were read in both Latin and Greek for the benefit of the Greek-speaking faithful in Rome. See here.
3. Anton Baumstark, Nocturna laus. Typen frühchristlicher Vigilienfier und ihr Fortleben vor allem in Römischen und Monastischen Ritus (Nocturnal Praise. Types of early Christian Vigils and their survival especially in Roman and Monastic rites), Münster: Aschendorff, 1957, pp. 38-39.
4. Adrian Fortescue, Ceremonies of the Roman Rite Described, p. 327
5. Summa Theologica, II, II, q. 91, a. 2.
6. “And in that day seven women shall take hold of one man, saying: We will eat our own bread, and wear our own apparel: only let us be called by thy name [in marriage]. Take away our reproach [of childlessness].” (Isaiah 4:1) The women in question were willing to forego the secondary benefits of marriage – the mutual aid of the spouses – in order to obtain its primary goal, the procreation of children.