Lex orandi, lex credendi
Four Ways in Which the Prayers of the Novus Ordo Differ from Those of the Traditional Latin Mass
So, you have previously attended the Novus Ordo and are new to the traditional Latin Mass, or have been attending for a little while. You have begun to appreciate the increased reverence with which the traditional Mass is celebrated, and noticed the obvious differences with a typical modern Mass, such as the Priest facing ad orientem. You might also be starting to wonder what other changes there are. Of course, many books and articles have been written about this, but by way of an introduction, here are four noticeable ways in which the prayers of the Novus Ordo differ from those of the traditional Mass, along with the reasons why.
1. The Intercession of the Saints
When one compares the traditional and modern orders of Mass, it becomes quite obvious that we ask for the intercession of the Saints much more often in the traditional liturgy. In the Novus Ordo, the Confiteor—which is optional—has had the specific mentions of Saint Michael the Archangel, Saint John the Baptist, and Saints Peter and Paul removed. Similarly, after the Lord’s Prayer, in the Libera nos the words “and by the intercession of the blessed and glorious ever-Virgin Mary, Mother of God, of your blessed Apostles Peter and Paul, of Andrew, and all the Saints” were omitted by the liturgical reformers. The prayer Per intercessionem beati Michaelis at the blessing of incense during the traditional offertory was deleted entirely.
This reduction of intercession is also noticeable in the feasts and memorials of the Saints. Let us examine a small selection of prayers that occur during the summer months.
The Postcommunion of Saint Bonaventure (July 14) asks that “through the prayers of your blessed Confessor Bishop Bonaventure, we may obtain forgiveness.” In the Novus Ordo, only a proper Collect is assigned to this memorial, with the super oblata (Prayer over the Offerings) and Postcommunion taken from the Common of Pastors or the Common of Doctors. Neither of the Postcommunion prayers in these Commons ask for the intercession of the saints.
Intercession is a theme that runs throughout the Mass propers for Saint Mary Magdalene (July 22). In the Collect, we ask for her intercession; in the Secret, we ask that her merits “may make our gifts acceptable” to God; and in the Postcommunion, we ask that “through [her] protection we may be rescued from all harm.” In the Novus Ordo, this is restricted to the Collect only: “that through her intercession and example we may proclaim the living Christ…”
For the Mass of Saint Ignatius Loyola (July 31), we again see an intercessory theme throughout the traditional prayers. In the Collect—retained in the Novus Ordo1—we ask that “by his help we may imitate him”; in the Secret, we pray for his “gracious support”; and in the Postcommunion, we ask that “by his intercession, we may exalt your majesty without end.” These latter two prayers were edited by the post-Vatican II reformers to remove the references to the intercession of Saint Ignatius.
For the feast of Saint Lawrence (August 10), we are told in the Secret prayer that his merits plead for us, and the Postcommunion asks that “through [his] intercession, we may enjoy an increase of your saving grace.” The Novus Ordo removes both the merits of Saint Lawrence from the super oblata and any mention of his intercession from the Postcommunion.
As a final example, on the feast of Saint Augustine (August 28), the Collect asks for his intercession, as do the Secret and Postcommunion prayers taken from the Mass In medio from the Commons (Doctors of the Church). The Novus Ordo replaces this Collect with a newly-composed prayer that combines parts of three different texts and omits any mention of saintly intercession.
To be clear, the modern Missal does still ask for the intercession of the Saints in its prayers. But it does not do so as often as the traditional Roman Rite does, and this is quite noticeable. Why is this? Fr. Carlo Braga, a close collaborator of Fr. Annibale Bugnini, provides us with something of an explanation in connection with the Prayers over the Offerings in the Proper of Saints, and the logic can obviously be extended to the Postcommunion prayers:
[T]o avoid misunderstandings it must be specified that we do not intend to deny the intercession of the Saint, but at the moment of mentioning the value of the offering about to be made through the remembrance of the Lord’s memorial it seemed more important to emphasise this aspect, and to leave the direct invocation of the Saint in the collect, thereby resulting in a more balanced distribution of elements among the three euchological formulas of the Mass.2
This, it must be said, betrays quite a rationalist view of liturgical prayer. It is true that each genre of prayer—Collect, Secret, Postcommunion—has a particular function within the Mass. However, to insist that the ‘proper place’ to ask for a Saint’s intercession is in the Collect, to the exclusion of the other prayers, is rather rigid. This not only reduces the faithful’s exposure to the inter-relation and harmony that exists between the liturgical orations, but also obscures the intercessory relationship between the Church Militant, the Church Suffering, and the Church Triumphant. Here on earth, we are dependent on the prayers of the Saints in heaven, just as the faithful in Purgatory are dependent on our prayers for them—and the traditional liturgy does a better job of training us in this intercessory mindset.
2. Fasting during Lent and throughout the year
Another noticeable difference between the traditional Roman Rite and the Novus Ordo is the mention of fasting. In the post-Vatican II Missal, fasting is mentioned much less often during Lent, with the word ieiunium replaced with phrases such as “the works of Lent,”3 “the sacred practice of penance,”4 and “works of penance and charity.”5 Numerous prayers in the 1962 Missal that mention fasting were deleted entirely and replaced with other orations, themselves often edited to remove the language of fasting. For example, the traditional Collect for Monday in Week 2 of Lent was replaced by a prayer from the 8th century Gelasianum Vetus (n. 173), which begins “O God, who have taught us to chasten our bodies by the devotion of fasting for the healing of our souls.” In the Novus Ordo, the words ieiunii devotione have been removed, contrary to every single manuscript this prayer appears in.6
The discipline of fasting has not just been reduced or removed from Lent in the Novus Ordo. When the Ember Days were eliminated from the post-Vatican II liturgical calendar,7 the fasting associated with them throughout the year disappeared. The third, fourth and fifth Collects as well as the Secret for Ember Saturday in Pentecost do not appear anywhere in the post-Vatican II Missal. Neither does the Collect for Ember Friday in September, nor the first, second, fourth, and fifth Collects for Ember Saturday in September, all of which mention fasting.
Why was the language of fasting reduced in the liturgical reforms? Group XVIII bis of the Consilium, the organization set up to carry out the reforms, give the following rationale:
[T]here are some orations that have lost their historic value, or that no longer conform to the norms of Christian life today…[T]he majority of the Lenten orations will suffice as an example…With respect to the secondary nature [of Lent], namely the penitential character, it is evident almost exclusively in the language of fasting, and neither the spirit of penance in general nor the preparation for the paschal mystery is sufficiently treated…Does it please the Fathers…that, in certain cases, orations be accommodated to the customs of Christian life today?8
On a practical level, such changes to the prayers of the Missal may also have been made necessary by the disciplinary changes introduced by Pope Paul VI in the Apostolic Constitution Paenitemini (February 17, 1966), which drastically curtailed the number of fast days and gave bishops’ conferences the ability to allow the faithful to substitute other acts of penance in place of fasting. But these changes in fasting discipline were not mentioned by Group XVIII bis at all.
In fact, the removal of fasting from many of the prayers of the Roman Missal seems to have its roots in the group’s misinterpretation of the phrase “twofold character” (duplex indoles) in Sacrosanctum Concilium n. 109. In this part of Vatican II’s Constitution on the Liturgy, the two Lenten elements of “recalling or preparing for Baptism” and “penance” are presented as equal sides of the same coin. In contrast, the Consilium gave priority to the baptismal nature of Lent over and above its penitential character, describing the latter as its “secondary nature” (secundam indolem). Their revision of the Lenten orations reflects their misinterpretation of the Council’s liturgical constitution.
Although prayer and good works should always accompany our fasting, this does not mean we should lessen our emphasis on this important biblical and traditional discipline. It is unfortunate that, as Prof. Michael Foley writes, “as a whole, the new Missal offers little guidance on fasting and almost no prayers for its success.”9 The faithful are better served by the traditional Roman Rite’s very noticeable emphasis on fasting, by which we “may abstain from sin and pursue justice” (Monday in Week 2 of Lent, Collect).
3. Praying for the Souls of the Dead
Another difference that is quite noticeable between the traditional and modern Missals is the manner in which the dead are prayed for. For instance, when the Masses for All Souls’ Day (November 2) in the traditional Latin Mass and the Novus Ordo are compared, one will notice the lack of any mention of the souls of the deceased in the Novus Ordo. Many of the modern prayers for All Souls are new compositions that take elements from existing liturgical and biblical texts—unnecessary, given the vast quantity of prayers for the dead that already exist in the tradition10—but even for the orations carried over from ancient sacramentaries, mention of the souls of the deceased has been systematically removed.11
The word anima (“soul”) in all its forms appears around seventy-five times in the prayers of the traditional Roman Missal. By contrast, in the first (1970) and second (1975) editions of the Missal of the Novus Ordo it appears only around thirty-five times—half as much, in a book with nearly twice as many orations in it.12 It is a matter of fact that we pray specifically for the souls of the dead more in the traditional liturgy than in the modern liturgy. And this de-emphasis in the Novus Ordo is puzzling, given the teaching of both Scripture and Tradition on death. As the Catechism of the Catholic Church states (n. 366):
The Church teaches that every spiritual soul is created immediately by God…and also that it is immortal: it does not perish when it separates from the body at death, and it will be reunited with the body at the final Resurrection.13
We ought to be praying for the dead—more specifically, the souls of the dead—frequently. So, why is it the case that the Novus Ordo changes the language and terminology of the liturgy by removing references to the souls of the deceased? Fr. Pierre-Marie Gy (d. 2004), a consultor to the Consilium and an influential 20th-century liturgist who was director of the Centre de Pastorale Liturgique in France, stated:
It was also desirable that the prayer for the soul of the deceased to be cleansed of its sins (a prayer in which the substance of the Catholic faith of Purgatory is involved) should be freed from a certain number of allusions to a mythical itinerary of the soul after death.14
It seems, then, that praying specifically for the souls of the deceased was reduced in the Novus Ordo due to concerns about myth and superstition. The danger in this approach, however, is that it looks very much like a retreat from the Church’s traditional and dogmatic teaching on eschatology and the nature of man. Instead, the solution to this perceived problem—insofar as it exists—is to clearly explain the teaching of the Church on the unity of man’s physical body and spiritual soul, their separation at death, and their reunification at the general resurrection. The traditional Roman Rite does a better job of this than the Novus Ordo.
4. A More Balanced and Realistic View of Human Nature and the World
Finally, one more aspect of the traditional liturgy that is very clear when compared with the modern Missal is its much more realistic, balanced, and biblical view of human nature and the world. In their quest for a liturgy more attuned to “modern man,” the reformers changed or deleted language they considered to be too harsh, or too negative. Some examples of this are:
Other prayers that were considered too “negative” were completely omitted from the reformed Missal. For example: the Postcommunion for the Last Sunday after Pentecost (“whatever is evil in our hearts”); the Secret for the 22nd Sunday after Pentecost (“protect us from all adversity”); the Postcommunion for the 4th Sunday after Easter (“we may be cleansed from vice and rescued from all peril”); the Collect for Friday in Week 3 of Lent (“may we also fast from spiritual wickedness”).
The general tenor of many of the prayers in the Novus Ordo is much more optimistic and positive. Indeed, it could be argued that it leans too far in this direction: the constant exchange of supposed ‘negatives’ for ‘positives’ risks that the faithful, who are formed by the liturgy, will take on a view of our human nature that is too optimistic.15 And all this is by design, carried out through edits and omissions to the treasury of prayers found in the tradition of the Church. As some of the reformers openly stated, “the prayers of the Lenten Masses in the old Missal had been judged by some experts as poor, negative, and not in line with the modern mindset,”16 and that “many texts, for a long while too well known, put heaven and earth into radical opposition…an adaptation was imperative that, without harming the truth, took account of the modern mentality and the directives of Vatican II.”17
It is hard not to see these changes as anything other than an ideological sifting of the Church’s prayer through the assumptions of a particular generation of scholars. Mercifully, the traditional liturgy of the Church is free from this very noticeable issue in the Novus Ordo, to the ongoing benefit of the faithful.
Endnotes
1 Albeit with the imagery of the Church militant removed: novo per beatum Ignatium subsidio militantem Ecclesiam roborasti (“who through Saint Ignatius strengthened the Church militant with new power”) is changed to beatum Ignatium in Ecclesia tua suscitasti (“who raised up Saint Ignatius in your Church”).
2 Carlo Braga, “Il ‘Proprium de Sanctis,’” Ephemerides Liturgicae 84.6 (1970), pp. 401-431, at p. 422.
3 Compare, for example, the Collects for Monday in Week 1 of Lent: ieiunium quadragesimale in the 1962 Missal becomes opus quadragesimale in the 1970/2008 Missal.
4 Compare, for example, the Collects for Friday in Week 2 of Lent: sacro nos purificante ieiunio in the 1962 Missal has been changed to sacro nos purificante pænitentiæ studio in the 1970/2008 Missal.
5 The phrase per pænitentiæ caritatisque labores in the Prayer over the Offerings for Ash Wednesday in the Novus Ordo replaces the phrase cum epulárum restrictióne carnálium in the Secret for the 1st Sunday of Lent in the traditional Roman Rite. This particular change makes little sense, given that this prayer was moved by the reformers to the beginning of Lent, which remains a day of obligatory fast and abstinence even in modern Church discipline (see 1983 Code of Canon Law, can. 1251)!
6 Edmond E. Moeller, Jean-Marie Clément, and Bertrand C. ’t Wallant (eds.), Corpus orationum (CCSL 160-160M; Brepols, 1992-2004, 14 vols.), n. 1940, tells us that this prayer appears in sixteen manuscripts, and is consistently associated with Lent or times of fasting.
7 For more on this, see Matthew Hazell, “Ember Days in the Post-Vatican II Liturgical Reforms: An Accidental Elimination?”, Rorate Caeli, March 10, 2022, https://rorate-caeli.blogspot.com/2022/03/ember-days-in-post-vatican-ii.html.
8 Consilium ad exsequendam, Schema 186 (De Missali, 27), September 19, 1966, pp. 2-3.
9 Michael Foley, “Fasting and the Orations of the First Sunday of Lent,” New Liturgical Movement, February 19, 2021, https://www.newliturgicalmovement.org/2021/02/fasting-and-orations-of-first-sunday-of.html.
10 See Louis-Marie Couillard (ed.), Corpus orationum. XI. Supplementum: Collectarium orationum defunctorum (Brepols, 2020) for an organised listing of these orations.
11 See the 3rd Mass for All Souls in the Novus Ordo: the super oblata reads “for all your servants who sleep in Christ,” whereas its source (Gelasianum Vetus, n. 1682) has “for the souls of these your servants and for all those who sleep in Christ”; the Postcommunion reads “bestow on your departed servants your great mercy,” whereas its source (Gelasianum Vetus, n. 1689) reads “bestow on the souls of your servants your great mercy.”
12 In an intriguing example of what could be considered a small reversal of the liturgical reforms, the 2002/08 third edition of the post-Vatican II Missale Romanum quietly restored the word anima to many (though by no means all) prayers in the Masses for the Dead from which it had been deleted.
13 See also CCC 997, 1005; II Corinthians 5:8; Ephesians 1:23; Paul VI, “Credo of the People of God” (June 30, 1968), n. 28.
14 Pierre-Marie Gy, “Le rituel des funérailles dans la tradition,” La Maison-Dieu 101.1 (1970), pp. 15-32, at p. 28. See also Henry Ashworth, “The Prayers for the Dead in the Missal of Pope Paul VI,” Ephemerides Liturgicae 85.1 (1971), pp. 3-15, who wrote that “certain mythological expressions used by ancient formularies could not be retained today” (p. 5).
15 As Scripture says, “The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately sick; who can understand it?” (Jer. 17:9)
16 Mattias Augé, “Le collette del Proprio del Tempo nel nuovo Messale,” Ephemerides Liturgicae 84.4 (1970), pp. 275-298, at p. 287.
17 Antoine Dumas, “Les oraisons du nouveau missel romain,” Questions liturgiques 25 (1971), pp. 263-270, at p. 267: English translation from Lauren Pristas, “The Orations of the Vatican II Missal: Policies for Revision,” Communio 30 (Winter 2003), pp. 621-653, at p. 635.
Current Issue
