Questions and Answers
Why doesn’t the SSPX do the pre-55 Holy Week ceremonies?
The SSPX was founded by Archbishop Lefebvre at Ecône, Switzerland, in 1970. At the beginning, the so-called 1965 missal was the liturgy used at Ecône. The Archbishop accepted its slight modifications to the traditional Mass at first before finally settling on the 1962 books promulgated by Pope John XXIII as the SSPX’s normative liturgy in 1974.1 This decision had an immense impact on the traditionalist movement, as all of the traditional orders founded afterwards likewise make use of the 1962 missal.
Included in that missal are the ceremonies of the Reformed Holy Week promulgated by Pope Pius XII in November of 1955. Since the SSPX observes the 1962 liturgy, it likewise has always performed those Holy Week liturgies.2
In the past ten years or so, there has been a movement within the so-called Ecclesia Dei communities—those traditional groups whose existence was permitted by Rome after Archbishop Lefebvre consecrated four bishops for the SSPX in 1988—to perform the old or pre-55 Holy Week ceremonies. This movement also has the support of various prominent lay traditionalists, and much debate has taken place online on whether the pre-55 or the Pius XII Holy Week is better.
The Holy See granted permission to the Ecclesia Dei communities, in 2018, to perform the pre-55 Holy Week ceremonies on an experimental basis for three years. After those three years passed, the permission was neither renewed nor rescinded and many chapels of the Fraternity of St. Peter and the Institute of Christ the King continue to perform the old ceremonies. This has led some SSPX faithful to ask why the SSPX does not do the same.
The answer derives from the fundamental differences between the SSPX and the Ecclesia Dei communities. Archbishop Lefebvre’s decision to make the 1962 missal normative in the SSPX was motivated by a question of faith. He acknowledged, on the one hand, that the authorities in Rome were to be obeyed in all matters except those that go against faith. On the other hand, he believed strongly that the New Mass is a danger to the faith. Thus, when Rome commanded him and his fraternity of priests to celebrate the 1969 missal, the Archbishop believed that he had grounds and even a duty to refuse because doing so would endanger his faith and dishonor God. It would be a case of obeying men rather than God.
Certain American SSPX priests in the early days of its history held to the error of sedevacantism and refused to celebrate the 1962 Mass because it was promulgated by someone they believed was not Pope, John XXIII. Archbishop Lefebvre explained to the American seminarians in 1983 that there were no grounds for rejecting the 1962 missal, since nothing in it poses a danger to the faith. The SSPX has to follow the principle that authorities are to be obeyed in all things except what is contrary to the faith:
The principle of the Church is the principle of St. Thomas Aquinas…So, what does St. Thomas Aquinas say about authority in the Church? When can we refuse something from the authority of the Church? Only when the faith is in question. Only in this case. Not in other cases. Only when the faith is in question.3
This principled stand was both the basis of the Archbishop refusing the Novus Ordo Mass and accepting the 1962 missal. He did not want to make his choice of the liturgy a question of preference but rather one of obedience. He would submit himself to the last promulgated liturgy that was not a danger to the faith, including the Holy Week ceremonies that are part of that liturgy.
Notice that this decision comes before any question of whether the pre-55 Holy Week is superior or inferior to the Pius XII Holy Week. That is a question open to debate, but I believe everyone would agree that Pius XII’s Holy Week is not a danger to the faith. The point is that, even if Abp. Lefebvre had liked the old Holy Week better (I know of no statement to this effect), he would not have decided to use it, because his decision was not made on the basis of preference.
The SSPX’s perspective on this question is expressed well by the late Fr. Didier Bonneterre, SSPX, in his book The Liturgical Movement:
[W]ith the purest of intentions, Pius XII undertook reforms that were required by the good of souls, but without realizing, as would have been impossible, that he was thereby undermining the foundations of the Church’s liturgy and discipline at one of the most critical moments in their history, and, above all, without being aware that he was putting into practice the program of the deviated Liturgical Movement…On the one hand, [the new Holy Week ceremonies] are the expression of the will of a saintly Pope, which guarantees their perfect orthodoxy; on the other, they are stages in the realization of a plot intended to bring about the death of the Church.4
We can conclude that the new Ordo Hebdomadae Sanctae brought some pastoral advantages, but at the price of modification of the most ancient and venerable ceremonies of the Roman Catholic liturgy. Pius XII considered that the advantages outweighed the disadvantages. We are by no means challenging his decision, but we would simply remind the reader that during this time the deviated Liturgical Movement gained several victories.5
The bottom line is that the new Holy Week was a beginning of bad things to come and established a dangerous precedent, but was not problematic in itself, isolated from its historical context.6 Regardless, it was promulgated and guaranteed by Pope Pius XII. There is no reason for the SSPX to reject his liturgy because the basis of its choice of liturgy is a question of faith, not of preference.
The decision that the Ecclesia Dei communities make for their liturgy, however, is a question of preference. When some priests of the SSPX left Archbishop Lefebvre after the consecrations of 1988 and went to Rome for the purpose of forming the Fraternity of St. Peter, Rome made sure that those priests did not have the Archbishop’s position on the New Mass. The protocol presented to the Archbishop asked that he recognize the validity (“validitatem”) of the New Mass, while the FSSP’s Formula of Adherence had them declare an acceptance of the goodness or soundness (“valitudinem”) of the New Mass.
The ramifications of this difference in wording are great. If the New Mass is good and the traditional Mass simply better, then the members of the FSSP can only be choosing the traditional Mass out of preference, not out of principle. Rome allows the Ecclesia Dei communities to celebrate the 1962 missal and they receive that permission gladly. At the same time, this puts those communities in a difficult position since, in that framework, Rome could demand the celebration of the New Mass and those communities would be bound in conscience to celebrate it (because they admit that it is good and one cannot go against one’s superior when he does not command something against the faith), and could also rescind the permission to celebrate the traditional Mass.
Closer to the subject of our Q&A is the effect that this has on the Holy Week ceremonies. Archbishop Lefebvre believed himself bound in conscience to celebrate the 1962 Holy Week, out of respect for Roman authority. If the 1962 Holy Week does not represent a danger to the faith, it is not for him to choose one Holy Week ceremony over another from the past. However, if the adherence to the traditional Mass over the Novus Ordo Mass is a question of preference, if it is simply a choice among good liturgies of one that is liked above the rest, then one may start investigating other liturgies.
In this light, the Holy See’s permission of 2018 to the Ecclesia Dei communities to use the pre-55 Holy Week is a confirmation that the liturgy of those communities is one of preference. They can use a hybrid combination—the 1962 missal for most of the year and the pre-55 for Holy Week—because they are choosing what they find more spiritually stimulating rather than protecting their faith.
This is also the source of the intense debates about whether the pre-55 or the 1962 Holy Week is better. If one is making a choice of what is more spiritually fruitful rather than simply the last orthodox liturgy, then one must argue one’s preference.
One danger of this debate is that it gives the impression that Catholics should be in a position to make their own liturgical preferences. If you do some research into older liturgies and there is one that strikes your fancy, then you should make a case for its adoption. In reality, abstracting from today’s terrible crisis, Catholics should simply be happy with the liturgical decisions made by the Church, in a spirit of obedience.
Another danger of the debate is the temptation to become too critical of the pre-Vatican II changes that were not contrary to the faith. Once one starts to sift the liturgies of the past, one can easily start to call everything into question. In this regard, some go so far as to criticize St. Pius X for his reforms to the breviary and the missal.7 They blame him for not having proper respect for the liturgy of old and giving the impression that the liturgy is something that can be tinkered with, when he should have just considered the liturgy as having reached an immobile state without making any attempt to improve it or adapt it for modern times.
This criticism seems to forget that, while whatever is of divine institution in the Church can never be changed (e.g. a male-only priesthood), whatever is of ecclesiastical institution is subject to change (e.g. the ceremonies of the sacraments) and the Popes have the power to make those changes. The fact that this power has been abused in recent times does not remove the possession of the power.
In summary, the SSPX does not even reach the stage of discussing whether the pre-55 Holy Week is superior to the 1962 or not because its reason for celebrating the traditional Mass exclusively is different from the Ecclesia Dei communities. It celebrates the 1962 missal in a spirit of obedience to Rome, while having received sanctions from Rome for not celebrating the 1969 missal or New Mass, in order to preserve the faith in the midst of a crisis in the Church. The Ecclesia Dei communities have accepted the goodness of the New Mass and, with this acceptance, have purchased permission to celebrate the 1962 missal out of preference. This leads them to consider what other liturgies they might prefer from the past and welcome the possibility of celebrating the pre-55 Holy Week ceremonies.
Endnotes
1 Tissier de Mallerais, Marcel Lefebvre (Angelus Press, 2004), p. 416.
2 The SSPX follows the Pius XII Holy Week ceremonies as such, but there are some little variations included in the ceremonies at many SSPX chapels that come from the pre-55 ritual (e.g. the knocking on the church door with the cross on Palm Sunday) or SSPX customs.
3 Conference of April 24, 1983. He cites II-II, q.33, a.4, ad 2.
4 Bonneterre, Didier. The Liturgical Movement (Angelus Press, 2002), pp. 72-73. Fr. Bonneterre was a professor of liturgy at Ecône under Archbishop Lefebvre.
5 Ibid., p. 76.
6 Archbishop Lefebvre said exactly this about the reform of the breviary under Pope John XXIII in a conference given in April, 1982: “Perhaps it was that certain men when in doing this reform of the breviary, in their minds they intended it to be the preparation of a future reform that is modernist. But to say that this reform was modernist, I think that is exaggerated. I do not think it is modernist. We cannot say that it is.”
7 See, for instance, The Once and Future Roman Rite, p. 309, p. 331 footnote, p. 334.
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