Michael Davies

The Liturgical Revolution
The Historical Background

THE WORD "LITURGY" is derived from a Greek root meaning a public duty or service to the state to be undertaken by a citizen. In the Septuagint, a Greek version of the Old Testament, it is used for the public service in the temple, and is thus invested with a religious sense as the function of the priests in the ritual of Jewish worship. Our Lord is described as the Leitourgos of holy things in Hebrews 8:16. The liturgy is thus His public religious work for His people. It is not something we do, but which He does.

Man's chief duty undoubtedly is to devote himself and his life to God. In order to direct himself properly to God, the individual must acknowledge His sovereign majesty and supreme teaching authority; he must accept with humble mind the truths God has revealed; obey His laws faithfully; devote every action and energy to Him. It means, briefly, to pay due homage and worship to the one true God by the virtue of religion. This involves a duty to worship God not simply on an individual basis, but socially. The public worship of Almighty God is a duty incumbent upon all mankind, and was ordained by God in the Old Testament. Our Redeemer did not cease His priestly life when He ascended into heaven. He willed it to continue unceasingly through the ages in His Mystical Body, which is the Church. In order to achieve this, He instituted a visible priesthood to offer everywhere a clean oblation. He is therefore among us today perpetuating His priestly office through the Church, which has one and the same function as the Incarnate Word: to teach truth to all men, to rule and guide them aright, to offer to God a pleasing and acceptable sacrifice.

The Church perpetuates the priestly office of Jesus Christ especially in the liturgy. This she does first and chiefly at the altar, where the Sacrifice of the Cross is perpetually represented, with a difference only in the manner of offering. She does it secondly by means of the Sacraments, special instruments for communicating the supernatural grace to men. She does it thirdly by the tribute of praise which is offered daily to Almighty God in the Divine Office, recited as an obligation by priests and members of religious orders, but from which laymen are by no means excluded.

These observations have been based upon the teaching of Pope Pius XII in his encyclical Mediator Dei, which includes the following formal definition of the liturgy:

The Indefectibility of the Church

The Church is the Mystical Body of Christ, an extension of the Incarnation throughout the nations and the centuries. The Church is Christ among us today fulfilling the mandate entrusted to Him by His Father, that is, to save the entire human race without distinction of time or place. In order to achieve this end Our Lord constituted His Church with certain specific powers, and this divine constitution will remain essentially immutable precisely because it is a divine constitution. If the Church did fail in any aspect of her divine constitution, it would mean that Christ Himself had failed, which would render the entire Christian Faith meaningless. The divine protection enjoyed by the Church, ensuring that she can never fail in any aspect of her divine constitution, is referred to as indefectibility. It applies to the triple powers of the divine constitution which have already been cited from Mediator Dei:

Of the three powers pertaining to the divine constitution of the Church, to teach, to rule, and to sanctify, it is with the third that we are concerned here. Because the sanctification of the faithful is an essential function of the Church's divine constitution, it is certain that she will never cease to offer her members the means of holiness through valid sacraments and, above all, the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass. The supreme authority in the Church, the Sovereign Pontiff, could never impose as a universal Church law, any liturgical rite or custom that was contrary to sound doctrine, or could invalidate the sacrament.¹ Laws affecting the Roman Rite to which we belong, must be regarded as equivalent to universal laws, even though they do not apply to the minority rites within the Church. This is the unanimous teaching of Catholic theologians.

The Church is Visible and Hierarchical

The Church was constituted by Our Lord as a visible, hierarchically governed body. Her invisible ruler is Jesus Christ, whom the Eternal Father has made: "Head over all the Church which is His Body" (Eph I, 22). Her visible ruler is the Bishop of Rome, the lawful successor of St. Peter. Our Lord referred to His Church as a body which can be seen and distinguished from other societies. His Church is a kingdom, a flock, a city, a house. The Fathers teach us that: "It is an easier thing for the sun to be quenched than for the Church to be made invisible." It is thus a grave error, and characteristic of many heresies, to imagine that there can ever exist an invisible Church in which "true teaching," "true sacraments," or a "true Mass," exist independently of the Pope and the hierarchy. It can indeed be the case, as was shown in the article in this series on the Arian heresy, that there can be weak popes and a falling away from orthodoxy among entire hierarchies. But at no time did St. Athanasius suggest that Liberius had ceased to be pope or that the hierarchy itself had ceased to exist. On the other hand, the indefectibility of the divine constitution of the Church applies only to the Church as a whole, not to the Church in any particular country. Whole nations have fallen away from the unity of the Church and never returned—North Africa and Scandinavia are evident examples. The fact that the Church is indefectible where the Mass and the sacraments are concerned must be borne in mind continually while considering the liturgical revolution which followed the Second Vatican Council. It will be an important factor in making a balanced judgment upon what has taken place.

Liturgical Development

Until the fourth century no liturgical books were used during the Mass except for the Bible from which the lessons were read. The first part of the Mass was a Christianized synagogue service of prayers, readings and a sermon. At the conclusion of this "Liturgy of the Word," the catechumens and those who were not baptized had to leave, hence the name "Mass of the Catechumens." Then followed the second part, the Christian Mystery, the Eucharist. This was an ex tempore celebration by the bishop, but from apostolic times it had already acquired fixed norms. The bishop would pray according to the tradition he had received, and his successor would use the same words, but sometimes with minor variations and additions. Once the practice of writing down the liturgy had become established in the fourth century, the more or less uniform pattern previously used crystallized into the parent rites of the different Catholic and Orthodox Mass liturgies in use today. There was at no time any question of composing rites and then writing them down. What had developed over a period of centuries was jealously guarded and codified. At no time during the development of the liturgy did any pope or patriarch set up committees or commissions to reform the liturgy. The very idea was so contrary to the Catholic ethos that it was probably never so much as considered. The Mass as celebrated in Rome, the Roman Rite, had already reached its definitive form by the epoch of St. Gregory the Great, at the end of the sixth century. In all essential points it could be recognized as the Mass which was celebrated throughout the Roman Rite until 1969. Not surprisingly, the pre-eminence of the See of Rome resulted in the widespread use of the Missal used there. The Franciscans, in particular, carried it all over the world after deciding to adopt it during the pontificate of Pope Innocent III (1198-1216). There were still some developments to come, e.g., the prayers at the foot of the altar, the priest's offertory prayers, the Last Gospel. Pope Nicholas III (1277-1280) imposed a modified version of the Franciscan version of the Missal upon the diocese of Rome. In every important aspect it is identical with the first printed version of the Roman Missal (1474), which, in turn, is virtually identical to that contained in the Missal published by St. Pius V in 1570.

The Protestant Reformation

It has been stated that at no time during the development of the liturgy was there any question of committees or commissions being established either to compose rites or reform those already in existence. As is explained in Canon G. D. Smith's The Teaching of the Catholic Church: "…throughout the history of the development of the sacramental liturgy, the tendency has always been towards growth—additions and accretions, the effort to obtain a fuller and more perfect symbolism." Thus, as the centuries passed, prayers and ceremonies came to be included in the Mass which stressed its sacrificial nature and the Real Presence. As reverence for the Blessed Sacrament developed, a tradition evolved that only the consecrated hands of a priest should touch the Host, and so laymen received on the tongue rather than in the hand.

The first break in a tradition built up over fifteen centuries was made by the Protestant Reformers in the sixteenth century. It is anomalous that these men should be referred to as "reformers," as they were revolutionaries. A revolution can be defined as "a complete change, turning upside down, great reversal of conditions, fundamental reconstruction." A revolutionary is a man who overthrows the existing order and replaces it with something new. This is precisely what the Protestant Reformers did. They overthrew the Church founded by Christ and replaced it with a religion concocted by themselves. It is hardly surprising that at the same time they needed to overthrow the existing form of worship and replace it with services concocted by themselves. There is a maxim, lex orandi, lex credendi, which, roughly translated, means that the way we worship reflects what we believe. The existing forms of Mass were clear manifestations of belief in sacrifice and the Real Presence, which were anathema to Protestants. In most cases they even went so far as resurrecting the long extinct practice of Communion in the hand, as this, they claimed, would indicate that the bread was ordinary bread, and that the minister who distributed it was not a priest.

The Reform of Saint Pius V

The Council of Trent responded to the attack on the Mass and the doctrines it enshrined in two ways. Its first priority was to codify Catholic Eucharistic teaching, which it did in clear and inspiring terms. Anathema was pronounced upon anyone who rejected this teaching, and the Fathers of the Council insisted that it must remain unmodified until the end of time. Secondly, in opposition to the anarchy of the new Protestant services, it wished the Roman Rite to be celebrated uniformly everywhere. A commission was appointed to examine the Missal, to revise and restore it "according to the custom and rite of the Holy Fathers." It is reasonable to presume that the Council intended the missal to be invested with the same permanence as its Eucharistic teaching.

The Council closed in 1563, before the commission had completed its task. The reformed Missal was promulgated by St. Pius V in 1570, but is nonetheless an act of the Council of Trent. The commission charged with the reform in no way attempted to compose a new liturgy. Respect for tradition was the characteristic of its approach. It codified the existing Missal, purging it of a few items which it considered superfluous or unnecessary, a number of sequences for example. But as regards the Ordinary, Canon, Proper of the time, and much else, the Missal of St. Pius V is a replica of the Roman Missal of 1474, which dates back in all essentials to the epoch of St. Gregory the Great. Father Adrian Fortescue, England's greatest liturgical scholar, commented, "We may be very grateful that his commission was so scrupulous to keep or restore the old Roman tradition."

The Bull Quo Primum did not, then, promulgate a new missal, but consolidated and codified the immemorial Roman Rite. It extended its use throughout the Latin Church, except for missals with a history of continuous usage dating back over two hundred years. It included an indult enabling priests to freely and lawfully use this missal in perpetuity. The Bull is, however, a disciplinary document not binding on subsequent popes. It did not rule out any future changes or reforms if these were sanctioned by a pope. No pope can bind his successors in disciplinary matters. However, in view of the fact that the Missal carried the authority of the Council of Trent, it is reasonable to presume that no pope would ever change it without the very gravest reason for doing so. This was, indeed, the case until Vatican II. Father Fortescue wrote:

Some changes did occur after Father Fortescue had written this (in 1917), principally the Holy Week changes of Pope Pius XII. These changes did not affect the Ordinary of the Mass, and were all eminently sensible and of great pastoral value. They appear to have been introduced without any significant protest in any country. This is not surprising. To take just one example, the Easter Vigil with its countless references to light and darkness, and the beautiful ceremonies involving the Paschal Candle, was held on Saturday mornings in largely empty churches. The vigil was originally intended to be held after sunset, but had been anticipated more and more until it was actually held in the morning. The poor attendance was due to the fact that many people worked on Saturdays, and also due to its great length. All the most beautiful features of the vigil were preserved, the number of lessons reduced, and it was restored to the evening. The result was a great increase in attendance by the faithful. It was, in fact, a truly pastoral reform.

Pope Pius XII also authorized a rubrical reform, chiefly concerned with the Calendar. This was simply a continuation of a reform initiated by St. Pius X. This reform was eventually promulgated by Pope John XXIII. It affected the Ordinary of the Mass only to the extent of dropping a Judica me and the Last Gospel on a very few occasions, and abolishing the Confiteor and Absolution before the people's Communion. The Confiteor did not even form part of the text of the Mass itself, but was mentioned in a rubric to be utilized if there was a people's Communion. When the priest alone communicated, it was not used. There are sound arguments both for abolishing and retaining the Confiteor, but it is not a matter of any great significance. The last change made was the addition of the name of St. Joseph to the Canon by Pope John XXIII in 1962. The Pope was doing no more than accede to widespread requests for the spouse of Our Lady to be honored in this way. One may regret that this breached a tradition that no change had been made to the Canon since the time of St. Gregory the Great, but the Pope was acting well within his authority and, no doubt, with the best of motives.

A Precious Tradition

Thus, even taking into consideration the reforms of Popes Pius XII and John XXIII, we could still accept without reservation in 1962 the following words of Father Fortescue:

The Tridentine Mass is, as Father Faber expressed it: "The most beautiful thing this side of heaven." The form of Mass is, the Bible apart, the Church's greatest treasure. It is her pearl of great price which should be more sacrosanct, more inviolable than anything else she possessed. But then came Vatican II.

1. Editor's note: This is true of proper laws, properly prepared, promulgated and imposed to the Church, such as the reform of the Breviary of St. Pius X, or the restoration of Holy Week by Pius XII. It does not apply to the liturgical reforms made after Vatican II, including the New Mass, because of the many abnormalities and improprieties in their preparation, promulgation (such as the infamous Article 7), and implementation. It is easier to see this now, "by their fruits ye shall know them,"; the fruits of these conciliar reforms have been bitter and disastrous for the Church!