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Vatican II Was No Revolution

A DIFFERENT APPROACH TO LITURGICAL REFORM

By Christopher Zehnder

Those who associate Vatican II liturgical renewal with vernacular Masses, priests facing the congregation, lay liturgical ministers, and even with incense bowls and liturgical dance, might be in for a surprise. On November 22, 1997 Adoremus, the Society for the Renewal of the Sacred Liturgy hosted its first liturgical conference at the Los Angeles County Fairplex in Pomona. While many, whether "liberal" or "Traditionalist," equate Vatican II liturgical renewal with revolution, the speakers at the Adoremus conference presented a different model. The liturgical renewal called for by Vatican II, they agreed, was a flowering of Roman Catholic liturgical piety, in full continuity with the liturgical tradition that preceded it.

A strange position! Yet, Adoremus does not claim that the liturgical renewal as it has been carried out really fulfills the aspirations of the Council Fathers. Rather, this organization calls for a "reform of the reform," a return to the Mass as the Council envisioned it. And, no, such reform does not mean more lay participation, more democratization of worship; it means a return to Latin, Gregorian Chant, sacred symbolism.

The conference speakers had the restoration of authentic worship as their theme. Dr. Scott Hahn, Professor of Theology at Franciscan University of Steubenville, Ohio, provided a theological basis for liturgical renewal in his talk, "Liturgy as Heaven on Earth." Father Cassian Folsom, OSB, Director of the Pontifical Liturgical Institute in Rome spoke on "Restoring Reverence to the Liturgy." Duncan Stroik, associate professor at the University of Notre Dame School of Architecture, treated the subject of the architectural environment for liturgical worship. These were joined by Father Joseph Fessio, S.J., well-known as the founder of Ignatius Press and publisher of Catholic World Report, who presided at the 11 a.m. Mass.

The norm for all liturgical worship, said Scott Hahn, is the worship of the saints and angels in heaven. Because of "worldliness," said Hahn, people are unable to understand that the liturgy is truly heaven on earth. Since Mass is where heaven touches earth, it is our entrance into the communion of Saints. Quoting Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger, Hahn said Catholics do not attend Mass to feel part of a community, but to be brought into union with the Body of Christ. It is from this union, realized at Mass, that we are empowered to wage "liturgical warfare" against the evils of our time. "If you don't like the way things are going right now," said Hahn, "I would suggest that you go to heaven, next Sunday, at Mass."

Father Cassian Folsom in his talk emphasized the importance of external gestures in restoring reverence to the liturgy. Though active participation at Mass, he said, is an interior participation of all the powers of the soul in the sacrifice of Christ, it, nevertheless, involves exterior actions. Since modern man has lost the sense of the union of his body and soul, he does not understand that the soul necessarily worships through the body; the goal of the Christian, said Father Cassian, is the resurrection of the body, not the immortality of the soul. The solution to the divorce of body and soul in our time, said Father Cassian, is proper liturgical formation--Catholics must learn to express their interior life in a proper exterior way. The remainder of Father Cassian's talk detailed various liturgical gestures--genuflecting, the sign of the cross, use of holy water, beating the breast--why they are done and how they are fittingly done.

For those expecting some medieval or Tridentine revival, the Mass, concelebrated by Father Fessio and several other priests, would have been a disappointment. Most of the liturgy was said in English; the prayers were spoken, not sung; a layman in a suit read the Epistle and led the Responsorial Psalm; there was no incense, no bells. However, in the spirit of the "reform of the reform," Father Fessio, flanked by the concelebrants, said Mass in the traditional manner, not facing the people, but oriented, with the people, towards God; the faithful chanted a Gregorian ordinary; communion was accentuated by Sacred Polyphony, sung by the Saint Augustine Voices.

In his homily, Father Fessio said that Latin was absent from the penitential rite and the Eucharistic Prayer in the conference's Mass because it might prove too foreign to the attendees. However, Father Fessio explained, in the reformed Roman Rite he envisions the unchanging parts of the Mass would be in Latin--the ordinary, the canon (Eucharistic Prayer I)--but the remainder would be in the vernacular. The use of Latin, he said, is in full conformity with Vatican II's Constitution on the Sacred Liturgy, which not only said that Latin was to remain the language of the Roman Rite, but decreed that the faithful should be able to chant the ordinary of the Mass in that language.

To aid the faithful in singing the Gregorian chant ordinaries, Ignatius Press has published The Adoremus Hymnal, which includes, along with the musical setting for the Mass ordinaries, the Order of the Mass itself, and a collection of 166 hymns for the seasons of the liturgical year and all holy days.This hymnal was on sale at the conference. Adoremus also publishes a journal--the Adoremus Bulletin--which is the organ for the organization's 23,000 members.

Though the members of Adoremus accept the principle of a "reform of the reform," there are differences of opinion as to how this reform will proceed. Some, it would seem, envision returning to the pre-conciliar, so-called "Tridentine" Mass, and reforming it according to the norms set out by the Constitution on the Sacred Liturgy. Others would start with the Mass as reformed by Pope Paul VI, the so-called Novus Ordo Mass, and bring it more in line with the conciliar decrees.

During the conference I asked Father Fessio if this difference of opinion in Adoremus represented two radically different approaches to reform. Fessio said that, practically, it did not, since one could celebrate the Novus Ordo Mass "in a way which is so much in continuity with the Mass of 1962 that the differences are really insubstantial. Whether you go back to the Mass of 1962 and try to see how it should have been developed according to the Council, or whether you start with the Mass of 1997 and say, what is in the present rubrics that we could emphasize and would allow us to be in more in continuity [with the Roman tradition], I think you reach the same thing."

Father Fessio believes that the differences between the pre- and post-conciliar Mass rites are not great. Some of the differences, said Fessio are the disappearance of the last Gospel [a reading of a portion of John Chapter One at the end of the low Mass]; the suppression of the prayers at the foot of the altar during the penitential rite; and the changing of the offertory rite. As to the last, Father Fessio says he understands that "the new, third edition of the Roman Missal in Latin is going to give the old offertory prayers as an option."

Thus, step one in the reform Fessio envisions would be the choice of the right options already allowed in the rubrics. Step two, he says, "would be to go back more carefully and look at some of the collects and the prayers and the prefaces. I think, even there, there have been some changes [from the old to the new rite] which were neither necessary nor beneficial; so, perhaps, a slow reintroduction of the some of the more beautiful Latin collects. That would be about it, as far as the Mass goes."

Though he is critical of many elements of the official reform of the liturgy under Pope Paul VI, Fessio does not deny their validity. "I accept," he said, "the Church's authority in matters liturgical. I think the [Council's Constitution on the Sacred Liturgy] is a particularly significant document of great weight which was a culmination of a century of reflection of prayer and study. I think that what happened after the Council, if you look at it sociologically and even theologically, shows the signs of coming from a time of confusion. I think that there were mistakes that were made. Of course it's valid, and even licit, to use different canons, but I think it is a mistake. You can have children's Masses, but I think that's a mistake. You can bring in songs that are of a popular nature, and are adapted to the liturgy--I think that's not even permitted, strictly speaking, but if it is, that is a mistake. But I could be wrong; the point is, let's get these out in the open, let's discuss them, and if people think I'm wrong, let's hear the reasons for it. Why do we need more than one canon? What's the advantage of Mass facing the people?" Fessio says that such open questioning is "taboo" in the modern Church. For many priests, even to celebrate Mass as he did at the conference would not be possible--their fellow priests and bishops would look "askance" at it.

Is the purpose of Adoremus to influence Rome in the direction of a "reform of the reform?" "We're trying to educate people," says Fessio. "We know we have influenced Rome--not that Rome is going to take what we say, but most of the people in the Roman congregations, and I believe the Holy Father himself, share the view that we want more reverence, more sense of the sacred, more traditional continuity. We have organized a lot of translators and scholars to critique what's been done [on the English translations of the Roman Missal]. Those have been sent to bishops, here, and many bishops brought those up on the floor; and they've been sent to Rome. We've noticed some of the same criticisms we've made about the Sacramentary and the Roman Missal have appeared in Rome's criticism of the Rite of Ordination, which was just rejected."

In order to be effective, however, Adoremus must forge a consensus among its members as to what the reform of the reform should entail. Father Fessio says Adoremus is preparing a series of books to address this need. In these books, says Fessio, "We're going to take the principle of the 'Reform of the Reform'--what is it that we think should be done, in general, with the liturgy. We'll get several people to respond, and then we'll try to summarize, the consensus of those responses. That's step one, volume one. Step two will be take specific questions about the Mass: Latin ever? Latin sometimes? Latin always? Latin where? Facing East? Facing the people? Options? Music? We'll take all those points the Council brought up, we'll have a position paper, responses, to try and get a consensus."

Yet, even with such a consensus among liturgists and scholars, the road to liturgical reform will be difficult. In the past 35 years the sense of the importance of tradition has waned in the waxing of the worship of what is new. Yet, there are signs of change, perhaps evidenced by by the heightened criticisms of Adoremus by leading liberal clergymen, such as Bishop Donald Trautman of Erie, Pennsylvania. He and his allies seem frightened of losing the struggle for the liturgy.

"I think there are grounds for fear that they are losing," says Father Fessio, "because they've had the field to themselves for thirty years and it hasn't worked. And all they want to do now to propose a change is to make it worse, and people have voted with their feet; people are fed up. It's not just me or a few of us in Adoremus; there's a sense of unease all over the country, and over much of the world, too."

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