1955 Holy Week Revision

[Unitas]

What, exactly, were the revisions Pope Pius XII made to Holy Week? I’m having a very hard time finding any info; the internet is long on polemics but very short on specifics.

 

[Kielbasi]

Pius XII instituted many changes, among the most noticable are that the Holy Thursday mass was held in the a.m. as well as the Easter Vigil mass on Holy Saturday(instead of the current evening masses). In addition, on Good Friday, only the priest received communion, it was not offered to the faithful on that date.

 

[Unitas]

Pius XII instituted many changes, among the most noticable are that the Holy Thursday mass was held in the a.m. as well as the Easter Vigil mass on Holy Saturday(instead of the current evening masses). In addition, on Good Friday, only the priest received communion, it was not offered to the faithful on that date.

Were there any changes to the rubrics or the liturgies?

I know I could easily find out if I had a pre-1955 missal but I don’t :\

 

[AJV]

Big and extensive changes. You can see the texts here

 

[Unitas]

This is all I could find containing any specifics, posted in a sedevacantist site:
breviary.net/confraternity/piusxrubrics.htm

II. The New Holy Week (1955)
The whole of the Church’s venerable Holy Week got the axe in 1955 with the publication of Maxima Redemptionis. The lie is repeated and extended: this is merely a change of times. The drastic overhauling of most of the ceremonies of the Church’s most sacred week receives no justification. How could it?

A. Key Features: The new Holy Week was a kind of trial balloon for the Novus Ordo. What were some of the key features?

  1. Everything must be short and simple.

  2. Key rites are to be performed by the priest with his back to the altar, facing the people: the Blessing of Palms, the final prayer of the Palm Sunday Procession, the Holy Saturday Blessing of the Baptismal Water, etc.

  3. The Prayers at the Foot of the Altar and the Last Gospel are suppressed for the first time.

  4. Everyone, priest and laity, must recite together the Our Father On Good Friday.

B. Palm Sunday: In particular, the Palm Sunday service lost its ancient rite of blessing which incorporates many prayers of the Mass, thus associating the sacramental palm with the Blessed Sacrament. The seven collects were reduced to one, the Fore-Mass of the Blessing entirely disappeared, as did the ceremony of the Gloria Laus at the door of the Church. The Passion account was shortened, omitting the Anointing at Bethany and the Last Supper.

C. The Triduum: The whole of the balance of the Triduum Sacrum, the last three days of Holy Week, was upset. The beautiful Office of Tenebræ practically disappeared, as did the popular devotion of the Tre Ore.

  1. The ancient Mass of the Presanctified on Good Friday was abolished and replaced with a simple Communion Service for the people. Contrary to immemorial custom, a genuflection was prescribed at the prayer for the Jews.

  2. The Holy Saturday Vigil was entirely changed, with its lessons reduced from twelve to four, and a there was drastic modification of the traditional rite of the Blessing of the New Fire and Paschal Candle. (In 1955 as well, the equally ancient Vigil Service for Pentecost Eve was entirely suppressed.)

  Even this necessarily superficial ovérview of the new Holy Week rite will enable us to understand how it was that a noted liturgical modernist, Fr. Duployé, could say, "If we succeed in restoring the Paschal Vigil in its original value, the Liturgical Movement will have triumphed; I give myself ten years to do that." The modernist theologian Fr. Chenu comments: "Ten years later it was done."

III. “Reform” of the Rubrics (1955).
The year 1955 was a bad one for the Roman Liturgy; it saw as well a modernist-oriented reform of the rubrics of the Missal and Breviary, with the decree Cum Nostra Hac Aetate.

  So called "undesirable accretions" were removed from the Sacred Liturgy "in the light of modern scholarship," to wit:

  1. The ancient ranks of semi-double and simple feasts were abolished.

  2.   Most vigils of feast days were suppressed, leaving the celebration of vigils "a shadow of its former self." (Vigils such as All Saints, the Apostles, Our Lady, etc.)

  3. The number of octaves was reduced from fifteen to three. Some of the suppressed octaves went back to the seventh century!

  4. For the first time a distinction between "public" and "private" recitation of the Divine Office was introduced, even though tradition teaches us that the Office is by its very nature a public prayer. This foreshadows the Novus Ordo distinction between Masses with and without people.

  5. The Our Fathers recited in the Office were reduced from sixteen to five, and the ten Hail Marys and three Creeds were entirely omitted, as were certain other prayers before and after the office.

  6. The penitential ferial prayers were abolished with two minor exceptions.

  7. The Suffrage of the Saints and the Commemoration of the Cross were abolished, and the beautiful Athanasian Creed (dating from the eighth century) was said but once a year.

  8. The additional Collects said at Mass during the different seasons of the year (such as those of Our Lady and Against the Persecutors of the Church) were abolished.

  9. The Proper Last Gospel was abolished. Here again we have been obliged to content ourselves with a brief overview of these changes which were described as "provisional" — but which so altered the sacred liturgy as to discourage all but the most dedicated priest from learning them. Why should he bother, anyway? In five years the rubrics would change again.

  Finally, in 1955 the Solemnity of St. Joseph, Patron of the Universal Church, was suppressed. It was replaced with a kind of Feast Day of Labor, St. Joseph the Worker, on the international socialist holiday of May Day.

  In 1957, further changes in the Holy Week were introduced, including provision for a Solemn High Mass without a subdeacon.

Can anyone add to or corroborate any of this? While I’m not saying it’s all false because it’s from a SV source, I always want to double-check when an author has a clear agenda.

 

[Unitas]

Big and extensive changes. You can see the texts here

Dang it! I was just on Fisheaters too, haha! Dunno how I missed it

Thanks for the link!

 

[AJV]

This is all I could find containing any specifics, posted in a sedevacantist site:

Can anyone add to or corroborate any of this? While I’m not saying it’s all false because it’s from a SV source, I always want to double-check when an author has a clear agenda.

Yes, it is correct. I have the decrees of 1956 and 1957 if you want them. And a commentary by You-Know-Who on the 1957 decree.

There is one slight mistake- the rank of simple was not abolished.
Some of the complaint-commentary is a bit…streched. Like the “identification of the palms with the blessed sacrament” thing. There may also be something to seeing some (not all) of the prayers as repetitious.

But with regard to Cum Nostra, I find it surprising that the sedes react so stringently against some of the changes since they were certainly contemplated before in prior revisions of the breviary. Actually one question I long to ask was what do they think St. Pius X was referring to as the “squalor” of the breviary?

 

[AJV]

I wanted to give this extract from Battifols work on the breviary. In fairness, I note that the author, Dom Grospellier is speaking of the pre-Pius X office where certain items like the Suffrange and the Preces were much longer. Still, it is interesting to see what measures he proposes in 1902

“……certain modern festivals, wherein are celebrated this or that mystery of the life of our Saviour or the Blessed Virgin, are but useless repetitions of what is contained in the office of the season, the true significance of which has little by little been lost sight of: Thus, for example, the double Mystery of the Virginity and of the Maternity of Mary is expressed in a manner most beautifully poetical, and full of the symbolism dear to the Christian epoch when it was written, in the office of the octave of Christmas, that is to say of the festival which we now call the Circumcision of our Lord. In the feasts for the Sundays in October, conceded to many dioceses, we find similar repetitions. It would be easy to multiply examples of the same kind.”

“….But the suppression of transferences and of duplicate feasts would not go very far towards reducing the number of festivals of saints….the most efficacious means of compressing the Sanctorale within more moderate limits would be to reduce to the rank of simple feasts the greater number of those which are now semi-doubles and lesser doubles ".

“….But this is not all. With the same object in view, it would be well to suppress the Suffragia Sanctorum altogether, as being an addition to the office relatively recent, or perhaps rather to distribute them over the six ferias of the week, excluding them from recitation on Sunday. ….

“….It might be possible also to suppress the Pater, Ave, and Credo at the beginning of the several offices, and the antiphon of our Lady at the end of most of them, and to recite it only after compline. The former are a very recent addition ; and moreover nothing forms a better beginning for an office than the versicles “Domine, labia mea aperies,” and “Deus in adjutorium meum intende”. The concluding antiphon of our Lady, which dates from the thirteenth century, was only at first said at the end of compline.

……Other suppressions would also be possible, which would not in any way alter the constitution of the office : such as the Pater at nocturns ; the psalm in the Preces at lauds and vespers, since it is already recited elsewhere ; and even the long Preces at lauds might be replaced by the form provided for the little hours, leaving the longer form to be used at vespers only.”

Haven’t most of these been carried out in the 1955 decree? The Suffrages removed. The Pater, Ave and Credo removed. The antiphon to our Lady placed only after Compline. Semidouble feasts reduced to simples. The restriction of the Preces.

Even more interesting is this note of Battifol’s. He says, speaking of the changes of St. Pius X

The Quicunque vult is retained in the Sunday office for prime, under the old title of Symbolum Athanasianum ; but it is now only to be said on Trinity Sunday, and on the Sundays after Epiphany and after Pentecost when the office is of the Sunday : even then, it is to be omitted if any festival is that day commemorated

I don’t think I have to point out that on a great many Sundays, festivals of double rank are commemorated. Battifol continues in a footnote

This being so, many liturgists will think that the Quicunque vult (why perpetuate the old error of its attribution to S. Athanasius?) might as well have been reserved for recitation on Trinity Sunday only