Let's talk about the Mass of Paul VI

[AJV]

There are several Lutheran and Epsicopal/Anglican blogs that you can Google and get a historic perspective. Here is what you’ll find. The structure of their Masses, particularly in sequence, follows the Tridentine model: Epistle, Gradual, Gospel, Sermon, Offertory, Consecration, Lord’s Prayer, Communion, Post Communion. So does the N.O. although the names of some these prayers has been changed in the N.O. but remain the same in the Protestant masses. This has been the same since the 16th Century. As a previous post says, since they are not under a Papal structure, each area or synod can choose to modify their mass and lectionary to suit their preferences … which is similar to how the Novus Ordo can include hula dancing in Hawaii, and “interpretive” dancing in California at the Offertory.

Here is what separated the Catholic Mass from the Protestants prior to the Novus Ordo. You would typically only find this at a Latin Rite Catholic Mass:

1. Mass was offered in its Liturgical language (Latin)
2. Priest Faces East
3. The Blessed Sacrament is only handled by a priest whose consercrated fingers are the only way to handle the sacred specie.
4. The santuary is a sacred place where only the priest and the acolytes (ordinarily seminarians, extraordinarily, boys with the potential to be priests) are allowed to enter.
5. all parts of the Mass are offered by the priest
6. Masses can be High (Sung) or Low (spoken)
7. The Mass is a Holy Sacrifice, the unbloody sacrifice of Calvary and many prayers in the Mass specify this sacrificial aspect with references to altars and oblation.
8. Priest wears several different vestments signifying his duty in the Royal Priesthood and symbolizing different aspects of the sacrifice.

Both Cranmer and Luther took issue with some or all of these aspects of Catholicity. With Luther, it was the sacrificial aspect of the Mass (he considered it a Pascal Banquet), common priesthood of man (which was needed because they did not have Apostolic succession - Luther was only a priest and couldn’t ordain more priests) which the Novus Ordo has tried to imitate. He also condemned sacred images, relics, and art in churches which is why post-V2 churches are sterile and resemble bomb shelters in design. With Cranmer it was devotion to Our Blessed Mother and the Saints, indulgences, rosaries, and the like which they considered Popish.

 

[Dempsey1919]

1) Mass was offered in its Liturgical language (Latin)
2) Priest Faces East
3) The Blessed Sacrament is only handled by a priest whose consercrated fingers are the only way to handle the sacred specie.
4) The santuary is a sacred place where only the priest and the acolytes (ordinarily seminarians, extraordinarily, boys with the potential to be priests) are allowed to enter.
5) all parts of the Mass are offered by the priest
6) Masses can be High (Sung) or Low (spoken)
7) The Mass is a Holy Sacrifice, the unbloody sacrifice of Calvary and many prayers in the Mass specify this sacrificial aspect with references to altars and oblation.
8) Priest wears several different vestments signifying his duty in the Royal Priesthood and symbolizing different aspects of the sacrifice.

The Mass of Paul VI can be celebrated like this. In fact, is this not how it was supposed to be celebrated? Also, the theology of the Mass has not changed. However, the new prayers do not express Catholic doctrine as fully as the ancient prayers of the Tridentine Mass.

He also condemned sacred images, relics, and art in churches which is why post-V2 churches are sterile and resemble bomb shelters in design.

I have always been puzzled by the re-design of modern Churches. My father is a construction worker, and one of his jobs in the early 1980’s was to smash the High Altar of an ancient Catholic Church. He told me it broke his heart to do it, but he had no choice. They replaced a beautiful marble altar that was over 150 years old with a concrete table (his words not mine). He said they threw statues and images into the dumpster.

Why would they do this?

Although this thread is concerned with the Mass of Paul VI, I believe a discussion on the re-design of Churches is appropriate because this was carried out in conjunction with liturgical changes. In the minds of the reformers, why was it deemed necessary to change the Church architecture? I think it is related to the whole ethos of the Liturgical movement responsible for the Pauline Mass.

 

[giuseppeTO]

Why would they do this?

Is this a rhetorical question? … Becuase I answered it in the previous post.

 

[Dempsey1919]

Is this a rhetorical question? … Becuase I answered it in the previous post.

No it’s a proper question.

I refuse to believe that they changed the Churches in order to please Protestants. There has to be more to it than that. I also don’t believe the primary motives of Bugnini was the make the Mass more appealing to Protestants, although I do think this was one of his considerations.

In changing the Mass and the churches, the reformers must have had an agenda. The change of the Mass and the change of the church architecture are related. They aren’t simply isolated coincidences. Surely, the Churches were changed in order to better suit the Mass of Paul VI.

My question is this this: How is the change in Church design, style, and architecture related to the change in the Mass?

 

[giuseppeTO]

No it’s a proper question.

I refuse to believe that they changed the Churches in order to please Protestants. There has to be more to it than that.

Well, my friend, then ask yourself these questions:

Who was pleased by the wrecking of your high altar?
Was it your dad? Were any of the parishioners at that church standing around saying “my gosh, it’s about time they wrecked that altar and threw the status of St. Anthony in the dust bin!”

Do you think it was pleasing to the saints whose relics were in the altar stone?

Dempsey, remove your blinders, read what Bugnini said at the completion of his task regarding the New Mass.

It all fits under the theme of ecumenism. You are searching for an answer to fit nicely into your concept that the church must have done all this … the New Mass, the sterile architecture, etc to somehow safeguard/improve/enhance our faith and you won’t find it.

 

[giuseppeTO]

No it’s a proper question.

I refuse to believe that they changed the Churches in order to please Protestants.

Demp,

Take note of the date of this quote. That is five years before the Pauline Mass was promulgated. Here is his agenda, in his own words.

Do you need it explained to you in any other clearer terms than this?

**“We must strip from our Catholic prayers and from the Catholic liturgy everything which can be the shadow of a stumbling block for our separated brethren that is for the Protestants.” **- *Archbishop Annibale Bugnini, main author of the New Mass, L’Osservatore Romano, March 19, 1965 *

 

[PrayforMallory]

Tomorrow is today! There is already an American Catholic Church with married priests, women deacons, married Bishops, etc. And they use the Novus Ordo for their liturgy - it fits in perfectly.

They trace their orders to some obscure Old Catholic bishop but their philosophy fits in with the American mantra of freedom, brotherhood, and social activism. You can probably fit the lot of them on a Volkswagen bus but their message could begin to resonate.

In 30 years or so when there are virtually no priests around to say the Novus Ordo, populistic alternatives like this will become more attractive.

I didn’t even think about how the priest shortage might play into the situation. With so few priests saying the Novus Ordo, maybe the Vatican will try to import priests from Africa and Asia, but those priests also seem to be pretty Orthodox and anti-modern, so I doubt that will go over well in the congregations.

Who knows. They might eventually ordain their own bishops and even elect an anti-pope. If the heterodoxy continues, those SSPX consecrations are going to seem like such a small issue by comparison.

 

[PrayforMallory]

This is one of the best paragraphs I have read on this site! It perfectly summarizes my beliefs concerning the liturgical reforms. I can’t say anything else; the paragraph speaks for itself.

Oh wow thanks. I appreciate it very much!

 

[strugglingalong]

Do you know of any way that we can compare the pre-Vatican II Protestant services with the Mass of Paul VI, or would this be a very difficult undertaking?

I really want to investigate whether the Mass of Paul VI was influenced by Protestant services. It would also be great to know if the Pauline Mass influenced the Protestant services.

By doing this, we will be able to answer a lot of questions concerning the Ordinary Form of the Roman Mass.

There was a liturgy in France during the Revolution that was very similar to the Novus Ordo. It had the priest facing the people, an offertory procession, and forget what else. Alcuin Reid mentions it in his work on the organic development of liturgy. That liturgy was rejected by the Church. Bugnini and the Consilium surely knew of that liturgy and was influenced by it. It’s interesting because that shows a subversive movement at work even before the Council. There was definitely a movement to change the liturgy to what was desired by the modern world more than true organic development that does not destroy or alter it.

Pax Christi tecum.

 

[PrayforMallory]

No it’s a proper question.

I refuse to believe that they changed the Churches in order to please Protestants. There has to be more to it than that. I also don’t believe the primary motives of Bugnini was the make the Mass more appealing to Protestants, although I do think this was one of his considerations.

In changing the Mass and the churches, the reformers must have had an agenda. The change of the Mass and the change of the church architecture are related. They aren’t simply isolated coincidences. Surely, the Churches were changed in order to better suit the Mass of Paul VI.

My question is this this: How is the change in Church design, style, and architecture related to the change in the Mass?

I think the answer is to look at the Protestant issue from a different angle. The Protestants of 1965 were different from the Protestants of today. Most Protestants generally held to most of the same social beliefs as the Catholic Church (at least in regards to abortion,sexuality, etc).

I think they generally believed that there were hundreds of thousands of Protestants who were hungering for the Eucharist. Unfortunately, after Vat II most of the “High Church” Protestants, who were the target of this ecumenical agenda, became practically gnostics who now deny even the sanctity of life.

I think they just held to a wrong notion of what Protestantism really is. Protestantism is defined by being in protest, and the closer we move towards Protestantism the further the Protestants move into modernism.

The statues, altar rails, Latin, incense, etc., were stumbling blocks for both Liberals and Protestants, so they destroyed them, thinking it would bring these groups into the Church, when in reality, it caused them to rebel even further.

They had good intentions, but they didn’t really realize what High Church Protestantism is all about.

 

[PrayforMallory]

There was a liturgy in France during the Revolution that was very similar to the Novus Ordo. It had the priest facing the people, an offertory procession, and forget what else. Alcuin Reid mentions it in his work on the organic development of liturgy. That liturgy was rejected by the Church. Bugnini and the Consilium surely knew of that liturgy and was influenced by it. It’s interesting because that shows a subversive movement at work even before the Council. There was definitely a movement to change the liturgy to what was desired by the modern world more than true organic development that does not destroy or alter it.

Pax Christi tecum.

I didn’t know this. This is very disturbing.

 

[strugglingalong]

I didn’t know this. This is very disturbing.

Yes. I’d have to look it up on Reid’s book which I don’t have with me. He comments that Bugnini et al would have been aware of this liturgy.

Pax Christi tecum.

 

[giuseppeTO]

I think the answer is to look at the Protestant issue from a different angle. The Protestants of 1965 were different from the Protestants of today. Most Protestants generally held to most of the same social beliefs as the Catholic Church (at least in regards to abortion,sexuality, etc).

I think they generally believed that there were hundreds of thousands of Protestants who were hungering for the Eucharist. Unfortunately, after Vat II most of the “High Church” Protestants, who were the target of this ecumenical agenda, became practically gnostics who now deny even the sanctity of life.

I think they just held to a wrong notion of what Protestantism really is. Protestantism is defined by being in protest, and the closer we move towards Protestantism the further the Protestants move into modernism.

The statues, altar rails, Latin, incense, etc., were stumbling blocks for both Liberals and Protestants, so they destroyed them, thinking it would bring these groups into the Church, when in reality, it caused them to rebel even further.

They had good intentions, but they didn’t really realize what High Church Protestantism is all about.

Mallory,
Good analysis. How sad that the same thing happened within the Catholic church. Not only did the high Anglicans and High Lutherans NOT convert, but hordes of Catholics became “former Catholics”, priests left, seminaries emptied, and now, in the US, only 40% of Catholics attend Bugnini’s Mass on Sunday. Not only was he successful in “stripping everything from the Catholic liturgy that would pose a 'shadow” of Protestant objection", he ended up stipping the soul of Catholicism, leaving Her weak and injured.

 

[Dempsey1919]

There was a liturgy in France during the Revolution that was very similar to the Novus Ordo. It had the priest facing the people, an offertory procession, and forget what else. Alcuin Reid mentions it in his work on the organic development of liturgy. That liturgy was rejected by the Church. Bugnini and the Consilium surely knew of that liturgy and was influenced by it.

We have establised that Bugnini was heavily influenced by “new” liturgical studies and histories. It has been suggested that the creators of the Pauline Mass had access to more information than the liturgical experts of yesteryear. I do not doubt this, but I want to know where this new information came from? I find it hard to believe that the Church discovered new information about the history and development of the Roman rite given the fact that the Vatican keeps extensive records. Surely, the Vatican has a plethora of information on the Roman liturgy and its developments over the years.

I doubt that the Vatican has kept extensive records on the development of protestant liturgies. Catholic liturgists would have had little access to the vast studies on protestant liturgies in previous years, primarily because of the fact that many of these would have been deemed as heretical by the Church. As a result, Catholic liturgists would have been ignorant of a whole body of liturature concerning the liturgy.

It is my belief that the “new” studies which influenced Bugnini and others, were protestant. They would have had access to all of the Vatican documents on the liturgy, but they would not have had as much access to the writings of the protestant reformers and their descendants. It is my belief that these “new” liturgical studies were actually rediscovered protestant documents, which had previously been ignored by the Church.

This is a perfectly logical explanation for the many similarities between the protestant services and the Pauline Mass. Bugnini must have discovered the protestant theories on the liturgy, and this obviously influenced the development of the Pauline Mass. This explains why the Mass of Paul VI bares a resemblance to many protestant services throughout history. How else can you explain it?

Also, I believe that the ecumenical movement would have given Bugnini and others access to these protestant studies on the liturgy. The fact that Bugnini invited Protestant “observers” to his Concilium meetings proves that he valued ecumenical dialogue.

 

[Brennan_Doherty]

do not support…

Typo, sorry. I was typing too fast and also a bit sleepy.

Although there were those who clearly believed in a more ecumenical position, and certainly more of those who called for it, I’m not sure exactly how much can be attributed to removal of obstacles. Some of the people on the commissions, even though they wanted reform, were not so inclined to this position. Usually, it seems to me that such a statement is corroborated by pointing to the removal of things like the Offertory. But those can be very well explained on a different basis. At least, that’s my “take” and others may reach different conclusions.

I agree fully with you. To be honest, I the time I was typing about 1500 years I had in mind more the Ordinary rather than the Propers of the Mass. Certainly, for the collects, the omission of certain concepts is not very defensible much less the reworking of all the collects. At the same time, I haven’t fully worked out my own thoughts on the changing of some collects. For example, the one in Lent about Cosmas and Damien, or the Septuagesima for St. Paul. Plus *some *of the principles for the revisions for the Sanctorale, like the address to the Father instead of the Son, seem very appealing to me. Of course, these are not opposed to organic development.

Hi AJV,

Okay, thanks for the clarification of your position, I appreciate it. God bless.

 

[ProVobis]

Why on Earth would we shed the Catholic Church’s adaptations from the last 1,000 years just because people can’t understand Latin?

The truth is that more people studied Latin in the 60’s before the Mass was vernacularized. Catholic schools, public schools, universities, law schools, etc. most were offering it if not requiring it. If anything killed the study of Latin, it was perhaps the unintended consequences of Vatican II. I can’t believe that many flunked out of Latin courses.

 

[Like]

The truth is that more people studied Latin in the 60’s before the Mass was vernacularized. Catholic schools, public schools, universities, law schools, etc. most were offering it if not requiring it. If anything killed the study of Latin, it was perhaps the unintended consequences of Vatican II. I can’t believe that many flunked out of Latin courses.

[SIGN]AMEN BROTHER[/SIGN]

 

[srp643]

Yes. I’d have to look it up on Reid’s book which I don’t have with me. He comments that Bugnini et al would have been aware of this liturgy.

Pax Christi tecum.

I will try to find the book but my recollection is that there was also a Protestant community in Taize, France in the 1950s that ostensibly influenced Bugnini and the new liturgy. When I read the Taize liturgy in the appendix, it was incredibly close to the NO. Can someone find a link to this Taize protestant liturgy?

Also, I understand there were Protestant “observers” at VII. Does anyone know if any Eastern Orthodox “observers” were there, and if so, what did they say about liturgical development? With all due respect to our Protestant brethren, if forced to have other Christians observe (it’s not remotely clear to me why this happened in the first instance) I would certainly pick EO over Protestants as “observers” given their apostolic succession, valid sacraments and much stronger adherence to Tradition vs. the Protestants. It seems we ended up losing both ways; the Protestants did not rejoin us (in fact they went on to form over 30,000 denominations) and the EO probably laughed at us and felt reaffirmed in their schismatic beliefs.

Sancta Maria, ora pro nobis.

 

[Brennan_Doherty]

I will try to find the book but my recollection is that there was also a Protestant community in Taize, France in the 1950s that ostensibly influenced Bugnini and the new liturgy. When I read the Taize liturgy in the appendix, it was incredibly close to the NO. Can someone find a link to this Taize protestant liturgy?

Also, I understand there were Protestant “observers” at VII. Does anyone know if any Eastern Orthodox “observers” were there, and if so, what did they say about liturgical development? With all due respect to our Protestant brethren, if forced to have other Christians observe (it’s not remotely clear to me why this happened in the first instance) I would certainly pick EO over Protestants as “observers” given their apostolic succession, valid sacraments and much stronger adherence to Tradition vs. the Protestants. It seems we ended up losing both ways; the Protestants did not rejoin us (in fact they went on to form over 30,000 denominations) and the EO probably laughed at us and felt reaffirmed in their schismatic beliefs.

Sancta Maria, ora pro nobis.

Okay, I am going off memory, so someone correct me if I am wrong, but from what I understand Russia did allow some Orthodox delegates to Vatican II possibly under the agreement that there would be no condemnation of communism in any of the documents.

As far as the liturgy goes, from what I understand the Orthodox attitude was that they simply didn’t understand why we were completely revamping our liturgy (and of course they did not agree with it).

I often think one of the tragedies of the split with the Orthodox is that their understanding of the importance of the liturgy along with their spirituality would be a great help to us and if we had been united I seriously doubt if we would have been able to alter the liturgy the way we did. I think many of the Orthodox would have opposed it.

 

[Dempsey1919]

An Episcopalian friend of mine recently told me that the current day Anglican Service was influenced by the ancient Catholic Sarum rite. Could this be one of the reasons for the similarities between the Pauline Mass and the Anglican Service?