Everyone slow down. You folks are talking as if CITH, dialogue masses, vernacular hymns, priest facing people, standing for communion, etc were all evil and as if it was never allowed. Both assumptions are wrong. They are not evil and they have been allowed.
The problem is, as I have said over 100 times, a lot of things were allowed to a very small, select group of Catholics. Now, they are allowed in the parish. The way that it looks to the person in the pew is that this is something new and bad. That is not the case, nor is it what John Paul II said or Benedict XVI.
There were norms, such as COTT that were held for the laity, religious houses of women, and for many religious houses of men. Together, this makes up the largest segment of the Roman population.
However, there were always exceptions that existed long before Trent and which Trent did not abrogate. The fact that Trent did not abrogate these exceptions is an indicator that it was not wrong. The Church would never allow something that is wrong.
What Trent tried to do was unify the Roman Church by codifying the liturgy. However, it left intact many of these practices that we think are new, which already existed in certain places, in some religious orders and in some abbeys.
One can say that one likes or dislikes it. That’s fair. But it’s unfair to say that it’s wrong. When you say that, then you’re indicting those who have had these practices for hundreds of years. For example, my religious family had CITH since 1209. We had vernacular music since 1209. We did not have Gregorian Chant. We never had communion rails or kneelers, we stood or knelt on the floor, depending on the custom of the province. Each province had its own customs. We had our own ritual and still do to this day.
Carmelites, Carhusians, Dominicans, Jesuits and some other religious communities of men that I can’t think of right now also had their own ritual books and some even had their own rite. Franciscans never had a rite, but do have a ritual book, missal, lectionary and breviary with its own rubrics . To the layman’s eye it looks like a hybrid between the EF and the OF. In fact, it’s just a carryover from the 13th century with some modification made to accommodate for different provinces and local customs.
We must be very careful when we use words such as “wrong”. “Out of compliance for the laity” is a much more appropriate term than “wrong”. The word “wrong” suggests that those who did not do it this way were doing something bad.
We must never violate charity in our defense of reverence. That’s an oxymoron.
Fraternally,
Br. JR, OSF
