Doesn’t this line of thought only reflect one side of the debate about what “full, conscious, and active participation” means? I am sure that you are aware that it is strongly held among traditionalists that such criteria do not require vocalizing responses.
I’m aware of the line of thought on both sides. It has no aspect of “debate” to me, however. The Council Fathers are quite clear and they are dispositive. I used to teach a course based on
Sacrosanctum Concilium and spent a good amount of time lecturing on the distinction between
participatio actuoso (which the Council Fathers use) and what one could term
participatio activo…by which one could attempt to typify a more purely external busyness that some people would like to ascribe to the aftermath of the reform of the liturgy.
In other words, I take a strong position against those who advocate that what the Council Fathers called for is purely external activity. It assuredly wasn’t – and those of us who knew and worked with Council Fathers know that quite well.
That said,
participatio actuoso positively cannot be understood as merely interior activity, as some try to argue. It is to have external extension and manifestation. The participation of the laity in the rite was no longer to continue in the way it had been before the Council, because it was not adequate in the judgement of the bishops of the world. The Council Fathers are extremely clear in
Sacrosanctum Concilium:
*30. To promote active participation, the people should be encouraged to take part by means of acclamations, responses, psalmody, antiphons, and songs, as well as by actions, gestures, and bodily attitudes. And at the proper times all should observe a reverent silence.
- The revision of the liturgical books must carefully attend to the provision of rubrics also for the people’s parts.*
How people were participating in the Mass needed to be changed in the judgment of every Catholic bishop at the Council, less four. Sacrosanctum Concilium’s critique of the liturgy indicates every part of the liturgy needed reform and restoration – and the document was passed by a vote of 2147 to 4.
And if this is the case, I am curious as to why you were willing to offer the indult Masses for the people, yet only with the condition that it be offered in a manner that you believed to be more consistent with Sacrosanctum Concilium?
I did not say I was willing. I was compliant. There is a difference. The matter rested entirely with the bishop. The bishop had received a petition in view of what was asked for by
Ecclesia Dei. He wished to grant the petition. A number of priests otherwise available felt uncomfortable either because of the language alone or the complexity of the rite or a combination thereof. Those older than me wished to be excused on account of their age and already sufficient workload.
I was a teacher of Latin, so I could not feign a linguistic inability. I was a professor of liturgy, so I could not plead a problem relative to the rubrics; I knew them quite well. But I had no interest in offering Mass according to the
vetus ordo. Still, this was a conversation that was going one place – and His Excellency and I both knew it. As it happened, his concern that each person in the group was in complete acceptance of Vatican II and in accord with the utter necessity, determined by the world’s bishops, to reform and restore the liturgy was actually even stronger than mine, given his personal association with the Council.
I am not old enough to have experienced this for myself, but I have been reading up on the tumult of the 70’s and 80s and the near disappearance of the Traditional Latin Mass.
I would not describe the 60s, 70s, and 80s as a period of tumult. Such was very far from my lived experience although I grant that there were those who experienced it as something unpleasant. The introduction of the
novus ordo was a very great positive to me, actually.
From what I understand, one of the primary purposes that indult Masses were permitted by Pope St. John Paul II was for the benefit of those attached to the old rites. What then would be the purpose of altering, even licitly, the manner in which those faithful, who longed for the Mass of their youth, were familiar with - namely a Mass where the servers and/or choir makes the reponses? If they wished to embrace the interpretation of “full, conscious, and active participation” that you espouse, would they not have simply attended the Novus Ordo Missae?
The one point I will address in a subsequent post in this thread.
As for the motives, the motu proprio
Ecclesia Dei is very short and its focus is on trying to heal the ruptures to ecclesial communion and governance that the Lefebvrists had already inflicted upon the Church for more than 15 years and which had reached a consummation in the illicit ordination of four bishops without pontifical mandate, at the time of the motu proprio’s issuance. What the Holy Father said regarding the
vetus ordo and its provision was:
To all those Catholic faithful who feel attached to some previous liturgical and disciplinary forms of the Latin tradition I wish to manifest my will to facilitate their ecclesial communion by means of the necessary measures to guarantee respect for their rightful aspirations. In this matter I ask for the support of the bishops and of all those engaged in the pastoral ministry in the Church.
vatican.va/roman_curia/pontifical_commissions/ecclsdei/documents/hf_jp-ii_motu-proprio_02071988_ecclesia-dei_en.html
