Some questions about the Extraordinary Form

[Lazerlike42]

The Liturgy is a subject I have thought about for some time, in particular the reverence it is due, how to restore that reverence where it has been lost, and how to instill an even greater reverence in those places where it already exists. The Extraordinary Form Liturgy has been a particular interest of mine for some time, and I have been thinking about it all the more the past week or so. I have just now finished watching a celebration of it on EWTN, and a number of ideas about it that I have been mulling over for a great while have now solidified in my mind.

To make this as short as possible, I think the Extraordinary Form is, by and large, absolutely wonderful. At the same time, there are a few select items which I cannot get past. Were it that these were not the case, I would see no reason why the Extraordinary Form ought not be able to be the Liturgy celebrated everywhere every day. I have decided to inquire about these items here in the hopes of 1) learning anything about them which I may not already know, 2) seeing how others feel about these things, and 3) possibly engaging in some constructive discussion on the topic.

While this may come across as a list of complaints, please understand that that is quite far from my intention. I have explained above why I mention these points, and I ask everyone in Christian charity to take me at my word.

1. 
   *]It does not seem ideal for the Epistle and Gospel to be read ad orientem, These are, after all, directed towards the people, and in the theology I have read in traditional books regarding the Mass as a dialog, this has always been presented as that part of the dialog where God speaks to man. The symbolism of it just seems to give the wrong message, and this all the worse coming in a Mass where symbolism is so very important. The same goes for the ad orientem posture in general. I believe that restoring this posture is one of the most important things we can do to restore the Liturgy, but it would seem best to have the priest face the people when speaking to them, and face “away” when speaking to God.
   *]On this note, it also seems far less than ideal that the Epistle and Gospel need to be read first in Latin and then afterwards in the vernacular. It really seems extremely clunky and takes away from the flow of the Mass, and again, this all the more unfortunate in a Mass where flow is so important. I believe that in the 1950s, an indult was granted to permit these to simply be read in the vernacular without the need to read them first in Latin. Is this no longer applicable, and, if not, why can this not be made a permanent rubric?
   *]The silence of the Canon seems not to be ideal. While I can appreciate the mystery that this invokes and the atmosphere of reverence that seems to be created during the Canon, it also seems that the faithful miss so much that they could be getting. “This is my body” is one of the single most important things Christ said during His earthly life, and it seems to me that the faithful should hear this. Given that the Eucharist is indeed the “source and summit” of our faith and lives, this seems unfortunate. Moreover, given that one of the strongest criticisms of the Ordinary Form is usually that the people lose the sense of sacrifice due to the changes in the words, how is it not equally as problematic that the faithful do not hear the words of sacrifice in the Extraordinary Form?
   *]This is a very minor point, but one which still troubles me. Why does the priest thrice bless the host after it has been consecrated? At this point, it is the host - Jesus Christ - who ought to be blessing him!
   *]This is one of the more important issues to me: the fact that the priest alone says the Our Father is very… troubling? Discouraging? Wel, something of that sort, in any case, to me. Similarly, the fact that the Confetior is said by the server only is something which gives me so hard a time in fully embracing the Extraordinary Form. It seems so tremendously - again, I cannot find the word for it, but “troubling” suffices I suppose - that these prayers are not in fact made personally. If I am to take part in the Holy Sacrifice and receive the Body and Blood of the Lord, I ought to be confessing my sins. When I read Sacrosanctum Concilium, this seems to be one of the concerns the Council was trying to address as well.
   
   Most of the concerns I have seem to be the things that the Second Vatican Council was truly aiming at addressing, rather than the various things that ended up coming about. If there were a Mass that was precisely the same as the Extraordinary Form, but with these few minor “corrections,” I do not see how one could ask for anything greater!
   
   Simultaneously, given that these things are the way they are, I have so hard a time fully embracing the Missal I so dearly want to. Neither is this simply idle talk, as I quite likely will be pursuing the priesthood. I actually feel called to be a “liturgical priest,” and to bring reverence to the people of God. Of course, all priests are called to liturgy, as that is the essence of the call, yet I sense some special calling in this area. In any case, this is certainly an important series of questions for me to address. I look forward to any helpful responses I may receive.
   
   God bless

 

[preV2tradcath]

When someone attends the classical rite for the first time, they are often surprised that what is obviously the most important part of the liturgical action is done in silence. Even at sung Mass, as today, the consecration happens in silence. It is true, regrettably, that at certain times in our liturgical history there have been abuses in this connexion, organ music overlaying the consecration and other indignities. Nevertheless, the classical pattern of the traditional Roman rite is that after the Sanctus has been sung, silence descends, broken only by the bell. This is the essential glory of the classical rite, the very heart of the matter. I do believe that in our noisy, clamorous modern world, this silence is even more necessary than it was for earlier generations.

The reason for the silence is, that at a very early stage in the Church’s liturgical awareness, it was realized that the miracles of grace which occur during the canon should not risk trivialization by being spoken out loud as if the sacred words which effected these miracles were simply in the normal run of ordinary speech. The mystery of the Real Presence, the miracle of transubstantiation, the subsequent pleading of the oblation, all this is the stuff of heaven, heaven come down to earth. Perhaps we would better say that in the canon, earth is raised to heaven. In the canon, the worshipping Church does not sink into silence. No, the truth is, that we rise into silence, a contemplative, anointed silence, over which the Holy Ghost is hovering, a timeless silence which breathes the life of heaven.

In the silence of the canon, the external signs of the liturgical action become even more poignant: the genuflexions, the manual gestures of the celebrant, the repeated signs of the cross over the oblata. These numerous signs of the cross made over the oblata after the consecration are just as important, indeed I venture to suggest perhaps even more important, than those made before the consecration. After the elements of bread and wine have been changed into Christ Himself, the Church repeatedly signs them with the sign of the cross, not of course in order to bless them, for all possible blessing has already occurred in the miracle of transubstantiation. No, the crossings are to designate the oblata, again and again, as the matter of the sacrifice, the very same body and blood that were offered on the cross, now glorified and truly present upon the altar. I am convinced that to omit the crossings after the consecration risks weakening our faith in the identity of the sacrifice of the Mass with the sacrifice of the Cross. In the silence of the canon, that total identity is explicitly affirmed, with the liturgical gestures of the celebrant proclaiming the Cross as powerfully as any words could utter.

The above is taking from latin-mass-society.org/canon.htm I would urge you to read the whole article.

 

[preV2tradcath]

Just wanted to add the following from the article because it seems to speak directly to one of your concerns:

The pious and traditional instinct of the Church is that the Lord’s astounding words over bread and cup should be breathed again only in a hushed and reverent whisper by the unworthy human agent of the miracle, the priest who is acting in persona Christi. These are not words to say aloud, much less, heaven forbid, to sing aloud. These are words of love, words to whisper in awe and trembling. These are the words of the new and everlasting covenant which changed the world for ever. These are the words which make the Mystery of Faith accessible to humankind, at every moment of every day, until the Lord returns.

 

[MarkThompson]

Wow, I pretty much agree with all your points. I would add that, if the Last Gospel is to be retained, it should not be silent, and it should precede, not follow, the Ite missa est, which should be the actual end of the Mass. To be sure, not all of what you say goes in all cases. There’s a certain beauty to the chanting of the readings which, I think, ought to be retained at least on certain feast days.

What I think you’ve found out is that the 3,000 bishops at Vatican II did not entirely have a collective moment of insanity when they approved Sacrosanctum Concilium. They saw things that could be improved. For instance, according to the early Church writers, you used to go to Mass and learn Sacred Scripture. By 1900, at Mass you would hear Sacred Scripture read toward the wall, in a language virtually no one reads let alone can follow spoken. Hopefully you read your Bible at home; you’re certainly not going to be learning it from Mass. Admittedly, the present method has a certain beauty to it, and theological concepts can be adduced to support it: e.g., it’s that whole body of Christ, the Church, is proclaiming the Word outward into the world, not a closed circle reciting it to themselves. Okay, but when no one in the outer world hears it and you have to recite it in the vernacular later on anyhow so that the priest can give a homily about it, you start to wonder if maybe something got lost somewhere along the way.

The Last Gospel is sort of an opposite case; it was originally a private devotion of the priest which he would say silently while walking back toward the sacristy, and eventually at Trent it got tacked on to the missal. Due to its history, it was to be said silently, and it follows the Ite missa est, which, before the innovation of the Last Gospel, actually had been the end of Mass. Really, though? Is this the best we can do? The priest reads it silently to himself, and I flip through the missal so that I can read it silently to myself at the same time? Can’t he just say it out loud? It’s not exactly like the Canon, where there’s at least some better argument to be made that the mystic, sacred nature of the prayers means they should be obscured from the masses. (I’ve never bought the argument that the Canon must be silent because the priest is speaking to God, not the congregation. The Collect is also spoken to God, but no one’s ever argued for a silent Collect.) The Last Gospel is only silent because of its accidental history and the late date at which it was introduced into the missal.

You’re going to catch a lot of heck, I predict, for writing about “correcting” the liturgy, even in quotation marks. It’s highly frowned upon in some circles to think that one could dare to presume to “improve” the liturgy. Mind you, the bishops at Trent “improved” the Mass by stripping out hundreds of beautiful, reverent, theologically meaty sequences, leaving only four, to which a fifth was restored in the early 1700s. I’d be happy to see a sequence back in the Mass for, at least, every major feast. Can one dare to feel that that would be an “improvement”?

 

[floresco]

Most of the concerns I have seem to be the things that the Second Vatican Council was truly aiming at addressing, rather than the various things that ended up coming about. If there were a Mass that was precisely the same as the Extraordinary Form, but with these few minor “corrections,” I do not see how one could ask for anything greater!

I agree with almost every point you have made. When I read Sacrosanctum Concilium it seems both reasonable and in continuity with previous popes of that century. I too think that it was calling for something more like your ideal Mass than what we actually got. I probably would have voted for it if I had been a Cardinal at V2.

But the committee that actually wrote the Mass introduced changes with theological implications. And the attempt of the Council to give bishops flexibility in their implementation of the new Mass allowed problematic practices to be introduced. And the less specific rubrics (and general attitude of "creativity) allowed priests to introduce even more problematic practices. Each level of the process brought more problems so that the Ordinary Form of Mass as typically practiced can be quite far from the apparent wishes of the Council.

Given this situation, I think the EF, even without “improvements” is closer to the ideal of the Council than the OF as practiced in most places.

 

[Ockham]

Interesting points. I think it would be easier to get the EF into more parishes if an indult was granted to skip the Epistle and Gospel in Latin. Most priests are smart enough to be able to learn the Mass in Latin, but a long Biblical reading can be intimidating.

It’s during the silence of the Mass I feel the strongest connection to it. Although you make a good point of the Consecration being said out loud.

I’ll pray for your vocation. If a call to reverence is what you’re feeling I suggest the traditional seminaries might be the best choice. You may want a reverent liturgy but if you are assigned to a progessive OF parish the will of the people might win out.

 

[malphono]

Interesting points. I think it would be easier to get the EF into more parishes if an indult was granted to skip the Epistle and Gospel in Latin. Most priests are smart enough to be able to learn the Mass in Latin, but a long Biblical reading can be intimidating.

No “indult” is necessary for this. It was addressed directly in Summorum Pontifucm:

Art. 6. In Masses celebrated with the people according to the Missal of Blessed John XXIII, the Readings can be proclaimed even in the vernacular, using editions that have received the recognitio of the Apostolic See.

 

[malphono]

It does not seem ideal for the Epistle and Gospel to be read ad orientem, These are, after all, directed towards the people, and in the theology I have read in traditional books regarding the Mass as a dialog, this has always been presented as that part of the dialog where God speaks to man. The symbolism of it just seems to give the wrong message, and this all the worse coming in a Mass where symbolism is so very important. The same goes for the ad orientem posture in general. I believe that restoring this posture is one of the most important things we can do to restore the Liturgy, but it would seem best to have the priest face the people when speaking to them, and face “away” when speaking to God.

With the exception of the readings, the priest does turn to face the congregation at all points of greeting or admonition. I happen to agree about the readings: they should, I believe, be done from the ambo, as seems to have been the original practice.

On this note, it also seems far less than ideal that the Epistle and Gospel need to be read first in Latin and then afterwards in the vernacular. It really seems extremely clunky and takes away from the flow of the Mass, and again, this all the more unfortunate in a Mass where flow is so important. I believe that in the 1950s, an indult was granted to permit these to simply be read in the vernacular without the need to read them first in Latin. Is this no longer applicable, and, if not, why can this not be made a permanent rubric?

See my earlier [post=6929922]post[/post] in this thread.

The silence of the Canon seems not to be ideal. While I can appreciate the mystery that this invokes and the atmosphere of reverence that seems to be created during the Canon, it also seems that the faithful miss so much that they could be getting. “This is my body” is one of the single most important things Christ said during His earthly life, and it seems to me that the faithful should hear this. Given that the Eucharist is indeed the “source and summit” of our faith and lives, this seems unfortunate. Moreover, given that one of the strongest criticisms of the Ordinary Form is usually that the people lose the sense of sacrifice due to the changes in the words, how is it not equally as problematic that the faithful do not hear the words of sacrifice in the Extraordinary Form?

Excellent observations. It’s interesting to note that those points were addressed in the short-lived (and ill-fated) “interim Missal of 1965.”

This is a very minor point, but one which still troubles me. Why does the priest thrice bless the host after it has been consecrated? At this point, it is the host - Jesus Christ - who ought to be blessing him!

That particular rubric is not unusual, and is actually common to the Eastern and Oriental liturgies as well.

This is one of the more important issues to me: the fact that the priest alone says the Our Father is very… troubling? Discouraging? Wel, something of that sort, in any case, to me.

Another very good point. It was partially addressed in an often overlooked instruction from the SRC from 1958 (de musica sacra) which does, in fact, allow the Pater Noster to be sung by the entire congregation at High Mass (both missa solemnis and missa cantata).

Similarly, the fact that the Confetior is said by the server only is something which gives me so hard a time in fully embracing the Extraordinary Form. It seems so tremendously - again, I cannot find the word for it, but “troubling” suffices I suppose - that these prayers are not in fact made personally. If I am to take part in the Holy Sacrifice and receive the Body and Blood of the Lord, I ought to be confessing my sins. When I read Sacrosanctum Concilium, this seems to be one of the concerns the Council was trying to address as well.

This was addressed by PP Benedict XV and again by Pius XII in their interest in promoting the missa recitata (aka “Dialogue Mass”). While the missa recitata enjoyed a certain following in Europe (and possibly elsewhere), for some strange reason it never really caught-on in North America. Apparently, it still hasn’t.

Most of the concerns I have seem to be the things that the Second Vatican Council was truly aiming at addressing, rather than the various things that ended up coming about. If there were a Mass that was precisely the same as the Extraordinary Form, but with these few minor “corrections,” I do not see how one could ask for anything greater!

And that again brings us back to the short-lived and ill-fated “interim Missal of 1965.”

 

[Ockham]

My understanding is the Server says those prayers on our behalf. Of course with a missal you can pray the whole Mass along with the Priest and Server.

 

[ProVobis]

Interesting points. I think it would be easier to get the EF into more parishes if an indult was granted to skip the Epistle and Gospel in Latin. Most priests are smart enough to be able to learn the Mass in Latin, but a long Biblical reading can be intimidating.

This is done at the EF I attend. However, as the priest normally recites the Epistle and Gospel in the vernacular at the sermon anyway, I fail to see where suppressing the Latin is beneficial. To me, having it in both Latin and vernacular, it should be more memorable, at least in theory. And it sounds more authentic. Don’t forget, there may be those in the congregation that speak a vernacular other than the one at hand. Thus the need for the Latin.

 

[porthos11]

Actually, a lot of these points were addressed in the document “Inter Oecumenici” which simplified the Missal of 1962 to bring it in line with Sacrosanctum concilium until the revisions could be completed (starting at paragraph 48).