Does the Pope have the authority to change a liturgical rite founded on apostolic tradition and developed over many centuries? We have already discussed and shown that, in the past, the Church hierarchy did not exercise a strong influence on the development of liturgical forms. It simply sanctioned the rite that grew out of local custom, and even the Church practice of officially sanctioning a rite emerged relatively late, only after printed liturgical books became popular. In the West, this practice began after the Council of Trent; and it is defined in Article 22 of the “Constitution on the Sacred Liturgy”. Referring to Canon 1257 of the Codex Iuris Canonici [1917 – cf. 1983 CIC n.838]
, it says “The supervision of the sacred liturgy depends solely on the authority of the Church, which resides in the Apostolic See and, in accord with the law, with the diocesan bishop (… Therefore, no other person, not even a priest, may add, remove, or change anything in the liturgy on his own authority).”
The Council did not elaborate on what the term “supervision of the sacred liturgy” (Sacra Liturgiae moderatio) means. If we consider past practices and customs, however, the term cannot mean the type of sweeping revisions of the Mass ritual and the alteration of liturgical texts that we are now experiencing. Rather, we must understand the real meaning in a larger context: Above all, the Council Fathers were intent on preventing every priest from “devising” the liturgical rite “on his own authority” – which, of course, is exactly what is happening today.
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The argument could be made that the pope’s authority to introduce a new liturgical rite, that is, to do so without a decision by a council [and this was not decided on by Vatican II, I skipped over those pages – PtC], can be derived from the “full and highest power” (plena et suprema potestas) he has in the Church, as cited by the First Vatican Council, i.e., power over matters ‘quae ad disciplinam et regimen ecclesiae per totum orbem diffusae pertinent’ (“that pertain to the discipline and rule of the Church spread out over all the world”) (Denzinger, 1831).
However, the term ‘disciplina’ in no way applies to the liturgical rite of the Mass, particularly in light of the fact that the popes have repeatedly observed that the rite is founded on apostolic tradition. For this reason alone, the rite cannot fall into the category of “discipline and rule of the Church.” To this we can add that there is not a single document, including the ‘Codex Iuris Canonici’, in which there is a specific statement that the pope, in his function as the supreme pastor of the Church, has the authority to abolish the traditional liturgical rite. In fact, nowhere is it even mentioned that the pope has the authority to change even a single local liturgical tradition. The fact that there is no mention of such authority strengthens our case considerably.
There are clearly defined limits to the ‘plena et suprema potestas’ (full and highest powers) of the pope.
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It certainly is not the function of the Holy See to introduce Church reforms. The first duty of the pope is to act as primary bishop (‘episcopus’ = supervisor), to watch over the traditions of the Church – her dogmatic, moral and liturgical traditions.
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And we can also say that neither in the Roman Church nor in the Eastern Church has there ever been a patriarch or a bishop who, on his own authority, has undertaken a reform of liturgical rites. That is not to say, however, that over the centuries there has not been an organic development of liturgical forms in the East, as in the West.
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Since there is no document that specifically assigns to the Apostolic See the authority to change, let alone to abolish the traditional liturgical rite; and since, furthermore, it can be shown that not a single predecessor of Pope Paul VI has ever introduced major changes to the Roman liturgy, the assertion that the Holy See has the authority to change the liturgical rite would appear to be debatable, to say the least.
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[Footnote:]
The following point is worth pondering: As already discussed, according to canon law, a person’s affiliation with a particular liturgical rite is determined by that person’s rite of baptism. Given that the liturgical reforms of Pope Paul VI created a ‘de facto’ new rite, one could assert that those among the faithful who were baptized according to the traditional Roman rite have the right to continue following that rite; just as priests who were ordained according to the traditional ‘Ordo’ have the right to exercise the very rite that they were ordained to celebrate.
