E
EphelDuath
Guest
True story: the Council Fathers never envisioned the Mass of Paul VI. His Missal wasn’t promulgated for years until after the Council ended, after all.
Really what the Council Fathers envisioned was the TLM, but with the readings and Propers in the vernacular (they assumed that any catechized Catholic had a good grasp of the Ordinary, despite it being in Latin). At the time (like now), they were facing the problem of the “four hymn” Mass, where the priest would say the Propers inaudibly while completely unrelated hymns were sung by the choir. They wanted the the laity to experience the beautiful and ancient Propers and hear the ancient Gregorian melodies in the mostly-unused chant books (THAT’S what all of the Popes prior to the Council meant by “active participation in the Mass”, not just doing or saying things).
So their course of action was two things: (1) allow the Propers in the vernacular so that people could understand them, and (2) make an abbreviated Kyriale and Graduale with the easier chants so that the congregation could sing with the choir.
One bishop, during the debate over Sacrosanctum Concilium at the Council, expressed fears that if the Propers were allowed in the vernacular, soon the whole Mass would be too. The entire Council laughed at him! Open-mouth guffawing at such a ridiculous suggestion. Nobody wanted that, so it was a totally unwarranted fear.
Unfortunately, Pope S.D. Paul VI entrusted hyper-liberals like Annibale Bugnini and Joseph Gelineau to the reform, and the committee they were on (the consilium) utterly disdained Catholic tradition, seeing it as vestiges of the Dark Ages. They wanted the Mass to look more like a generic Protestant service. So they generously deleted texts of the Missal and chants that they simply didn’t like, and composed some fresh ones on their own accord, which they dishonestly presented to the Pope as being a resurfacing of an ancient lost tradition (that’s where Eucharistic Prayer II came from; they claimed it was the ancient Canon of Hippolytus slightly tweaked, in reality they have almost no similarities at all). They also wanted to radically reform the Rosary, too, to make it more ecumenically acceptable; but the Pope wisely vetoed that plan.
Contrary to the wishes of the Council Fathers, the consilium actually preferred the “four-hymn Mass” to the Propers, so the consilium promulgated a Simple Gradual which allowed one to replace the texts of the Propers with anything they liked. So the beautiful Gregorian tradition, which the Council wanted the laity to enjoy, was buried even deeper than before the Council. Pope Paul VI began seeing the disastrous effects of the consilium, and in 1974 he sent a booklet called Jubilate Deo to every bishops’ conference in the world, which contained the simplest possible Mass chants and a few hymns, in the hopes that this could be the starting point for a renewal of chant. Sadly, the conferences were uninterested in chant at this point and threw his booklet in the garbage.
Long story short: the Council didn’t want to make drastic changes to the TLM, but the consilium appointed by Pope Paul VI did; and then they lied about the work they did when presenting it to the Pope. That’s why the Novus Ordo is a significant break from tradition.
Really what the Council Fathers envisioned was the TLM, but with the readings and Propers in the vernacular (they assumed that any catechized Catholic had a good grasp of the Ordinary, despite it being in Latin). At the time (like now), they were facing the problem of the “four hymn” Mass, where the priest would say the Propers inaudibly while completely unrelated hymns were sung by the choir. They wanted the the laity to experience the beautiful and ancient Propers and hear the ancient Gregorian melodies in the mostly-unused chant books (THAT’S what all of the Popes prior to the Council meant by “active participation in the Mass”, not just doing or saying things).
So their course of action was two things: (1) allow the Propers in the vernacular so that people could understand them, and (2) make an abbreviated Kyriale and Graduale with the easier chants so that the congregation could sing with the choir.
One bishop, during the debate over Sacrosanctum Concilium at the Council, expressed fears that if the Propers were allowed in the vernacular, soon the whole Mass would be too. The entire Council laughed at him! Open-mouth guffawing at such a ridiculous suggestion. Nobody wanted that, so it was a totally unwarranted fear.
Unfortunately, Pope S.D. Paul VI entrusted hyper-liberals like Annibale Bugnini and Joseph Gelineau to the reform, and the committee they were on (the consilium) utterly disdained Catholic tradition, seeing it as vestiges of the Dark Ages. They wanted the Mass to look more like a generic Protestant service. So they generously deleted texts of the Missal and chants that they simply didn’t like, and composed some fresh ones on their own accord, which they dishonestly presented to the Pope as being a resurfacing of an ancient lost tradition (that’s where Eucharistic Prayer II came from; they claimed it was the ancient Canon of Hippolytus slightly tweaked, in reality they have almost no similarities at all). They also wanted to radically reform the Rosary, too, to make it more ecumenically acceptable; but the Pope wisely vetoed that plan.
Contrary to the wishes of the Council Fathers, the consilium actually preferred the “four-hymn Mass” to the Propers, so the consilium promulgated a Simple Gradual which allowed one to replace the texts of the Propers with anything they liked. So the beautiful Gregorian tradition, which the Council wanted the laity to enjoy, was buried even deeper than before the Council. Pope Paul VI began seeing the disastrous effects of the consilium, and in 1974 he sent a booklet called Jubilate Deo to every bishops’ conference in the world, which contained the simplest possible Mass chants and a few hymns, in the hopes that this could be the starting point for a renewal of chant. Sadly, the conferences were uninterested in chant at this point and threw his booklet in the garbage.
Long story short: the Council didn’t want to make drastic changes to the TLM, but the consilium appointed by Pope Paul VI did; and then they lied about the work they did when presenting it to the Pope. That’s why the Novus Ordo is a significant break from tradition.