Why do certain liturgical rubrics exist?
Why for example can only the ordained proclaim the Gospel during the Mass. That makes little sense to me. It’s not uncommon at my parish to have the Mass celebrated by a priest who has great difficulty with the English language (he is great and he is from Mexico) along with a deacon who can barely read, at least out loud. Why does the Church prohibit in such cases having a layperson proclaim the Gospel? The result of not allowing it is a proclamation that cannot be understood.
I’m not able to give you a straight answer, to be honest, but I believe seeing things from an historical perspective might help even a slight bit. Since the earliest days of the Church, the reading of
all the Scriptural lessons belonged to the clergy. The task was originally assigned to the
lector or reader (formerly classed as one of the
four minor orders of the clergy). St. Cyprian of Carthage (c. 255), once wrote a letter to his presbyters and deacons about the ordination of someone named Aurelius, who was still quite young. He thought it wise at moment “*that [Aurelius] should begin with the office of reading. For nothing is more fitting for that voice, which has confessed the Lord with a glorious witness, than to be heard in the solemn reading of the divine word: than after splendid words which bore witness to Christ, to read the gospel of Christ whence his witness are made; than after the rack to come to the reading-desk. *” Of course, in a world where most people could not even read and/or write (literacy became widespread only recently in many places!) obviously not everyone could just stand up and read from a scroll/codex.
However, there was always this tendency to withdraw these privileges from the lower ranks of the clergy and give them to those of higher rank: hence, before the end of the 4th century, the deacon acquired the right of reading the Gospel. Around the 8th century or earlier in Rome, the
subdeacon slowly acquired the right of reading the Epistle, but he was never fully able to deprive the lector of this right, as the deacon did of that of reading the Gospel.
Hence, I think the preservation of this rule has partly something to do with conservatism.
I quote from the Catholic Encyclopedia:
The epistle (from the article Lessons in the Liturgy)
Originally [the Epistle] was read by a lector. The privileges of the deacon to sing the Gospel and (in the West) of the subdeacon to read the Epistle are a later development (see GOSPELS IN THE LITURGY). It seems that in the West lectors read the Epistle as well as the other lessons down to about the fifth century (Reuter, “Das Subdiakonat”, Augsburg, 1890, pp. 177, 185). Gradually, then, the feeling grew that the Epistle belongs to the subdeacon. This is apparently an imitation of the deacon’s right to the Gospel. When the custom had obtained of celebrating High Mass with two ministers only — a deacon and a subdeacon — in place of the number of concelebrating priests, regionary deacons, and assistant subdeacons whom we see around the celebrating bishop in the first centuries at Rome, when further the liturgical lessons were reduced to two, and one of them was sung by the deacon, it seemed natural that the subdeacon should read the other. The first Roman Ordo (sixth-eighth century) describes the Epistle as read by a subdeacon (I, 10). But not till the fourteenth century was the subdeacon’s peculiar office of reading the Epistle expressed and acknowledged by his symbolic reception of the book of Epistles at his ordination. Even now
[note: this was before the liturgical reforms post-VII] the Roman Pontifical keeps unchanged the old form of the admonition in the ordination of subdeacons (Adepturi, filii dilectissimi, officium subdiaconatus . . . etc.), which, although it describes their duties at length, says nothing about reading the Epistle.
Ceremony of singing the gospel (from the article Gospel in the Liturgy)
The Gospel has been for many centuries in East and West the privilege of the deacon. This was not always the case. At first a reader (
anagnostes, lector) read all the lessons. We have seen a case of this in the story of St. Cyprian and Aurelian (see above). St. Jerome (died 420) speaks of the deacon as reader of the Gospel (Ep. cxlvii, n. 6), but the practice was not yet uniform in all churches. At Constantinople, on Easter day, the bishop did so (Sozomen, Church History VII.19); in Alexandria, it was an archdeacon (ibid., he says that: “in other places deacons read the Gospel; in many churches only priests”). The Apostolic Constitutions refer the Gospel to the deacon; and in 527 a council, at Vaison, says deacons “are worthy to read the words that Christ spoke in the Gospel” (Baudot, op. cit., 51). This custom became gradually universal, as is shown by the formulæ that accompany the tradition of the Gospel-book at the deacon’s ordination (the eleventh century Visigothic “Liber ordinum” has the form: “Ecce evangelium Christi, accipe, ex quo annunties bonam gratiam fidei populo”, Baudot, p. 52). An exception that lasted through the Middle Ages was that at Christmas the emperor, dressed in a rochet and stole, sang the midnight Gospel: “Exiit edictum a Cæsare Augusto” etc. (Mabillon, “Musæum italicum”, I, 256 sq.).
