Reason 6 of why the current liturgical rites are
superior to the pre-Conciliar rites is that the liturgy walks us through the
cycle of Christ’s birth, life, teaching, suffering, death, resurrection and
sending the Holy Spirit.
Of course the pre-Conciliar rites also took us
through the anticipation of Christ’s Incarnation (Advent), The Mystery of his
Incarnation (Christmas) his teaching (Sundays after Epiphany and Sundays after
Pentecost) and the Paschal Mystery of his Suffering, Death and Resurrection
(Septuagesima, Lent, Easter and Pentecost), but it was a very different
experience. In the first place the 1970
revision uses a three-year cycle of readings that literally triples the amount
of Gospel and Scripture readings to which we are exposed in the Sunday
Liturgy. (The Daily Lectionary is a
two-year cycle which therefore increases the scriptures used at daily Mass by
50% as the Gospels are the same in both years.)
The expanded Lectionary not only exposes us to more of the Word of God,
but gives us the same narratives of the life and teaching of Jesus from the
perspectives of the different Evangelists.
In addition to the expanded Lectionary and the more
extended use of Scripture readings, the faithful actually hear the
readings. While the custom before the
Council was generally that the Gospel be read a second time in the vernacular
on Sundays, at daily Mass the readings were simply read sotto voce by the priest at the altar and in Latin, meaning that
only if the faithful had a daily missal with them could they access the
readings. And it was not unknown in the
“old Mass” that not even the Gospel was read to the people in their own
language. It only mattered that the
priest “say the Mass” as he “said it for us” and we were onlookers to the
sacred action. We had neither to hear nor to comprehend but only to be
present.
Another example of how little we were exposed to
the scriptures before the liturgical reforms of the Second Vatican Council is
that it was the common practice that whenever possible the Requiem Mass be said
for the person for whom the stipend was being offered. The readings for the Requiem Mass did not
change from day to day but were always the exact same reading. It was entirely possible that from a Monday
through a Saturday, the same Epistle and Gospel were read at Mass each day.
When there was a feast that pre-empted the
opportunity to use the Requiem Mass, the readings were almost always from the propers
of that feast, or more exactly the “commons” of the particular genre to which
the saint of the day belonged. So if the
feast were that of a Virgin Martyr such as Saint Cecilia, the exact same
readings were used for several dozen other feasts through the year—Saints
Ursula, Barbara, Lucy, Perpetua, Agatha, etc.
Same for Bishop Confessors: Martin, Patrick, Ambrose, Gregory, Leo. Same for Martyrs: George, Vincent, Justin,
Ignatius, etc. Greater Apostles (Peter,
Paul, John) might have their particular readings, or at least a particular
Gospel, but the majority of them—Jude, Simon, Matthias, Thomas, etc tended to
get lumped together with the same readings, or at least for their
Epistles. And of course Saturdays were
the Votive Mass of Our Lady with the same readings each week. All in all, it was a tiny portion of the New
Testament that was read at Mass and little, if any, of the Old.
Lent was extended with the addition of
Septuagesima—a period of three weeks affixed to the First Sunday of Lent. This took three Sundays where the Vatican II
Liturgy focuses on the teaching and miracles of Jesus and added them to the
focus on his Passion and Death. This
deemphasizes discipleship in favor of our being passive onlookers to the
Passion and Death of the Lord.
All in all the pre-Conciliar Rites minimized the
importance of the Scriptures and restricted liturgical access to them in favor
of the priest offering the Sacrifice on our behalf but without our active
participation. It fit the needs of the
sixteenth century where the bulk of Catholics were illiterate and uncatechized
but it also kept the faithful from growing in their faith and committing
themselves to active discipleship.
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