The "New Translation" of the Mass III--More on the "Reform of the Reform"

A medieval illustration from the

Bibliothèque nationale de France

depicting a Requiem Mass being

celebrated ad apsidem (facing

the rear wall of the Church

I mentioned in the last post the “Reform of the Reform” school of liturgical renewal that feels that Paul VI went far too far in the Reform of the Roman Rite in the 1970 Missal and who have been advocating “correcting” the excesses of the Novus Ordo.  I also mentioned Father Joseph Fessio who as founder and president of Adoremus has been the chief American voice for the movement.  He is not the only advocate of the program, nor is his position on revising the current Rite even the most extreme.  Father Fessio may be a conservative and suffer from an exaggerated sense of his own importance, but he is both intelligent and highly educated.  Not all voices have such credibility.  I had mentioned Father Jerry Pokorsky from the Arlington Diocese.   He founded an organization called CREDO which has long agitated for revisions in the Novus Ordo including a more literal translation of the Latin texts.  Father Pokorsky holds an undergraduate degree in business and a seminary degree in theology.  A liturgical experience in his parish, Saint Michael’s in Annandale is, well to avoid the word eccentric, unique.  There is much razzle-dazzle, one could even say sacred glitter, but little substance in the way of sound liturgical spirituality.   One of  his partners in CREDO, Father Cornelius O’Brien often made pretense to a doctorate which in fact he had never completed.  Sermons by some of the CREDO priests in the diocese of Arlington are often otherworldly—not as in Divine or ethereal, but in the sense of “what planet is this priest from.”  Tales of spurious miracles and implausible hagiographic stories replace the scriptures in “thrill ‘em and chill ‘em” pulpit pyrotechnics.   Father Brian Harrison, an Australian priest who is a convert to Catholicism, received a doctorate from the Pontifical University of the Holy Cross but his tapes on biblical exegesis that contradicted the Pontifical Biblical Commission and attacked biblical scholarship since Pius XII’s encyclical Divino Afflante Spiritu have undermined, indeed destroyed, what little academic credibility he might otherwise have enjoyed.  All in all this is the problem with the Reform of the Reform—From Msgr. Gamber down to “Doctor” O’Brien, there is a lack of intellectual bottom to the movement.   Of course that is not to say that any of the other “schools” of liturgical renewal are any better.  Frankly, I wonder where the scholarship of the Jungmann’s and Dix’s and Deiss’s is today.  Where are the successors of  Odo Casel and Ildefons Herwegen and Lambert Beauduin? Frankly, there is grave need for ongoing renewal of the Roman Liturgy but it cannot be undertaken until a new generation of serious scholars, scholars that have credibility beyond the narrow and intellectually thin world of contemporary Catholic “Theology.” 
     Looking through the publications of various “Reform of the Reform” advocates we can see the movement’s agenda.  This is not to say that each and every voice of the movement subscribes to each and every point, but it does give us an overall view of what this particular group would like to see the Catholic Liturgy adopt.  
      What is the Reform of the Reform all about? 

1.    The priest and people facing the same direction in the liturgy
2.    The restriction of communion to one species for all but the celebrating priest
3.    The elimination of the sign of peace
4.    The restoration of kneeling for holy communion
5.    The administration of holy communion directly on the tongue
6.    The recitation of the Canon in Latin
7.    The translation of “pro multis” to be restrictive (for many) rather than inclusive (for all)
8.    The abolition of all other Eucharistic Prayers other than Prayer I—the “canon” of the Mass in the Tridentine Liturgy
9.    The use of two scripture readings at Sunday Mass rather than three
10.The elimination of extraordinary ministers of the Eucharist at the liturgy
11.The exclusive use of men in liturgical ministries
12.The use of black or purple vestments for the funeral liturgy
13.The elimination of concelebration of the Liturgy
14.The use of “Roman” vestments –the “fiddleback” chasuable
15.The revival of suppressed or archaic customs such as the use of the maniple, the biretta, and, for prelates, the cappa magna.
     The 2000 Third Edition of the Roman Missal addressed none of these issues.  The new translation—at the insistence of Pope Benedict—does translate the “pro multis” as “for many,” but other than that doesn’t  address the “Reform of the Reform” agenda.  I don’t mean to say that the “new” missal isn’t problematic, even a step backwards, but it isn’t a threat to the substantial revisions made in the Liturgy after the Second Vatican Council.  What is a threat is what happens in many parishes where priests on their own authority begin to turn back the clock, withdrawing the chalice from the laity, eliminating the sign of peace, closing liturgical ministries to girls and women.     

The "New Translation" of the Mass II--The "Reform of the Reform"

This medieval bas-relief on the facade of Lucca

cathedral testifies to the practice of celebrating Mass

versus populum (facing the people) in the medieval

period.

Almost twenty years ago Monsignor Francis Manion, then rector of the Cathedral of the Magdalene in Salt Lake City, published an article in America Magazine on five schools of thought regarding how the Roman Catholic Liturgy should be celebrated.  It has been a very important article to track the development of various liturgical movements through the reign of John Paul II and into Pope Benedict’s pontificate.  One of the “schools of thought” then on the fringe that Monsignor Manion identified was a groups he termed(and others have used this phrase, including its adherents) “The Reform of the Reform.”  
      The “Reform of the Reform” school of liturgical renewal believes that Paul VI went far beyond the mandate of the Council Fathers in his restructuring of the Liturgy in the 1970 Roman Missal.  They insist that the Council Fathers wanted certain portions of the Mass, mostly those parts which gave the laity a direct participation of listening (the Liturgy of the Word) or singing (the various chants proper to the celebration such as the introit, the gradual, and the offertorium) put in the language of the people, while the core prayers were to stay in Latin.  They insisted-and I think they are substantially correct—that the Council Fathers had not called for the radical restructuring of the “offertory” rites, the repositioning of the altar to face the people, the multiplicity of Eucharistic (consecratory) prayers, and what they perceive to have been a deemphasizing of the role of the priest-celebrant in favor of an expanded role of the laity that creates the impression that the non-ordained in any way “celebrate” the Liturgy along with the priest or bishop.  Advocates of the “Reform of the Reform” also are quick to point out that the Council never mandated the altar to be turned so that the priest faced the people.   
      The “Reform of the Reform” has taken its energy from a book written by Monsignor Klaus Gamber (1919-1987), a German liturgical historian who wrote a book known in English as The Reform of the Roman Liturgy: Its Problems and Background.  The book is not without its historical problems and differs in substantial ways from the earlier liturgical histories written by the Jesuit Josef Jungmann and the Anglican Benedictine Dom Gregory Dix.  The Jungmann and Dix works have been surpassed by subsequent research which both validates their research and theses and builds on their work.  But we can save that for a future entry.  As I have written in some earlier entries, my chief problem is with Gamber’s thesis that priest and people have always faced in the same position—facing eastwards—during the liturgy.  While the predominance of the ad orientem (eastward positioning for prayer) seems to be true in the East (due to the influence of the synagogue tradition) and in even northern Europe, the archeological evidence is clear that it was never the custom in Rome.  Moreover, various paintings, book illustrations, bas-reliefs, and mosaics show that it was not a universal practice in the western Church even outside of Rome.  I think in particular of a medieval bas relief on the façade of the Cathedral of Lucca that clearly shows a Eucharistic celebration in which the clergy face the people over the altar.  The illustration I used on the previous blog is another example of a medieval liturgical celebration facing the people.  But again, I have done entries on the ad orientem vs versus populum debate and don’t want to get side tracked here.  (See entries for January 25, February 26, March 3, August 9, and 16, all of this year.) 
    Joseph Fessio SJ—the somewhat troublesome and seemingly troubled founder of Ignatius Press, and one-time provost of Ave Maria University emerged as the American leader of the “Reform of the Reform movement.”  Let me make it clear that Father Fessio is a priest in good standing and impeccable reputation regarding his personal life, but the hills and valleys of his career indicates a troubled soul whose personal agenda often overpowers an ability to work collaboratively or integrate his vision with other members of a team.  In other words, he would seem to be a raging megalomaniac.   I don’t mean this to be an ad hominem attack but an attempt to put the “Reform of the Reform” into the context of the actual people behind this agenda.  Father Fessio established an organization known as Adoremus to further the “Reform of the Reform” through their newsletter, speaking engagements, and various publications including a traditional hymnal.  In addition to Father Fessio, the executive committee of Adoremus also includes the traditionalist spokesperson Helen Hull Hitchcock and another, to put it kindly,  “highly eccentric” member of the clergy, Father Jerry Pokorsky of the Arlington (Virginia) Diocese.  Adoremus has done a noteworthy job of advancing the agenda of the Reform of the Reform, but the success of the movement has depended more on an admirer of Monsignor Gamber’s work, Josef Ratzinger, now Pope Benedict XVI. 
       Then-Cardinal Ratzinger had always been very clear in expressing his opinion that he perceived problems with the Novus Ordo of Paul VI and that he saw the work of Liturgical Renewal as not finished with then current edition  but in need of continuing Reform—the exact point of the “Reform of the Reform.”  While he was no supporter of the late Marcel Lefebvre, the schismatic archbishop who consecrated his own bishops in defiance of the Holy See, Ratzinger was in constant supportive dialogue with those who continued to celebrate the preconciliar rites.  His Eminence was a regular participant in liturgical conferences at the Benedictine Abbey of Fontgombault which has been a center for the preservation of the pre-conciliar rites.  At the same time, the Cardinal also wrote theological justifications for maintaining the “ad orientem” position with priest and people alike facing eastwards in the liturgy.  He also expressed deep concern about the translations of the Words of Consecration of the chalice that declared that Christ died “for all” rather than “for many.”  This is a very complex issue both theologically and linguistically and merits a blog entry or two on its own.  
      Cardinal Ratzinger wrote a preface to Gamber’s book and this energized Gamber’s disciples in the Reform of the Reform, but it was only with the election of Ratzinger as Benedict XVI in 2005 that the weight of a pope (as opposed to that of a Cardinal) shifted the movement from fringe to mainline.  Ironically, since his election, Benedict has backed away from (not renounced) his support for the ideas espoused by the Reform of the Reform.  On only one occasion that I know of has the Pope celebrated the liturgy ad apsidem, that is facing the wall.  He has never (publicly) celebrated the Tridentine Rite.  On the other hand, he has insisted that those receiving communion from him receive kneeling and directly on the tongue and these are two of the cardinal “reforms” of the Reform of the Reform.  
       The Third Edition of the Roman Missal, issued by Pope Benedict’s predecessor, Blessed John Paul II,  in 2000 has been a big disappointment to the “Reform of the Reform” as it has not addressed any of their principal concerns for a genuine “reform” of the Novus Ordo.  In as that the Mass of Paul VI remains substantially intact beneath the new translation mandated at the time of the Missal’s promulgation it is no more likely to please the “Reform of the Reform” advocates whose agenda it fails to meet than it will please those who have been happy with the Novus Ordo since it has been in place these last forty years.  It was well within Cardinal Ratzinger’s power to insist, as the Cardinal Prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, that the 2000 missal address the doctrinal concerns of the “Reform of the Reform;” his election as Pope in 2005 empowered him, if he had so chosen, to supersede the 2000 Missal with yet a fourth edition that would have mandated various items of their agenda.  Neither as Cardinal Prefect or as Pope has Benedict XVI made substantial changes in the 1970 Rite.  While I am less than happy with the new translation, it is to Benedict’s credit that he is not turning the clock back on the post-Conciliar Rite.