Gavin asks an important question below:
(D)o you think that the Pian Mass excludes the Participatio demanded by the council? And what would have to change in it for that to be possible?
From what I hear, people worshipping with the 1962 Missal are probably much farther along in terms of participatio than mainstream parishes were before the Council. In part, it may be a self-selected group: essentially the liturgy geeks of 1950 transplanted decades in the future. I can understand that. I may well have been one of them before the Council.
That said, I have heard the stories of the seminarian shushing the people when they prayed the Lord’s Prayer out loud when the 1962 Missal was in use. So I wonder if the 1962 Masses aren’t burdened by a hyper-rubricism. Maybe they think they need it.
As is true in the contemporary Roman Rite, you can’t force participatio on unwilling traditional worshippers. It must come from their own motivations. It seems obvious that to have the awareness the Council called for, the classical Latin Mass requires much more of its worshippers than the 1970 Missal. Is that a good or a bad thing? Personally, I’d prefer Catholics who find living in the world demanding and worship a fair bit easier to swallow. If the focus is on catching up in comprehension, it can be easy to miss or disengage from the message.
I think the council bishops had some sense that the world was changing. The concerns about organic change weren’t high on their minds. Not nearly as high as a higher principle: the attempted sanctification of the faithful.
We know that God is pleased by our prayer and worship. God does not require ritual perfection. The heart is seen and when the actions, intent, and caritas et amor are all aligned, perhaps smallish sins are forgiven. And if sins are forgiven, I’m sure liturgical minutiae aren’t weighing much in the balance.
That leaves us with the natural conclusion that the pastoral needs of worship override any particulars on the edge of tradition. That’s why the Mass was changed dramatically. As prayed in 1962, the Mass was out of touch with both its Patristic, Apostolic, and Jewish roots and even more out of touch with the needs of a Western society struggling to make sense of the Church’s or even God’s seeming impotence in the face of generations of misery.
Organic development is a desperate bone thrown to pacify the objectors. I doubt any traditionalists before the Council were trumpeting the value of organic development. So maybe that was a bit of movement inspired by Vatican II. If so, I doubt traditionalists can even find the mention of “organic” in Sacrosanctum concilium, or discuss the context in which it is used.
What would have to change in the 1962 Rite? Given the embrace of the vernacular in the Catholic Church, that would seem to be the direction for a wider participatio. But I’m not completely convinced. What do the readers think?
9 January 2007 at 10:19 am
Thanks for the response! I especially like your point that most of these people probably were not clamoring for organic development prior to 1969.
My opinion (more as a student of history than as someone who lived it) is that participatio rarely happened because it wasn’t expected of the people. My mother always characterizes the old Mass as, “The priest did everything and you just sat there waiting for the next Marian hymn.” Of course, I always respond with something like, “what do you mean you couldn’t understand it? You had a missal there to follow in with the translation!” From what I can figure, the attitude was probably one of “if I don’t follow along, it doesn’t matter anyway.”
And neither Vatican II nor the radical reforms following it changed that attitude among everyone. As I’ve said, the Catholics of my generation are just as bad as our grandparents at participation in the Mass, although that’s likely just a 13-30 phase of “I won’t sing in church.” And I suspect that the “reform of the reform” will really do that much either. The difference is that now there’s an emphasis (sometimes overdone) on what you can get out of Mass, and a lot of people are trying to get more out of it than they could in 1960.
I don’t know that anything would have to change about the ‘62 Mass in order to get the participatio the council called for. Perhaps it’s just a matter of more openness to encouraging participation. Of course I don’t mean “Gather Us In” or English Masses, but teaching the people the responses and making sure they know that it’s their part of the Mass. Or responsorial settings of the Introit and such. Despite what I’ve heard, the Tridentine Masses I’ve been to were not filled with young families with tons of children bravely intent on single-handedly fixing Vatican 2. It was by and large old people who ignored the fact that something was going on and just prayed the rosary for the whole Mass. I recall the last time I went, I was the only congregant singing the ordinary. And Kyriales WERE available!
So what needs to change is the attitudes of those championing the Pian Mass. They need to admit and carry out that V2 wanted liturgical changes. Although, if they were really honest they’d just admit that the Pauline Mass IS the change that was called for and work to improve that, rather than following the SSPX road of complaining and division.
10 January 2007 at 12:57 pm
If I could summarize in one word: Volume.
As in hearing the priest as he prays the 1962 Missal.
A close second would be a revised lectionary, one of the great gifts of the 1970 Missal.
12 January 2007 at 4:50 pm
One of the most interesting changes from the 1962 Mass to the modern one is the change in how Scripture readings were done.
Peter Jeffery’s “Translating Tradition”, in the midst of its (poor, IMO) arguments against LIiturgiam authenticam, has a jewel of a discussion comparing Scripture readings in the old Missal and the new. In the old, remember, everything was in one book – there was no ambo, Lectionary, etc. AND, the readings were not necessarily identical to the Vulgate – there were quite a few paraphrases, changes in wording, etc. (Of course, I would argue that, since this was all in Latin, it is irrelevant to a discussion of Liturgiam authenticam, which concerns itself with translation to modern vernacular languages.)
Now, by contrast, we have no paraphrases, but straight-up readings from a Lectionary…..which isn’t even given by Rome, but is assembled from the Ordo lectionum Missæ, which contains incipits to the readings, resp. psalm refrains, Gospel verses, and references to Scripture passages for the readings & resp. psalm.