Vatican II on liturgical preservation

Reposted from Feb 2014. The 'good bits' (from a conservative point of view) in Vatican II on the liturgy were completely without force during the reform which followed it. As Michael Davies wrote somewhre, the only passages in official documents which are of any real importance are those which allow what was previously forbidden, or forbid what was previously allowed. That's a lesson a lot of conservatives have been slow to learn.

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Tenebrae: Solemn Offices of Holy Week, abolished in the Ordinary Form after Vatican II

This is what the Second Vatican Council  said about the Seasons of the liturgical calendar. (Sacrosantum Concilium 170)

The liturgical year is to be revised so that the traditional customs and discipline of the sacred seasons shall be preserved or restored to suit the conditions of modern times; their specific character is to be retained, so that they duly nourish the piety of the faithful who celebrate the mysteries of Christian redemption, and above all the paschal mystery.

Not only is there no mandate to abolish the Season of Septuagesima, but it is clearly ruled out. Both because all the seasons are to be 'preserved or restored', and you can't preserve or restore something by annihilating it, and because this applied a fortiori to Septuagesima since it is part of the preparation for 'the Paschal Mystery', Easter, to which this passage (rightly) accords a special importance.

If you accept Vatican II, you'd better get over to Mass celebrated in the Extraordinary Form during this season. Because in the Ordinary Form it does not exist.

But we can say the same about a number of things. Take Latin. Here is Sacrosanctum Concilium again, section 36.

Particular law remaining in force, the use of the Latin language is to be preserved in the Latin rites.

You can't 'preserve' a thing by abolishing it. If you want to be faithful to the Council, you'd better attend a Mass in Latin. That will, sadly, be almost impossible in the Ordinary Form, so it had better be the Extraordinary Form.

Isn't this word 'preserve' interesting? Talking of rites in general, Sacrosanctum Concilium declares (para 4)

Lastly, in faithful obedience to tradition, the sacred Council declares that holy Mother Church holds all lawfully acknowledged rites to be of equal right and dignity; that she wishes to preserve them in the future and to foster them in every way.

Following the Council, the Dominican Order effectively forbade the Domincan Rite, a situation which only changed with Summorum Pontificum in 2007. Forbidding something, however, is not a way of preserving and fostering.

The Dominican Rite: effectively suppressed after the Council

Of course the Council did mandate a liturgical reform. It says (50)

For this purpose the rites are to be simplified, due care being taken to preserve their substance;

Again, it is impossible to preserve the substance of a rite by abolishing it. But that is what happened to the Prayers at the Foot of the Altar and the Last Gospel. The ancient Offertory Prayers were also removed, to be replaced with new ones with a markedly different 'substance'. They were not 'preserved'.

Again:

114. The treasure of sacred music is to be preserved and fostered with great care. 

Now music continued to exist after the Reform, but the process cannot be described as one of preservation. What existed before - Gregorian Chant and Sacred Polyphony - was destroyed, with so few exceptions that, at its low ebb, they could be counted on the fingers of one hand, as far as the Ordinary Form is concerned.

Chant and Polyphony: for practical purposes they ceased to exist in the Ordinary Form

How about sacred art? Para 123:

Thus, in the course of the centuries, she has brought into being a treasury of art which must be very carefully preserved.

Again, 129:

In consequence they [clerics] will be able to appreciate and preserve the Church's venerable monuments, and be in a position to aid, by good advice, artists who are engaged in producing works of art.

To labour the point, art and monuments cannot be preserved by being destroyed. If it means anything, this clause means that what happened to St Chad's Cathedral, Birmingham, and to a million other churches around the world was wrong.

What are those who defend the liturgical reform to say about these passages? They can point out that Sacrosanctum Concilium is not infallible, since the only things in a General Council which are infallible are the anathemas (lists of condemned propositions which are found in every other General Council in the history of the Church, but which the Fathers of Vatican II eschewed).

They can point out that the practical decisions made in the course of a liturgical reform are prudential, and the guidelines given by the Council are generally prudential, and that applying them is prudential: in short, it is impossible to draw a simple line from doctrine to what actually happened in the reform.

They can point out that, as far as the law of the Church is concerned, the Pope has the authority to promulgate new rites, and the Council was actually not strictly necessary.

Defenders of the reform very seldom make these points, however: they prefer to ignore the problem. It is left to me to defend Pope Paul VI from the charge of heresy implicitly levelled against him by a liberal who thinks that deviations from Vatican II are incompatible with the Faith (or thinks that 'conservative' Catholics should think so).

The reason is simple: they don't want to shatter the illusion that those attached to the Traditional Mass are being wickedly disloyal to Vatican II, and have placed themselves irretrievably in the wrong. But if Traditionalists have done this, the reformers of the liturgy, and their supporters, have done it with knobs on.

Ruins of the Priory at Walsingham, visited by LMS pilgrims. From the point of view of
'preserving' sacred art, many Catholic churches haven't done much better since the Council.

Video: what is Septuagesima?

And what's the point of retaining it in the Extraordinary Form?

It seems a good moment to re-post this video. See also the Postioin Paper on Septuagesima, Vigils and Octaves, here.

 

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FIUV Position Paper on Septuagesima, Vigils, and Octaves

Over on Rorate Caeli I am today publishing the 20th of the series of short briefings, 'Position Papers', on aspects of the Extraordinary Form, which I have been coordinating for the Foederatio Internationalis Una Voce for the last two years. Go over there to read it. See all the Position Papers here.

In this post I will take the opportunity to say one or two other things about the issue addressed. It is a problem, in a practical way, for parishes where both the Traditional, Vetus Ordo and the reformed, Novus Ordo are celebrated, in that on a Sunday, between Masses, the liturgical colour has to be changed on the altar frontal, tabernacle veil and anything else using the colour of the season, three Sundays in a row, between green and violet. This is hardly the biggest problem facing the Church today, but it is an indication of a particular kind of crashing of gears which results from the lack of continuity of the new Mass with the old. It also happens here and there in the liturgical year when feast days have been moved or abolished. But there is something particularly awkward about a parish proposing a season of penance in one Mass on a Sunday, and carrying on as normal for the other Masses on the same day.

What is Septuagesima? Why was it abolished?

And what's the point of retaining it in the Extraordinary Form?

 

The video format is something which we at the Latin Mass Society very much want to develop, as a tool for explaining issues connected with the TLM as well as to promote our events. This should be the first of many.

Get ready for Lent!

The Season of Septuagesima is 'pre-Lent': a preparation for Lent, when the liturgical colour is purple, and the Gloria and Alleluia are not sung.

So for those who follow the Extraordinary Form, yesterday was Septugesima Sunday. The Epistle was St Paul telling us how he brought his body into subjection by mortifying it, and the Gospel was the Parable of the Labourers in the Vineyard, when we, the idle labourers, are urged to go to work in the Lord's Vineyard even though it is the 'eleventh hour'; we may still hope, from God's pure generosity, for the pay due for a full day's work: that is, we can still squeak into heaven. We need to get ready for Lent.

What were they thinking of, when the reformers abolished the season of Septuagesima? Looking it up in Bugnini's massive 'The Reform of the Roman Liturgy' (p319), the answer seems to be 'nothing'. This is what he says:

'The Septuagesima season is suppressed, the the three Sundays making it up become Sundays of Ordinary Time.'

That's it.

One could speculate that the rationale was connected with the general dislike of 'negative' elements in the liturgy, such as penance. Certainly, the yesterday's Collect won't have endeared itself to Bugnini:

O LORD, we beseech thee favourably to hear the prayers of thy people; that we, who are justly punished for our offences, may be mercifully delivered by thy goodness, for the glory of thy Name; through Jesus Christ our Saviour, who liveth and reigneth with thee and the Holy Ghost, ever one God, world without end. Amen.

Human Sin leads to suffering, including the suffering of the innocent, but we are delivered by God's Grace. This is the dogmatic teaching and the spiritual guidance of the Church. We need to get our heads around this in time for Lent, and prepare ourselves for some penance. We can all think of thinks we should be sorry for, and things for which we need to beseech God's mercy. Don't present yourself for the ash of Ash Wednesday without thinking about it first.

Ordinariate gets its own liturgical calendar

The Ordinariate of the USA has got its own calendar approved: dowload it here. This goes far beyond a few local feasts one might find in a diocesan calendar. It is a serious attempt to maintain their patrimony. And funnily enough, that turns out to be a the Catholic patrimony.

1. As in England, Ordinary Time will no longer be referred to, being replaced by Sundays after Epiphany or Sundays after Trinity, thus ensuring the whole liturgical year is now explicitly anchored and referenced to the mysteries of salvation.
2. The three “-gesima” Sundays are restored.
3. Rogation days before Ascension, and the Ember days in the four seasons of the year are restored.
4. The Octave of Pentecost is restored, to be marked properly except for the readings which will be of the particular weekday.

The recognition of the value of the Season of Septuagesima, Rogation Days and so on by the Holy See in this official way, for a brand new initiative, is enormously significant. If it has value for the Ordinariate, then obviously it has value in the context of the Traditional Mass.

I understand the English Ordinariate has a very similar calendar, but you can't download it as far as I can find.

H-t Fr Hugh.

Season of Septuagesima

The abolition of the Season of Septuagesima in the revised calendar not only removes a welcome opporunity to prepare for Lent, but creates a problem for churches where both the old and the new Mass are celebrated. In the Oxford Oratory (pictured), the celebrant is vested in purple (for Quinquagesima Sunday), while the altar and tabernacle are in green for an 'Ordinary Sunday of the Year'.