Letter #61, 2023 Tues Feb 28: Chiron on Mass

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Letter #61, 2023 Tues Feb 28: Chiron on Mass

[2023-02-28]

[Engleză]

(Photograph by Dmitri Kessel, 1954)

Pope Paul VI with Cardinal Giacomo Lercaro (1891-1976). Lercaro served as Archbishop of Ravenna from 1947 to 1952 and of Bologna from 1952 to 1968. Pope Pius XII made him a cardinal in 1953.

Lercaro’s reputation as an outspoken critic of communism is believed to have been a contributing factor in Pius’s decision to make him the 1st Archbishop of Ravenna (31 January 1947) and then the 20th Archbishop of Bologna (19 April 1952), both among the largest Italian cities under communist rule.

During his tenure in Bologna, where the most popular political party was the Italian Communist Party, he tried to build a dialogue with the members of this party. Lercaro was also the first to popularize the theory of a “Church of the poor” that developed further in Latin America during the 1970s.

On June 20, 1966, Lercaro, the head of the Vatican Commission to prepare the text of the new Mass after the close of the Council in December, 1965, presented the first draft of the new liturgical rite to Pope Paul VI.

Early in 1968, Pope Paul VI accepted Lercaro’s resignation from the Bologna archdiocese and from his curial office as head of the liturgical commission. A book appearing later that year by a priest and historian, the Rev. Lorenzo Bedeschi, alleged that Paul, in ill health, had been persuaded by conservative members of the Curia to drop Lercaro after a sermon in which he condemned the American air war over North Vietnam as “un-Christian” and “evil.” The Vatican strongly denied the charge, which was made in the best-seller The Deposed Cardinal

“The Vatican has never given any reason for the dismissal of Archbishop Bugnini, despite the sensation it caused, and it has never denied the allegations of Masonic affiliation. (…) I very much regret that the question of Mgr Bugnini’s possible Masonic affiliation was ever raised as it tends to distract attention from the liturgical revolution which he masterminded. The important question is not whether Mgr Bugnini was a Mason but whether the manner in which Mass is celebrated in most parishes today truly raises the minds and hearts of the faithful up to almighty God more effectively than did the pre-conciliar celebrations...” —The late Michael Davies (1936-2004), in an article entitled “How the liturgy fell apart: the enigma of Archbishop Bugnini,” published in AD 2000 in June 1989. [Note: I met with Davies on several occasions in the 1990s and early 2000s, before his death in 2004.] The important point in this excerpt is that Davies in the end “very much regret[ted]” that the question of Msg Bugnini’s possible Masonic affiliation was ever raised. In other words, for Davies, the question distracted attention from the real issue… and I agree with him…
Letter #61, 2023 Tuesday, February 28: Yves Chiron on how the new Mass was made

For your possible reading at the beginning of Lent, here are two essays.

They are long.

They are somewhat repetitive.

And, they do not address the real “main question,” raised in the quotation above from the late Michael Davies, whom I knew: “Whether the manner in which Mass is celebrated in most parishes today truly raises the minds and hearts of the faithful up to almighty God more effectively than did the pre-conciliar celebrations.”

So this central question will have to be the subject of future letters.

Still, in the light of the present effort to officially “undo” the “compromise liturgical solution” promulgated by Pope Benedict XVI on July 7, 2007 in Summorum Pontificum — when Benedict defended the beauty and dignity and spiritual efficacy of the old liturgy, while also supporting the celebration of the new liturgy — it seemed fitting to put some facts and some theories “on the table,” as it were.

Experts in this question are quite familiar with everything contained in these two essays.

But the vast majority of ordinary Catholics have never heard of many, or most, of these things.

So, yes, my apologies, the articles are long, perhaps too long — but they are intended to provide those who are interested with some of the background of what happened in the matter of the liturgy, and is now happening, material for reflection.

The first essay (#1) was originally a chapter in a quite well-researched and fair 2020 biography of Monsignor Annibale Bugnini by French Catholic scholar Yves Chiron entitled Annibale Bugnini: Reformer of the Liturgy, Angelico Press, 2020, link). The essay was then published separately as an essay on July 22, 2021, entitled “How the Novus Ordo Mass was made.” (link)

The important thing one discovers in this essay is that the entire process of revising the Mass was “inorganic,” in the sense that it occurred in offices in Rome and even “over a terrace table” — quite literally, in one instance, over a restaurant terrace table in Trastevere, when a text needed to be submitted the next morning, and the authors stayed up late to complete it.

Chiron cites Fr. Louis Bouyer, who was drafting the Second Eucharistic Prayer in the new liturgy, as saying: “I cannot reread that improbable composition without recalling the Trastevere café terrace where we had to put the finishing touches to our assignment in order to show up with it at the Bronze Gate by the time our masters had set!”

So if there is one point I would propose for memory it is this: that the old rite grew up over centuries, and was the result of centuries; the new rite grew up over months, and parts of it were composed on a café terrace in Trastevere.

And because Pope Benedict knew this, he broke his pontificate on defending the old liturgy.

The second essay (#2) is by the late Michael Davies, a British convert to Catholicism, who made the study of the transition from the old to the new liturgy a central investigative question of his life. —RM

***

P.S. We have been selling subscriptions to Inside the Vatican magazine for several months at a reduced price of $20 per year in honor of our 30th year of publication. We will continue this rate for just one more month, then return to the regular price of $49.95 per year. We would love to gain new subscribers, of course, and at $20, perhaps some may feel, “why not?” and take out a subscription. After March 31, the offer will no longer be available… Click here to take out subscriptions at this reduced rate for friends, family members and anyone you think might like to receive the magazine.

P.P.S. Here is a link to our Special Edition on Mary, which many are saying is “the best issue of your magazine you ever made.” This beautiful issue about Mary, on special high-quality paper, is suitable for display on a coffee table, and may come to be regarded as a collector’s item (link)

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(#1) How the Novus Ordo Mass Was Made (link)

by Yves Chiron

July 22, 2021

The incremental Vatican II reforms brought about by the September 1964 and May 1967 Instructions opened the way to a general reform of the Mass.

They lay the groundwork for it in two transitional phases, as it were.

A completely new rite of the Mass was slated for preparation from the very beginning of the Consilium [Council for the Implementation of the Constitution on the Sacred Liturgy].

During the fifth plenary session in April 1965 (20 members and 41 experts were in attendance), the possibility of modifying the Canon of the Mass was brought up.

As Archbishop (Annibale) Bugnini (link, 1912-1982) himself was later to admit, however, a very broad majority of members and consultors was of the opinion that this “venerable document” was not to be touched.

The first complete draft of a new Ordo Missae was ready for the sixth plenary session (October 18–26, 1965).

Msgr. Wagner, the relator for the tenth group, presented it.

It was the occasion for two “experimentations” that took place in the chapel of the “Maria Bambina” Institute: the first in Italian on October 20, the second in French on October 22 [in 1965].

The two celebrations of this “normative” Mass, as it was called, took place behind closed doors in the presence of Consilium members, who were then able to share their impressions in one of the Institute’s meeting rooms.

Paul VI had some concerns regarding this reform of the Ordo Missae.

On three different occasions (October 25, 1965, December 10, 1965, and March 7, 1966), he had his Secretary of State, Cardinal (Amleto Giovanni) Cicognani (1883-1973) address official letters to Cardinal(Giacomo) Lercaro (link, 1891-1976) to recommend prudence and reserving to the Holy See any decision involving “any possible changes proposed for the rite of celebration of the divine sacrifice.”

On June 20, 1966, the revised first draft of the new Mass was presented to Paul VI by Cardinal Lercaro.

The pope wanted two important changes:

the present anaphora [the Roman Canon] is to be left untouched; two or three other anaphoras should be composed, or sought in existing texts, that could be used during certain defined seasons.
the Kyrie should be retained when the Gloria is not said; when the liturgy prescribes the Gloria, however, the Kyrie should be replaced with another penitential prayer.

Consequently, a Consilium subcommission prepared three new anaphoras (or Eucharistic Prayers). Two were new compositions while the third (which became the second Eucharistic Prayer in the new Ordo Missae) was inspired by the anaphora of Saint Hippolytus.

Archbishop Bugnini was later to acknowledge that one of these new Eucharistic Prayers (which became the fourth Eucharistic Prayer) was put together in haste, “a kind of forced labor.”

A consultor on that subcommission, Fr (Louis) Bouyer, gave the same description (not without humor and irony) for the composition of the second Eucharistic Prayer that he prepared with Dom Botte, the famous Hippolytus specialist.

He had to compose it posthaste, within a twenty-four-hour period:

Between the indiscriminately archeologizing fanatics who wanted to banish the Sanctus and the intercessions from the Eucharistic Prayer by taking Hippolytus’s Eucharist as is, and those others who could not have cared less about his alleged Apostolic Tradition and wanted a slapdash Mass, Dom Botte and I were commissioned to patch up its text with a view to inserting these elements, which are certainly quite ancient—by the next morning! Luckily, I discovered, if not in a text by Hippolytus himself certainly in one in his style, a felicitous formula on the Holy Ghost that could provide a transition of the Vere Sanctus type to the short epiclesis. For his part Botte produced an intercession worthier of Paul Reboux’s “In the manner of…” than of his actual scholarship. Still, I cannot reread that improbable composition without recalling the Trastevere café terrace where we had to put the finishing touches to our assignment in order to show up with it at the Bronze Gate by the time our masters had set!

Nine new Prefaces were composed at this time, of which eight were retained.

Fr Bouyer sees them in a more positive light: “The only element undeserving of criticism in this new missal was the enrichment it received, thanks particularly to the restoration of a good number of splendid prefaces taken over from ancient sacramentaries.”

An Experimental Mass at the Synod of 1967

The new Mass in its completed structure was presented to some 180 cardinals and bishops in a Synod at the Vatican in 1967. This first postconciliar Synod was to deal with several topics: the revision of the code of canon law, doctrinal questions, and the liturgical reform. On October 21, Cardinal Lercaro presented the assembled cardinals and bishops with a report describing the new structure of the Mass and the changes introduced into it, as well as the reform of the Divine Office. On October 24, Fr Bugnini celebrated a “normative” Mass before the Synod Fathers in the Sistine chapel. Paul VI did not attend this celebration because of an “indisposition,” however.

Besides the changes that were already in force since the 1964 and 1967 Instructions (Mass celebrated facing the people in Italian including the Canon, fewer genuflections and signs of the cross, etc.), the “normative” Mass that Fr Bugnini celebrated with a large choir added other new elements: a longer Liturgy of the Word (three readings total), a transformed Offertory, a new Eucharistic Prayer (the third), and a great number of hymns.

During the four general congregations devoted to the liturgy (October 21–25), cardinals and bishops made many comments on this “normative” Mass and on the liturgical reform in general.

All told, sixty-three cardinals, bishops, and religious superiors general commented on the subject and a further nineteen submitted written comments. There was a diversity of opinion. “Of sixty-three orators,” Fr Caprile reported, “thirty-six explicitly expressed, in the warmest, most enthusiastic, and unreserved terms,” their agreement with the reform underway and its results. Some bishops even wanted further changes, such as the possibility of receiving communion in the hand, that of using ordinary bread for communion, and the preparation of a specific Mass for youth, etc.

Yet the general tone was more prudent, if not reserved or even critical. The English-speaking bishops met at the English College to define a common position on the “normative” Mass. On October 25, at the Synod, Cardinal Heenan, Archbishop of Westminster, took the floor to accuse the Consilium of technicism and intellectualism and to blame it for lacking pastoral sense. More significant yet, in the sense that they came from the highest authority in the Church after the pope, were the words of Cardinal Cicognani, Secretary of State, who on the very same day asked for an end to liturgical changes “lest the faithful be confused.”

Twice during the debates on the liturgy, the participants were invited to express their opinion through a vote. On October 25, they answered four questions that Paul VI had specifically posed: on the three new Eucharistic Prayers, on two changes in the formula of consecration, and on the possibility of replacing the Niceno-Constantinopolitan creed with the Apostles’ Creed. Eight more questions were posed on October 27, particularly on the normative Mass and on the Divine Office draft.

Leaving aside a detailed analysis of these twelve votes, it is noteworthy that for half of them (two out of the pope’s four questions and four out of eight of the remainder), the required two-thirds majority was not reached. There were 187 voters; the two-thirds majority was therefore 124. For some of the votes, the tally was far from it, with the non placet (nays) and placet juxta modum (approval on condition of modifications) having a broad margin. For example, regarding the suppression of the phrase Mysterium fidei in the consecration formula, there were only 93 placet. More spectacular yet was the refusal to give unreserved approval to the general structure of the normative Mass: 71 placet; 43 non placet; 62 placet juxta modum; 4 abstentions.

A few months later Fr Bugnini acknowledged to Consilium consultors and members that “the response of the bishops was not unanimous. The votes in the Synod went to some extent contrary to what the Consilium wanted [contro il ‘Consilium’].”

Lercaro’s “Destitution”

This public disavowal of the Consilium’s work was one of the causes that led to Cardinal Lercaro’s destitution.

In August 1966, Cardinal Lercaro, who was reaching the age limit of 75 imposed on bishops and curial officials, had presented his resignation to the pope.

Paul VI had asked him to continue in his functions as both archbishop of Bologna and president of the Consilium.

Nevertheless, Paul VI named one of his close collaborators, Msgr. Poma, as coadjutor in the archdiocese of Bologna in June 1967.

Then, unexpectedly for the cardinal, Paul VI wrote to Lercaro on January 9, 1968 to tell him that he accepted his resignation from the Consilium.

The pope sent him a representative on the following 27th, whose mission was to secure the cardinal archbishop’s resignation [from the See of Bologna], which the latter, with a heavy heart, submitted on February 12.

One of Lercaro’s close collaborators, Don Lorenzo Bedeschi, presented this double resignation as a “destitution.”

History, in the main, has accepted this view.

Diverse reasons led to this double destitution: Cardinal Lercaro’s controversial pastoral policies in Bologna, his links to the Communist municipality (he agreed to being made an “honorary citizen”), his appeal against American bombing in Vietnam.

Yet his management of the liturgical reform was also questioned.

In 1967 the backlash linked to Casini’s pamphlet and the criticism leveled at the “normative” Mass had brought to light the opposition to the work of the Consilium, whose president he had been since 1964.

One may therefore say that Paul VI attempted to regain control of the liturgical reform in early 1968.

Just as he officially accepted the resignation of the Consilium president, he simultaneously asked Cardinal Larraona to resign from the Congregation of Rites.

On the same day Cardinal Gut, a Benedictine monk who was already a Consilium member, became its president as well the new prefect of the Congregation of Rites.

This double nomination anticipated the fusion of the two organisms, which would occur the following year.

Paul VI still had full confidence in Bugnini, however.

During the audience that followed Lercaro’s resignation, Paul VI told Bugnini: “Now you alone are left. I urge you to be very patient and very prudent. I assure you once again of my complete confidence.”

Fr Bugnini answered: “Holy Father, the reform will continue as long as Your Holiness retains this confidence. As soon as it lessens, the reform will come to a halt.”

Towards the “New Mass”

The Consilium put the “new Mass” project, which had been roundly criticized at the October 1967 Synod, back on the drawing board. We have seen that Paul VI had been unable to attend the first experiment of the “normative” Mass.

A report prepared under Fr Bugnini’s direction had been presented to him on December 11, 1967.

During an audience on January 4, 1968, he asked Fr Bugnini to organize three new “experimental” celebrations, to take place in his presence in the Matilda chapel on the second floor of the Apostolic Palace.

These three “normative” Masses were all celebrated in the late afternoon by one of Bugnini’s two closest collaborators, each with a different Eucharistic prayer, but in different modes of celebration: on January 11, a read Mass with hymns celebrated by Fr Carlo Braga; on January 12, an “entirely read Mass with participation of the faithful” celebrated by Fr Gottardo Pasqualetti; and on January 13, a sung Mass, once again celebrated by Fr Braga.

Each of the celebrations was attended by about thirty people besides the pope: the cardinal Secretary of State, different members of the Curia, several members of the Consilium, two religious women, and four laymen (two men and two women).

These three experimental celebrations in the presence of the pope presented a few differences with the “normative” Mass that had been celebrated before the Synod a few months earlier, in particular by the introduction of a “Sign of Peace” that all in attendance exchanged after the instruction “Give each other the Peace.”

After each of the Masses, the pope welcomed some of the participants along with Fr Bugnini in his private library to share impressions and comments on what had been done in the celebration.

On the following January 22, Paul VI provided his own written comments during an audience he granted to Fr Bugnini.

The pope made seven suggestions, asking in particular that the Offertory should be given more prominence since it “should be the part of the Mass in which . . . [the faithful’s] activity is more direct and obvious.”

He also asked that the expression Mysterium fidei should be maintained at the end of the formula of consecration, “as a concluding acclamation of the celebrant, to be repeated by the faithful” and that the triple Agnus Dei invocation should be retained.

Paul VI once again echoed some “authoritative persons” who asked that the last Gospel at the end of Mass (the prologue of the Gospel according to St. John) should be restored. Lastly, he asked that “the words of consecration . . . not be recited simply as a narrative but with the special, conscious emphasis given them by a celebrant who knows he is speaking and acting ‘in the person of Christ’.”

Also on January 22, Paul VI asked that the schema of the new Mass be sent, after revision, to all the Curia dicastery heads, a number of whom had expressed reservations or criticisms of the Synod “normative” Mass.

“We must win them over and make allies of them,” the pope explicitly said, even if this entailed the argument from authority: “You saw, didn’t you, what happened when St. Joseph’s name was introduced into the Canon? First, everyone was against it. Then one fine morning Pope John decided to insert it and made this known; then everyone applauded, even those who had said they were opposed to it.”

The following May 23, Cardinal Gut, prefect of the Congregation of Rites and president of the Consilium, published a decree authorizing the use of the three new Eucharistic Prayers and of eight new Prefaces. They could be used starting on August 15, 1968.

Once again, the traditional rite of the Mass was emended on important points before the new rite was completed and promulgated.

On June 2, 1968, the revised draft of the new Ordo Missae was sent, as Paul VI had intended, to fourteen curial cardinals (Congregation prefects and Secretariat presidents). Fr. Bugnini was to report that “of the fourteen cardinals involved, two did not reply, seven sent observations, and five said simply that they had no remarks to make or were ‘very pleased’ with the schema.”

It is noteworthy that the Institutio Generalis Missalis Romani (the “General Instruction of the Roman Missal”), which was to preface the new Ordo Missae, was not sent to these cardinals, not even to the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith.

This Institutio, which was made up of eight chapters and put together by a study group directed by Fr Carlo Braga, presented itself as “at once [a] doctrinal, pastoral, and rubrical” treatment of the new Mass. Certain articles of this Institutio would come under criticism, as we shall see.

Paul VI had the revised draft and the cardinals’ responses examined by two of his close collaborators, Msgr. Carlo Colombo, his private theologian, and Bishop Manziana of Crema.

Then he read and reread the draft himself, inserting marginal notes and underscoring the text in red and blue pencil, though without seeking to impose his views.

On September 22, 1968, he gave the annotated draft back to Fr. Bugnini with the following written remark: “I ask you to take account of these observations, exercising a free and carefully weighed judgment.”

Sursa: www.InsideTheVatican.com

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