Think Catholic, Act Locally
SINCE late
last year important events have been taking place within the Church which
traditional Mass communities throughout the world have been watching
attentively. These have been a new series of negotiations between Rome and the
movement founded by the late Archbishop Lefebvre, the Society of St Pius X (SSPX).
For now these
discussions have stalled, at high official levels at least, though there are
indications of continuing, low level, informal contacts.
One of the key
issues seems to have been a universal permission to all priests of the Latin
rite to use the traditional Missal: something which the SSPX regards as a
sine qua no but to which Rome has replied with a non placet.
What is
interesting about this stalemate is that Rome has not objected "in
principle" to a universal permission.
Indeed,
according to our sources, Rome has agreed that there is no "in principle”
objection to
such a permission. The only obstacle is a political one: how to manage so sharp
a change in the liturgical ‘line’ without upsetting the mass of bishops: men
who, in good faith and out of obedience to Rome, have become, for the most part,
aiders and abettors of liturgical disintegration.
End
Game
Yes, it is a
problem; and it would be inhuman not to feel the predicament in which the Roman
officials find themselves. For if there is no "in principal”
objection to a
universal permission for the priests of the Western Catholic Church to return to
its liturgical traditions, then one can hardly argue that the new forms of
public prayer are a work of the Holy Spirit to which all Catholics are bound.
Far from it. The appositely styled "New Order" is a thing of human
artifice, conceived in hostility to the experience of Catholic history, built on
the basis of abstract principles, imposed arbitrarily, and maintained in the
face of manifest failure by appeal to, and enforcement of, obedience pure and
simple. To admit, then, that there is no "in principle”
objection to a
universal permission to celebrate the traditional liturgy, is to say, in the
most diplomatically understated terms, that "the game is up ... though
where we go from here ...”
Oriens agrees
... and where we go from here is no certain matter. But we do take a position so
far as preservation of the classical liturgy is concerned: let there be no
aggiornamento in the usages which apply, in traditional Mass communities, to the
1962 Missal. During the past several months there has been a waxing and waning
of hints from the Rome that some such provision would have to be made.
These
suggestions seemed odd given that Rome was trying, at the same time, to reach a
compact with the SSPX. It is an indication that Roman policy on these questions
is uncoordinated and unsettled.
Thanks, perhaps,
to the very existence of the SSPX, and to the need to make a place for them in
their own home, as well as to some blunt speech from the International
Federation of Una Voce and elsewhere, the signals about ‘updating’ the 1962
missal have faded away.
As for Oriens,
it would object to any attempt to introduce New Order usages into traditional
Catholic communities.
These –
whether they are such as communion-in-the-hand, or the use of extraordinary
ministers, or the replacement of texts by others from the new missal – are
contrary to the spirit of the traditional liturgy and alien to the spiritual
culture of Catholics who have not lost (or who are recovering) their sense of
history and identity. Were such things to be decreed, it would demonstrate at
least an inability to comprehend the sentiments of traditional Catholics. And if
Roman officials cannot understand their own people, who are patently faithful to
the Holy See, what confidence could a Lefebvrist, or one of our Orthodox
brethren, have that his Roman interlocutors genuinely respect his way of living
and praying the Christian life?
Sources
of Reform
Having said that, Oriens does not subscribe to the view that
the 1962 missal represents the acme of the Western liturgical tradition. It is
but the latest, authentic manifestation of it. To be such does not exclude the
possibility of reform.
Indeed,
experience of the 1962 Missal, when set
against the whole, richly varied historical pattern of the Western liturgy,
indicates some clear directions for reform.
But these do not lie along
the liberal progressivist road, along the path trod by those who have made
public prayer in the Church what it is today, or who claim for it virtues and
successes which it has not had.
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'Rome’s job is not to lead reforms, but to bless those that others make.' |
The sources for reform lie
in the liturgical experience of the pre-Reformation Church. There is not the
space to essay here the character of the pre-Reformation Western liturgy, nor to
state in full how the 1962 missal might benefit from recontact with those
sources. This is a work of years. We can, however, give some (necessarily
incomplete) indications of how we could begin to reacquire the lost riches of
the Western liturgy and to deal with some new issues that have arisen.
• For a start, the twelve
Prophecies could be restored, at least as an option, to the Easter Vigil. These
survived intact down to the infelicitous liturgical reforms of Pope Pius XII –
an exercise in which the destructive influence of Mons. Bugnini was already at
work.
• Also, some of the
Sequences so severely pruned from the liturgy during the reform of Pope Pius V
could be selectively restored, say, to all First Class Feasts.
• New Mass texts might be
composed for feasts of newly canonised saints where the worthy celebration of
these cannot be accommodated within the existing provisions of the 1962 Missal.
• And, finally, there is a
question of whether new Mass texts might be composed for, and made proper to,
days treated as ferial in the 1962 calendar.
The important point is, that
such changes should not be decreed from above and imposed on those below.
Developments in the
traditional liturgy (if there are to be any at all) should take place ad
experimentum, with the permission of the local bishop, and the agreement of
particular communities concerned.
Indeed, some communities
might not wish for any such changes and this should be respected without
question.
Liturgical reform, as recent
tragic history has confirmed, does not come, ready made, from on high. It grows
up from within local communities deeply attached to the forms and to the texts
in which their worship is expressed. And the reform spreads if other
communities, under their relevant authorities, adopt changes in liturgical use
made elsewhere for the better. This is what "organic development"
means.
It is not, then, Rome’s principal business to reform liturgy or, for that matter, the Church at large. Neither the Church’s constitution, nor its history, demands it. Rome’s job is to let others instigate the reforms and to bless them if, and when, they bear fruit. If we can transpose a dictum used among the environmental activists, we should start to "Think Catholic, Act Locally".
