Even eight years after the Supreme Pontiff publicly decreed that the Latin rites of the Roman Church must be celebrated for all those who desire them, the mass of regularly practising Catholics know little or nothing of the fact. The policy pursued by many bishops is that the Catholic people should be preserved in their ignorance. It is better that they should believe that the 'old Mass' has been 'banned'. Oriens writer Antoni Milan provides this special briefing.
If Catholics are kept in the dark about the public law-making of the Holy See, still less are they likely to know about the policy advice made to the Pope by his official advisers in the course of developing that legislation - the Ecclesia Dei decree of July 2, 1988.
And yet, a 1986 Commission of Cardinals, which played a crucial role in formulating the Ecclesia Dei policy, is in some ways more significant than the Ecclesia Dei decree itself. What then was the 1986 Commission of Cardinals and what did it recommend?
The Indult problem
We need to go back to the indult in favour of the traditional Mass (Quattor Abhinc Annos) issued on October 3, 1984. A mix of benevolent sentiment and harsh conditions, the indult was intended to address the fact that there were significant numbers of Catholics who were alienated from the new liturgy and deeply attached to the old.
It was clear, however, that the indult was hardly adequate. The Pope must have been aware that his generous impulse to address the needs of traditional Catholics had been thwarted by the strait-jacket of restrictions formulated by the Congregation for Divine Worship. He must also have been aware that the indult was irrelevant to solving the "problems" posed by Archbishop Lefebvre and his movement. For the indult to work required that Catholics seek permission from bishops to benefit from its measures and that bishops accede to these requests. But what was to be done about those Catholics who had no intention of requesting from bishops permission to continue practicing the immemorial custom of Catholic worship - a custom which neither bishops nor Popes have the right to suppress? A much more serious approach to addressing the problem was required. So a Commission of nine Cardinals was appointed in 1986 to advise.
The big questions
Neither the mandate nor the recommendations made by this Commission have ever been officially made public. However, thanks to highly reliable intelligence provided by Dr Eric de Saventhem, former head of Una Voce International, we do have a clear picture of the task with which the Commission was charged and how it advised the Pope.
The Commission was directed to examine two very significant questions:
* Did Pope Paul VI authorise the bishops to forbid the celebration of the traditional Mass? and
* Does the priest have the right to celebrate the traditional Mass in public and in private without restriction, even against the will of his bishop?
The Commission was, apparently, also mandated to advise the Pontiff, if their answers were favourable to the traditional liturgy, how to accommodate it within the post-conciliar regime. The Commission seems to have completed its work in late 1986.
In reply to the first question, the Commission was unanimous that Pope Paul VI never gave bishops authority to forbid celebration of the traditional Mass.
To the second question, the Commission replied that a priest cannot be obligated to celebrate the new rite of the Mass and that bishops cannot forbid or place restrictions upon the celebration of the traditional Mass, whether in private or in public.
The Norms
The Cardinals then went on to lay down six 'norms' to provide for the co-existence of the traditional with the new liturgy. These were:
1. Due honour should be accorded to the Latin language. Bishops should thus take care that at least one Mass in Latin be celebrated in their dioceses on Sundays and Holydays. Nonetheless, the Lessons and Gospel may be read in the vernacular.
2. For their private Masses all priests may always use the Latin language.
3. For any Mass celebrated in Latin, with or without a congregation, the celebrant has the right of freely choosing between the Missal of Paul VI (1970) or that of John XXIII (1962).
4. If the celebrant chooses the Missal of Paul VI, he is to observe the rubrics of that Missal.
5. If the celebrant chooses the Missal of John XXIII, he shall follow the rubrics of that Missal, but he may
* use either Latin or the vernacular for the readings and
* select prefaces and propers from the Missal of Paul VI and introduce prayers of the faithful.
6. The liturgical calendar for the feasts shall be that of the Missal
chosen by the celebrant.
Indifference to tradition
No comment is required on what the Commission's findings mean for the
liturgical 'reform'.
In response to them waves of bishops, throughout the spring of 1987, began descending upon Rome in protest, alerted, it has been said, by one of the key members of the Commission, the Secretary of State, Cardinal Agostino Casaroli.
The Pope, as we know, is devoted to "collegiality" - which today means allowing a generation of bishops largely indifferent to Catholic tradition to dictate pastoral policy. In the face of these protests, then, the 1986 Norms were shelved, but not forgotten. They were to emerge again with the 1988 promulgation of the Ecclesia Dei decree.
No mention of the Norms was made in Ecclesia Dei. In fact, the decree gives little guidance as to how its principles are to be carried into effect, except that it was to be done "widely and generously".
The flesh was put on these bones with the establishment of the Pontifical Commission Ecclesia Dei which was empowered within the faculty of granting "to all who seek it the use of the Roman Missal according to the 1962 edition and according to the norms proposed in December 1986 by the Commission of Cardinals constituted for this purpose..."
In other words, what the Pope had in mind was that the Ecclesia Dei Commission would operate in such a way as to implement the 1986 Norms.
It was not, however, to be. On May 16, 1989, there was a major row in the Vatican, apparently in the presence of the Pope, with Cardinal Ratzinger and Cardinal Mayer (president of the Ecclesia Dei Commission) on one side and with key representatives of the European episcopal conferences on the other.
It is said that Cardinal Hume of England played a leading role in organising this second major descent upon Rome of liturgically outraged bishops. The powers of the Commission (Click here for full text of the Commission's powers), represented, it was claimed, the death of collegiality and the rebirth of Roman centralism. No doubt, it was also said, that the powers of the Commission spelt the end of the liturgical reform.
The collegiality card
While many bishops have scant regard for Roman authority, they need it to sustain the present liturgical dispensation. They know that nothing holds together the liturgical reform other than the willingness of Rome to support it. Should that willingness falter, the whole thing would collapse.
The bishops appreciate that, short of creating a new congregationalist style of church, the liturgical revolution cannot survive without a cadre of priests. The problem is that the future generation of priests is already much more self-conscious in its orthodoxy than the present generation of bishops, much more attached to the Holy See, and much more attracted by traditional Catholic ways of life and worship. If Rome does not hold, then the future priests and seminarians will abandon the reform. So when Pontifex wobbles, the bishops play the collegiality card.
Danger UXB!
So, for the second time, the 1986 Norms were shelved and the Ecclesia Dei Commission became something of a lame duck - though, for all that, one which has waddled on to notch up some surprising achievements. For very good reasons, then, the recommendations of the December 1986 Commission of Cardinals lie buried in the Vatican's deepest archives: an unexploded bomb too dangerous to disinter. The Pope fears to provoke a revolt. The bishops who played the key roles in these episodes fear the disintegration of their carefully crafted, world-accommodating church. And neither side wants traditional Catholics to make life more dangerous by insisting that Rome dig this blockbuster out.
Sometime, however, someone is going to have to do the digging. Perhaps the time is not yet ripe. But a day will come when it is.
