www.byzcath.org Forums News & Events Church News Fr Robert Taft says a history lesson is needed

Cardinal Ratzinger on the Novus Ordo: �After the Council� in place of the liturgy as the fruit of organic development came fabricated liturgy. We abandoned the organic, living process of growth and development over centuries, and replaced it, as in a manufacturing process, with a fabrication, a banal on-the-spot product�.

I trust this statement...

Bingo! Novus Ordo was not the fruit of organic development. It was the work of a committee, which included Protestant consultants. Bugnini at first denied that there was Protestant input, but those advisers later went public and affirmed their roles! I don't deny the validity of Novus Ordo, but IMHO, it was a step in the wrong direction by the Western Church, which is only now beginning to return to Tradition. This present Pope is the right hierarch for this time period. He speaks of the whole "Progressivist" crowd in the Western Church, including their liturgical thinking, as having proceeded from a "hermeneutic of rupture" with the past, whereas there should be a "hermeneutic of continuity". This is why Benedict has liberalized usage of the Old Rite, so that it can "inform" celebrations of the "ordinary form" (which I find, in many places, at present, to be quite "ordinary").

Dn Robert

Consider that for forty years the faithful were denied any alternative to the Novus Ordo. That's an entire generation that grew up thinking that it was the one and only Mass. Adherents of the Tridentine Mass were marginalized at best, frequently demonized by their own bishops as either reactionaries or closet schismatics. When forced to allow celebration of the Tridentine, many bishops ensured it was only permitted at odd times and in inconvenient locations.

Given that free choice was not permitted, that the faithful were given no voice at all in the matter, it is hard to say that there was any real reception involved. Hobson's Choice is not real conciliarity.

The article posted seems like a rehash -indeed a cut-and-paste - of much of Father Taft has previously said.

I basically agree with all of his points. A few things that might make his points easier to swallow:

- read the whole article.

- remember he considers the liturgical reforms instituted by Pope St. Pius X very successful [think about that one for a second...]

- in his works, it's abundantly clear that Father Taft grew up with the "Tridentine" mass, and based on my reading of his work I think knows it as well as anyone out there. His thoughts about are marred by the abuses which took place then.

- on the note of abuses, he doesn't deny them. However, I'd agree with him: the abuses came because various people at the local level wanted them, not because Rome wanted them.

I'd go further: I think the Latin church, especially at the parish level, has lost its sense of what liturgy is and that the abuses we have would have taken place even if the "old mass" was kept, especially if the bishops replaced the books of the 1950s with the musical schlock that they generally have now. This didn't suddenly happen in the 60s. Every priest and liturgical reformer of the 60s and 70s grew up with the "old Mass", and I've heard of plenty of incorrect thinking about the Mass that was prevalent at the time (a book on Catholicism by Yaroslav Pelikan from the late 1950s is most illuminating on this point).

- Gregorian chant, in its current form, was made in the late 1800s and promulgated by Pope St. Pius X in the early 1900s (1905 I believe - I used to have that edition of the Gradule Romanum). Before, the existing chant book of record allegedly had many problems, and the historians tell us that nobody used it anyway - they either had silent "low" masses, organ masses, poor to middling choral massses, or grandiose classical music concerts. (the period of 1600-1900 was the period where "classical" music became in vogue).

As much as I dislike much of the music used these days, liturgically they're not any worse than much of what came in the past several hundred years, even if Mozart, Schubert and the like are light years better composers than the Catholic song-writers of the 70s. In both case, music in the liturgy becomes a concert-piece made by a musically competent elite intended to stir pious feelings in the people.




Anyway, I do have to agree with his fundamental point: a liturgy where the people assembled have a minimal role, where (at best) a choir/orchestra gives a performance and a clergyman mostly does his own thing, with the assembled being decidedly optional. Even though I sang in the schola of my local indult parish for several years, overall I prefer the 1970 Roman Missal over the 1962 missal. But only as long as everything else stays the same.....

Believe me, Stuart, by 1963 my generation was longing for an alternative to the Tridentine Mass. We had no alternative either, but accepted, in faith, gladly what we had. The Novus Ordo was a big relief, and has born fruit. The popes have acknowledged that it has, and, while not perfect, it remains the standard of worship in the Latin church. The adherents of the Tridentine form have had the support of those same popes, and can now use this form unimpeded, though some bishops have found this Vatican "bullying". I am very happy that these people find solace and comfort in these rites. They are available every Sunday here in Maine at the cathedral in Portland at a very convenient time. A handful of people attend in Maine's largest city. They are not marginalized, but they are on the margin.

Pay, pray and obey, that's the way to go!


Really? Where are all those missing Catholics, then?


That's not the point. The real point is neither liturgy is an organic development of the authentic Latin Tradition, both have serious problems, and nobody seems very interested in fixing them. By the way, your attitude towards those who prefer the Tridentine rite sounds really condescending. You might consider that those people hear it in that way, too.

Yeah the Novus Ordo has born fruite alright, its born fruit for protestants and other denominations. I can't tell you how many former Catholics that I meet day in and out. This can't possibly be what you mean.

Where exactly are these fruits? Is Cardinal Mahoney and the lunancy that goes on in his dioscese part of these fruits? Maybe its the fact that the local Catholic schools here don't have one single nun for a teacher because the vocations for nuns have been destroyed? Is that the fruits?

Monomakh

Here is the complete document of + Pope Paul VI regarding the propagation of the new liturgy, November 1969...one can reread it several times and come away with different thoughts and opinions...



http://www.ewtn.com/library/PAPALDOC/P6691126.HTM

For all his criticism of it, HH Benedict has refused to abrogate the Ordinary Form, and has in fact declared it the ordinary form, and has implied that calling it the "Novus Ordo" is inappropriate.

So the mass promulgated by Pp. Paul VI, and again by JP II (twice with minor corrections), is the normative mass. The Trent liturgy is still an extraordinary form, not the normative form.

Theologically, the Trent liturgy is no less troubled, just in different ways: The people as audience, the lack of explicit post-narrative epiclesis, the lack of instructive content.
Abuse-wise, people forget how abused the Trent missal was.

The only viable issue, really, is the method of development. And that, even, is arguable, since all the changes in the actual text of the mass as promulgated by Pp. Paul VI were almost all included in the bishops' requests.

Note that CITH, that was NOT in the mass of Pp. Paul VI. (But it was and is in the Chaldean, Maronite, and Armenian praxis...) It was a later, and very organic, accretion.

Not wanting to be seen as taking a pot-shot at Utroque, the fact that he/she gives away his/her age by noting that "in 1963 my generation wanted something different" makes the point of view less surprising. From what I've found, and what studies tend to show, is that people old enough to "want" anything in 1963 are generally much more liturgically liberal than those, such as myself, who are under 40-50.

Alexis

Why is the lack of an explicit post-narrative epiclesis a problem? Is the entire lack of an institution narrative in the Anaphora of Addai and Mari also a problem? Fact is, the Roman Canon never had an epiclesis, so what? The entire canon is itself a single consecratory prayer, and the focus on this moment or that moment is not patristic, but a second millennium innovation deriving from scholastic theology and the Orthodox reaction to it.

"Pray, pay and obey, that's the way to go!"

Thanks. Who's condescending?

"Where have all the Catholics gone?

Asia, Africa and...ah...Maine.

I think the cited article by Father Taft makes the point, and a very good one. That's my point.

Communion in hand is wrong. Lay people distributing communion is wrong. Priests facing west for the consecration is most definitely wrong. Wrong, wrong, wrong.

Dr. Lauren Pristas has written some wonderful essays on the reform of the Roman Church's liturgy, and some of her articles are linked at her faculty webpage.

Dr. Lauren Pristas - Caldwell College [faculty.caldwell.edu]

I agree that Father Taft identifies some of the major issues with the Mass of the John XXII Missal. But each of the issues he speaks to could have been addressed with an inorganic 'New Mass by a Creative Committee':

-Giving the prayers formerly said by the altar server back to the people.

-The possibility of a sung Liturgy (not recited, and with music that is not as difficult as Gregorian chant or Mozart multi-voice needing choirs).

-The vernacular.

-Etc.

Again, lots could have been done to allow organic development over time without chasing so many people away (I would not want to be those bishops on Judgment Day!). A new Mass was not required or even desired. Liturgical renewal was in full force for an entire generation before Vatican II and was making organic progress. Had the suggestions I put forth been followed and there have been even more openness to organic development a very lot would have happened, but with the silliness of "Four Songs and a Mass" that goes on in many places.

Father Taft says: After Vatican II some people unfortunately thought that they had to be creative. As I've said more than once, I have never understood why people who have never manifested the slightest creativity in any other aspect of their human existence all of the sudden think they're Shakespeare or Mozart when it comes to the liturgy. That's sheer arrogance.

But yet he does not condemn the creativity of the committee that created the Novus Ordo. Possibly because he likes that type of creativity?

Most of the article is not new, and he has said the same thing numerous times before.