Getting the history right

Pope Benedict XVI's Summorum pontificum, issued motu proprio (as an executive order), universally permits celebrating the sacrifice of the Mass according to the Roman liturgy that was in existence prior to the reform of 1970. This means that there are two liturgies approved for universal usage. The new, reformed liturgy, contained in the Roman Missal promulgated by Pope Paul VI in 1970, is now termed the ordinary expression of the lex orandi, or rule of praying, of the Catholic Church of the Latin rite. The Roman Missal promulgated by St. Pius V and reissued by Blessed John XXIII in 1962 is to be considered an extraordinary expression of the same rule.

The Second Vatican Council often used the method of juxtaposition in its documents. For example, the ancient paradigm of the church as "communion" was retrieved and presented alongside, and in tension with, the pyramidic hierarchic paradigm that had developed during the church's second millennium. Benedict, however, has taken the method of juxtaposition--wherein differing positions or understandings are accommodated, side by side, rather than made to come to terms with one another--into somewhat uncharted territory by juxtaposing two liturgies. Both liturgies affirm the rule of belief that the Sacrifice of the Cross is sacramentally renewed in the Mass. Both affirm the Lord's real presence under the eucharistic species. But there are also important theological differences between the two liturgies. In particular, they reflect diverse theologies of church and disparate perspectives on the role of the baptized in worship. They also invoke different understandings of mystery, transcendence, and God's presence. Those variations are not unrelated to the fact that the two liturgies emerged in two different historical situations separated by four centuries.

The missal of Trent, issued under Pius V in 1570 (revised under St. Pius X in 1920 and John XXIII in 1962), has its roots in a difficult period in which Catholic teaching on the sacrificial nature of the Mass, the ministerial priesthood, and the real and permanent presence of Christ under the eucharistic elements seemed threatened. In response to requests for the vernacular in the liturgy, Trent taught that the eucharistic sacrifice is, first and foremost, the action of Christ himself. According to this reasoning, the manner in which the faithful take part in the Mass does not affect the efficacy belonging to it. Trent then anathematized anyone who maintained that "the rite of the Roman Church prescribing that a part of the canon and the words of consecration be recited in a low tone of voice should be condemned," as well as anyone who claimed "that the Mass should be celebrated only in the vernacular." It also anathematized anyone maintaining that the faithful ought to receive the Eucharist under both species. While prohibiting the use of the vernacular in the Mass, Trent directed that pastors "frequently give instructions during Mass, especially on Sundays and holydays, on what is read at Mass and that among their instructions they include some explanation of the mystery of this sacrifice."

The General Instruction of the Roman Missal, revised under Pope John Paul II in 2001, declares that the Second Vatican Council completed and improved the liturgical norms of the Council of Trent, bringing to realization the efforts of the past four hundred years to move the faithful closer to the sacred liturgy. The decades before Vatican II had already brought a gradual lessening of the separation between the people and the priest celebrating the Mass, a separation that had been maintained for more than a thousand years. For example, in 1897, the prohibition against translating the Ordinary, or fixed ritual prayers, of the Mass into the vernacular was finally removed in the revision of the Index of Forbidden Books issued by Pope Leo XIII. The subsequent spread of the missal in different languages allowed the faithful to read the prayers of the Mass along with the priest. That would be followed by the so-called dialogue Mass, in which the entire congregation, and not just the altar servers, responded to the celebrant. In 1905 and 1910, the decretals of Pius X advocating frequent Communion and the Communion of children at an early age marked another significant step.

Vatican II's Constitution on the Liturgy (Sacrosanctum concilium) emphasizes that "it is through the liturgy, especially, that the faithful are enabled to express in their lives and manifest to others the mystery of Christ and the real nature of the true church" (section 2), Referring to the epistles of Ignatius of Antioch, the constitution, emphasizes that "the principal manifestation of the church consists in the full active participation of all God's holy people in the same liturgical celebrations, especially in the same Eucharist, in one prayer, at one altar, at which the bishop presides, surrounded by his college of priests and by his ministers" (section 41). Communal liturgical celebrations in parishes, "under a pastor who takes the place of the bishop, are the most important, for in some way they represent the visible church constituted throughout the world" (section 42). In the post-conciliar implementation of liturgical "renewal," altars again became tables at which the ordained presider faced the assembly, and the rail that had separated the people from the so-called sanctuary was removed. It bears reiterating that such changes were not something "new" but a creative retrieval of the eucharistic experience of the assemblies of the earliest centuries.