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Examination of the earliest surviving Roman rite books which served
in actual liturgical use reveals the presence of all the essential
elements and structures known from the Middle Ages and valid up to
1970.
This statement should be understood differently for the different elements of the liturgy, for the various seasons and days of the liturgical year, and for the composition, material and arrangement of the celebration itself. Whilst the priest’s prayers and the lections, for instance, are known in different arrangements from the (partly overlapping) collections of the VIIth and VIIIth centuries, the repertory of Mass chants in the earliest sources (edited by Dom R.-J. Hesbert) which were obligatory until very recent times, is about 90 percent the same. The liturgy reflected in this ‘essentially identical’ source material became still more homogeneous by the fixation of the Roman rite and its diffusion through all of Europe. The distribution of the Scripture readings, the Sacramentary, the chant books and even more the structure of the main components of the liturgy, all exhibit great similarity when charted in thousands of mediaeval ritual books. And in the course of this process of fixation, new contextual values and potentialities have evolved organically: cross-references, associations, confluence of elements all enriched and stabilised the celebration of the sacred rites. This does not mean, however, a literal identity. The preconciliar rites of certain religious orders allow us to perceive to a greater or lesser degree the inner variety of the Roman liturgy. The Benedictines, Cistercians, Dominicans and Norbertines preserved the liturgy of their orders even into recent times, up to the last Council and some even beyond. These liturgical families preserve great values for the whole Church, and a special personal attractiveness for those living in the given communities. But in the Middle Ages, variety within unity was not limited to the religious orders. The guardians of continuity were first of all the cathedrals. In a paradoxical way, they guaranteed both conformity with the unity of the Roman liturgy, as well as the variety of the local rites. The liturgy of the cathedral was the norm for all parish churches of the diocese. The geographical (or rather, institutional) differences caused no confusion, for two reasons. On the one hand, both the categories of ubi and quomodo were adequately regulated. In other words, the liturgical areas where or in which unity must be maintained whilst local traditions are observed, were governed by a ‘hierarchy’ of elements supported by dogmatic and liturgical considerations. And on the other hand it was the Chapter (or the convent, or the superior of the religious order) that safeguarded both the continuity and the legal changes or development, and this guarantee against any kind of arbitrariness was not at all less efficient than the activity of a far distant Curial congregation would have been. And so when, knowing all this, we again ask: what is the “traditional Roman liturgy” ?, the reply sounds like this: it is the liturgical practise of Rome continuously living and organically developing from the IVth century at the latest (if its basic features are meant) and fixed in the VIIIth/IXth centuries; which preserved its identity during diffusion both geographical (in cathedrals) and institutional (in orders), as also amidst the local and temporal variations regulated by liturgical hierarchy. Or, more briefly put : the Roman rite is that which emerges in the uniformity of organic temporal and coherent spatial variety of its daughter-liturgies. What, then, is the “Tridentine” liturgy? It is the rite codified in the liturgical books promulgated under the authority of St Pius V as a response to the wish of the Council of Trent. But that does not mean that the 1962 Missale Romanum is identical with the Tridentine rite. The fact is that the books containing different parts of the liturgy were published over a lengthy period, and they reflect in different ways the wishes of the Sacred Synod. The legitimate liturgist thinks, for example, of the catastrophic XVIIth-century re-arrangement of the Hymnal and the re-wording of many hymn texts, or of the anomalies surrounding the edition of the Gradual.... The material published in these books was augmented during the XVIIth to the XIXth centuries and in the meantime that material underwent minor unessential changes, sometimes in oppostion to the will of the Council. New and decisive changes were made once more at the beginning of the XXth century, chiefly in the structure of the Divine Office. It is sad, but true, that this re-arrangement of the order of psalmody basically destroyed the system of the Roman Office and erased its most traditional elements from the experience of two or three generations of priests. Another change was the introduction of the Pius XII Psalter in the Fifties, again injuring the liturgical continuity at a sensitive point, just as the re-arrangement of Holy Week did not lack critical points. Finally, the Tridentine liturgy was modified by some innovations under John XXIII and Paul VI. This is not to say that there were not many fruitful, organic and justified changes among those just mentioned. But the liturgy valid in 1962 can in no way be regarded as “Tridentine” without additions. A more important question is the relation of the “Tridentine” liturgy to its predecessors. The historical context of its emergence was: flourishing local liturgies, destructive liturgical movements of the Renaissance, and the confusion caused by the Protestant Revolt. In this situation, the Council of Trent had to restore order and -- at least according to its desire -- to return to the pristine Roman tradition, as was clearly explained in the introduction to the Missale. The restoration or return had two components : approval of cathedral and monastic order liturgies that had existed “from time immemorial” whilst removing some of their excesses; and on the other hand, providing a new exemplary Roman rite, originally intended only for those who did not possess such an ancient, basically Roman cathedral liturgy. The basis of this “Tridentine” liturgy was the rite of the Roman Curia. This Ritus Curiae Romanae evolved at the turn of the XIth/ XIIth century on the basis of old Italian and Roman traditions. In comparison with the other cathedral rites, it was a somewhat simplified variant of the same common order. The motivation for simplification was twofold : limiting the increase of the Frankish-Roman liturgy (e.g. indifference toward the Offices of new saints, slowing the growth of trope and sequence repertory); and the separation of priests working in the Curial bureaucracy from the elevated public sung liturgy of cathedrals and parishes. And thus many rich elements of the Holy Week liturgy, for example, fell victim to the Curial reform. To summarise : the “Tridentine” liturgy belongs to the family of the Roman liturgy. All its essential features are identical with that liturgy. In other words, it is one of the many variants of the Roman liturgy -- the “Tridentine” liturgy is Roman liturgy! In this sense, the “Tridentine” liturgy exists not only since the XVIth, but since the VIIIth or IXth, or in some sense since the IVth century. But the Roman liturgy is not identical with the “Tridentine” liturgy: it is more than that. Those who follow the “Tridentine” liturgy, celebrate the Roman liturgy. But the Roman liturgy also lived in other, and in certain respects perhaps more perfect, forms. Today, in the third millenium, we must take care to avoid confusion of terminology. For example, when a choice is described in terms of the dichotomy “conciliar liturgy - ‘Tridentine’ liturgy,” the impression is created that the matter concerns the opposition of two liturgical forms which are merely zeitbedingt or time-bound and hence quite relative. The logic of this false impression is that the “Tridentine” rite is the liturgy of the Renaissance and Baroque periods (Anton Mayer, Louis Bouyer) which perhaps worked well for the past 350 years, but today the needs of the new age and its new modern man must now be met with a new Vatican II liturgy. Accordingly, he who favours the ‘Tridentine” liturgy (ordo antiquus) as against the “conciliar” one (novus ordo), desires to perpetuate the formalities of bygone times and thus endangers the renewal of the Church. But if, on the contrary, the “Tridentine” liturgy in its essence is nothing other than the ancient Roman liturgy itself, then it cannot be written off as Renaissance or Baroque or zeitbedingt. Could it then be true that the recent innovations overrode not some 350-year-old custom, but in fact broke with the entire tradition of the Roman church, as far as this is recognisable for us? Perhaps we can find an answer by attempting to clarify the nature of the “conciliar” liturgy as well. As we have seen, it is incorrect to define the Roman liturgy as the mere sum of various local and monastic rites. Other liturgies existed outside this stream of tradition. The legitimate liturgist thinks first of all of the tradition of ancient ecclesiastical centres like Milan, Gaul, Spain and others. And there existed other systems created on the basis of the Roman liturgy but farther removed from it. Such are, for instance, the innovative systems created under the influence of Renaissance reflections. Some of these systems remained at the level of conceptual experiments, whilst others were realised in practise and some even received ecclesiastical approval. One such is the Quignonez Breviary, abolished expressis verbis after several decades of use, by the Council of Trent, or more correctly: by the Breviary of St Pius V. Such also are the Neo-Gallican liturgies of the XVII/XVlIIth centuries. They almost superseded the “Tridentine” rite in France, and by provoking reaction they played a part in the process of liturgical renewal in the Church Universal. They represented opposite poles from which the French Church had to return to Rome; at the same time, these rites and the bishops supporting them represented the greatest obstacle to such a return. Abbot Gueranger fought a lonely and heroic battle to replace the Neo-Gallican liturgies with the Roman rite, and he was regarded as the enemy of the Church in France. The Novus Ordo imposed in the wake of the Second Vatican Council fits very well into the long line of similar reform-liturgies. It adopts a respectable number of their concrete devices, and is akin to them in its approach and indeed, its philosophy. The “reform-liturgies” of the past four centuries resemble each other in the following main points: • they emerged not as the result of organic development and small changes during the course of subsequent centuries, but from a stormy, one-time modification; • they are not structures which originated during the normal process of church life, but are constructions created by “experts,” the inventions of one person or of a group; • though they accept certain elements and details from the liturgical tradition, their structure, material and arrangement is something newly invented, deviating to a great extent from the tradition, without any concrete precedents. Then in what sense can the Novus Ordo be regarded as a Roman liturgy? There is no doubt that it is “Roman” in two respects. Firstly, the majority of the Roman Catholic Church today celebrates her liturgy according to this Ordo. And secondly, it was produced within the juridical framework of the Roman Church and enjoys her official approval. Today, the postconciliar liturgy promulgated by Pope Paul VI in 1969 is the official liturgy of the Roman Church, and every good Catholic accepts it and follows it obediently. However, since it is difficult to call this rite “Roman” in terms of its content, it may be less confusing and more accurate to speak of it as the novus ordo, the new Order of Mass, or the “neo-Roman” rite. |