The Traditional Mass of the Roman Rite
"At
that hour of the Sacrifice, at the words of the Priest, the heavens are opened,
and in that mystery of Jesus Christ, the choirs of Angels are present, and
things below are joined to things on high, earthly things to heavenly, and the
service is both a visible and an invisible event." — St. Gregory the
Great, Pope of Rome († 604)
What is the Holy Mass?
The Holy Mass is the heart and the highpoint of the life of the Church,
for in the Mass Christ enables His Church and all Her members to take part in
His Sacrifice of praise, thanksgiving, reconciliation and satisfaction, that He
once and for all offered up upon the wood of the Cross: through this Sacrifice
of the Mass - which is the unbloody re-enactment of His bloody Sacrifice upon
the Cross - Christ showers His saving gifts upon His Mystical Body the Church.
The Holy Mass is the official public act of worship of the Church Militant upon
earth and a foretaste of and participation in the heavenly liturgy of the
Church Glorified. The Holy Mass makes present anew for us in space and in time
– in an unbloody, sacramental manner – the bloody Sacrifice of the Cross which
took place 2000 years ago. God knows no time, as He dwells in eternity. The
Mass is God’s way of breaking into our time and space in order to apply to us
the benefits of His Sacrifice, and in order to allow us to take part here on
earth in the Heavenly Liturgy. Thus, in the Mass, past, present and future become
one and the same moment. The Holy Mass is offered not only to adore and to
thank the Most Holy Trinity, but also to make satisfaction for the sins of the
living and the dead, and to beg God for spiritual and temporal favours. It is
Christ Himself, the Everlasting High Priest, Who, through the ministry of
validly ordained priests, offers up the Eucharistic Sacrifice. And it is also
the same Christ Who is the Victim of the Eucharistic Sacrifice, truly present
under the outward forms of bread and wine. By means of the words of
consecration, the miracle of Transubstantiation takes place, that is, the
change of the complete substance of the bread and the complete substance of the
wine into the Body and the Blood of Our Lord Jesus Christ. Under the consecated
species of bread and wine, the living and glorified Christ is really, truly and
substantially present. Because it is a Living Victim, the same Risen Christ Who
unceasingly offers Himself in Heaven, the whole living Christ is made present,
offered up and consumed upon our earthly altars – that is, the Body, the Blood,
the Soul and the Divinity of our Lord Jesus Christ. The Mass is a type of
sacrifice known as a sacrificial meal, because the Victim is not only offered
up by the priest upon the Altar, but also consumed by the priest and then by
the faithful at the communion rail – the table of the Lord. The Holy Communion,
which is the Fruit of the Sacrifice of the Mass, unites the communicant more
closely to Christ, strengthens the bonds of love between the communicant and
Christ and the Church, wipes out the daily sins of the communicant, and grants
him everlasting life. One receives the whole Christ even if one receives just
one of the two species, as Christ is fully present totally in both, even in the
tiniest crumb and in the smallest drop. The substance of the bread and wine are
changed into the Living Christ, whilst the accidents – the smell, taste,
texture and appearance of bread and wine – remain unchanged. Thus one
recognises the Lord with the eyes of faith, trusting in His unerring and
almighty Word, which assures us that this is no longer bread and wine, and
which we believe is capable of turning bread and wine into His Very Self so as
to become food and drink for our bodies and souls. Christ remains present as long as the outward
forms are intact. Whoever wishes to receive our Lord in the Holy Communion must
be in the state of grace (friendship with God) and must confess his belief in
our Lord’s Real Presence in the Most Holy Sacrament of the Altar. Otherwise, as
Saint Paul writes, he who receives the Holy Commuion without distinguishing the
Body and Blood of the Lord, eats and drinks to his own condemnation. Outside of
the celebration of Mass, the Body of Christ under the form of the Host is kept
in the Tabernacle, a golden safe which usually sits upon the high Altar. The
Tabernacle is veiled, and a candle nearby must always be burning, to show that
Christ is present. Because Christ Himself is present within the Most Holy
Sacrament of the Altar, we must duly honour Him with the worship of adoration,
and kneel before Him every time that we pass by the Altar where the Blessed
Sacrament is reserved. By visiting the Most Holy Sacrament, we show Him our
thankfulness, our love, and our recognition that He is our Maker, our Saviour,
our Lord and our God.
Why is the ''Tridentine''
liturgy called the "Traditional" liturgy?
Because this Liturgy - in all her substantial elements - has her origin
in the earliest times of the Church. The
texts of the traditional Mass of the Roman Rite can be found in the Missals of
Pope Saint Damasus (A.D. 266-284), Pope Saint Leo (483), Gelasius (491), and
Pope Saint Gregory the Great (590). The Roman Canon has remained unchanged at
least since those times. It was this Liturgy of the Mass that was brought by
countless missionaries to all parts of the world. The traditional Mass of the
Roman Rite is without a doubt the oldest christian liturgy. In the early
christian ages the very origin of our Liturgy of the Mass was ascribed to the
holy Apostle Peter, for example, in the fifth century, by Innocent in his
Epistle to Bishop Decentius.
Why is this Liturgy often
referred to as "Tridentine"?
"Tridentine" means "of Trent". After the Council of
Trent in 1570, Pope Saint Pius V ordered that the liturgical books, with their
prescribed texts and rubrics, in use in the City of Rome at that time,
thenceforward be made obligatory for the whole Latin Church, that is,
everywhere in the world where the Mass of the Roman rite was celebrated. That Rite
had organically grown since the apostolic times and was best preserved in the
Eternal City. The Pope also determined that, besides the Roman Rite, also other
usages and rites should continue to exist, which could claim to be at least two
hundred years old. And thus, for example, the Ambrosian Rite in the archdiocese
of Milano (Italy), and the Mozarabic Rite in Toledo (Spain), continue to be
celebrated to this day, as well as the usages of the Dominicans, the
Benedictines, and other religious orders. The Pope chose the term two hundred
years, in order to take out of circulation and use any and all liturgical books
which had become infected with Protestant errors during the Reformation. Pope
Saint Pius V introduced no new Liturgy, Order of Mass, or Rite. ''Indeed, the
Missal of 1570 differs very little from the first printed Missal of 1474, which
in turn is a faithful reproduction of the Missal from the time of Pope Inncent
III." (General introduction to the
Roman Missal of 1970). Thus, the traditional Mass of the Roman Rite is
neither 'Tridentine'' nor ''of Pope Saint Pius V'', but simply the ''Mass of
the Roman Rite'', the same Liturgy of the Mass that had been safeguarded,
handed down and celebrated throughout the ages, until the infelicitous
introduction of the ''Novus Ordo Missae" (''New Order of Mass'') by Pope
Paul VI in 1970. Indeed, in order to distinguish the Traditional Liturgy of the
Roman Rite from the new-style liturgy (which hardly resembles a Rite at all),
one could perhaps reserve the name ''[Traditional] Mass of the Roman Rite'' for
the Liturgy of the Mass as that was universally known and used in the Latin
Church until the year 1970. (A suggestion of Father Aidan Nichols, O.P.).
Eventually one could invent a new name for the ''Novus Ordo Missae'' (''New
Order of Mass''), such as ''Ritus Communis'' (Common Rite) or ''Ritus
Vulgaris'' (Vulgar Rite).
What did the Second Vatican
Council say about the Tridentine or Traditional Mass?
The Second Vatican Council declared that the use of Latin, and all
recognised liturgical rites, were to be preserved, maintained and fostered in
every possible way. The Council also declared that the faithful should be
taught to sing the unchangeable parts of the Holy Mass in Latin according to
the ancient and venerable Gregorian Chant, which is and shall remain proper to
the Roman Rite.
Is this Tridentine or
Traditional Liturgy allowed by the Pope to be celebrated?
Yes. When Pope Paul VI in 1969 gave permission to introduce the new
liturgy, he also granted permission to – amongst others - the bishops of
England and Wales – to continue to use the Missal of the Tridentine or
Traditional Roman Rite. In 1984 Pope John Paul II broadened this permission out
to the whole world, and in a motu proprio in 1988 he asked the bishops of the
world to allow wide and generous use of this permission to be made in their
dioceses. Thereafter, a Papal Commission determined that the Traditional Roman
Rite never had been outlawd – and that it, as an ancient and legally recognised
rite of the Church, in fact never can be outlawed. Any priest anywhere may
always celebrate the Traditional Mass in private, even without permission of
the local Ordinary.
Why does the priest, when
celebrating the Tridentine Mass, stand with his face towards the Altar rather
than towards the people?
The priest faces the altar because he offers the Holy Sacrifice of the
Mass ''in persona Christi'' (in Christs’ name and person) to the Holy Trinity,
and because the priest, as representative of Christ, the Head of the Church,
leads Body of the Church - the faithful - towards God, and represents them
before God. Since the beginning of christianity – and in all rites, both
western and eastern - the priest has always stood with his face towards the
east, towards the rising sun, which is the symbol of the "New
Jerusalem", the heavenly fatherland: he leads the flock just as the Good
Shepherd does. (Also in the hebrew temple service, the priest stood with his
face towards the altar, towards God, and not towards the faithful.) When the
priest addresses the faithful, he turns around and says: ''Dominus vobiscum''
(The Lord be with you) or ''Orate, fratres'' (Pray, brethren!). When the priest
reads the Epistle and the Gospel in the vernacular, and preaches a homily, he stands
facing the people.
Why are some of the parts of
the Holy Mass recited in silence?
All the prayers of the Mass are addressed to God, and not to the
people. Especially during the Canon of the Mass – from the end of the Sanctus
till just before the Pater Noster - is this silence the most effective
expression of worship of God, Who comes to us in the Mystery of the
Transubstantiation. Even the Angels, who
take part in the Holy Mass, are silent during the Canon and shudder out of
wonder for so great a Mystery. This silence during the Canon reminds us of the
Arcanum Fidei – the obligation of secrecy surrounding the faith – which was in
vigour during the times of persecution in the early ages of christianity.
Why is the Holy Communion
received kneeling and upon the tongue?
In the first centuries of the christian era - in the times of
persecution - could acolytes or lay christians sometimes find themselves in
circumstances wherein they saw themselves necessitated to touch the Sacred
Species, for example, in order to bring the Holy Communion to the bed-stricken
and imprisoned faithful, in stead of the priest or deacon, for whom it might be
too dangerous or impossible. The form of Communion in the hand then in use took
place in a totally other way than now, and with much more respect. The communicants
were instructed to wash their hands before Communion. The Communon Host was
placed upon the palm of the right hand, whilst the left-hand was placed under the
right hand to make a ‘throne’, and the communicant then bowed his head down
towards the Host to receive It directly with his tongue into his mouth, without
ever touching the Sacred Host with his own hand. The hands of women
communicants had to be veiled, and later, also those of men communicants. And
still, abuses crept in. These abuses and the increasing respect for the Most
Blessed Sacrament led to the fact that already in the third century (year 200),
Pope Saint Eutyches ordered, that laymen ought neither to touch, nor to bring
to the ill and the absent the Holy Communion. The Council of Saragossa in the
year 380 declared the sentence of excommunication as a punishment for any and
all laymen who dared to ''handle the Holy Communion as in times of
persecution'', that is, to touch with their hands the Sacred Species. The
Concil of Rouen (650) once again forbade priests to lay the Holy Communion upon
the hand of the faithful. Until the seventies of the twentieth century, the
Sacred Host was everywhere in the world received by the faithful directly upon
the tongue and kneeling. The Second Vatican Council did not change this
practice. The Council Fathers delared that as little as possible should be
changed in the celebration of the Holy Mass - only that which was stricly
necessary and that which would be for the clearly greater good of the faithful.
It was only after the Council that here and there one began to experiment with
giving Communion on the hand - and other liturgical aberrations -, in clear
violation of liturgical practice, church law, and the will of the Council. Pope
Paul VI in his encyclical ''Mysterium Fidei'' (1965) reiterated the binding
Catholic doctrines regarding the Sacrificial character of the Mass and the Real
Presence. That same Pontiff in the Instruction ''Memoriale Domini'' (1969)
declared that the faithful must continue to receive the Holy Communion
''kneeling and upon the tongue'', which was and would remain the universal
traditional practice. The Instruction gave as the principal reasons against
''handcommunion'' 1) the age-old venerable tradition, 2) the danger of
profanation, and 3) that the absolute majority of the bishops was against any
innovation in this matter.
Just the same, the bishops of Netherland (and of a few other northern
european countries) asked the Holy See to grant an indult (special permission)
to distribute Holy Communion - besides in the universally approved traditional
way - also standing and upon the hand. The Bishops motivated their request, by
claiming that in the Netherlands it was already being done without permission
anyway, and that a prohibition would not stop the abuse. It was a sort of
blackmail to force the Vatican to permit against its will a practice which the
Bishops in the Netherlands (Belgium, France and Germany, as well) had already
abusively introduced. Later this indult would be asked for by and granted to
other bishops in other lands as well. But Communion in the hand - where
officially allowed - in the mind of the Church remains an unwillingly tolerated
exception to the universal rule. Blessed Mother Teresa of Calcutta, when asked
what most distressed her of all the post-conciliar changes in the Church,
replied: ''Communion in the hand.'' When the Mass is celebrated according to
the Missal of 1962, (i.e., the Traditional Mass), the faithful may receive the
Holy Communion only upon the tongue and kneeling (with the exception of the ill
and the aged, who - of course - do not have to kneel).
Why is the Traditional Holy
Mass celebrated in Latin?
The Faith and the Holy Mass were carried by the Apostles and the first
missionaries throughout the whole Roman empire, where the official tongue was
the Latin in the west, and the Greek in the east. After the Roman empire went
under, Latin eventually became a dead language and thus became fixed in its
words and forms. Therfore the Latin tongue lends itself as no other for the
purpose of expressing liturgical and theological concepts in a clear and
uncompromising way, so that the faithful over the whole world wide can
understand them correctly, without running the danger of understanding and/or
interpreting them differently in each land. Another benefit of using Latin as a
sacred tongue is that the texts and chants of the Liturgy are thereby
safeguarded against profanation.
Why has the Latin language
undergone no changes, whereas the vulgar tongues (languages of the people) keep
changing over the years?
The vernacular tongues are slowly but surley ever developing, and as a
result the meaning of words change in the course of time. The nearly exclusive
use of the vernacular in the Liturgy of the Roman rite was introduced only 35
years ago, and already many text revisions have taken place. New texts are
constantly being prepared to take the place of older ones, because the meaning
or usage of the words keeps changing, or because the ''experts'' cannot agree
on how best to (mis)translate the Latin, or because they have simply developed
a taste for ever more changes and are never satisfied with the official liturgical
texts and rubrics. The Latin, on the otherhand, is unchangeable, and therefore
is and must remain the measuring stick by which all translations are checked.
The Latin is therefore of irreplaceable value in safeguarding and fostering
unity in the Church's worship and prayer, and in order to forecome theological
misconceptions. The wild growth in the vernacular of all kinds of private
liturgical compositions, that are mostly of poor quality and in conflict with
the spirit of the Liturgy and the faith of the Church, is partly to blame on the lack of those
necessary measuring sticks - the Latin and the Tradition (both Apostolic and
Ecclesiastical) - to which the Liturgy of the Mass, the Divine Office and the
Sacraments in the vernacular (people's tongue) must always be compared.
Does this mean that the
laity does not actively take part in the liturgy of the Holy Mass?
No, that means no such thing. It was the original intention of the
Liturgical Renewal Movement (and also of the Second Vatican Council) that there
should be a serious, intense and interior participation of the faithful during
the Holy Mass, foreall by lifting one's spirit and heart heavenwards and
morally uniting oneself to the priest, who offers the Divine Victim upon the
altar, and by offering ones' own self up to that very Divine Victim, Jesus
Christ. Following the words and the actions of the priest by means of a
layman's missal can be an important help in better understanding and
appreciating the beauty of the Liturgy. And last, but not least, the faithful
are encouraged to learn and to sing in Latin the fixed chants of the Mass - the
Kyrie, Gloria, Credo, Sanctus, and Agnus Dei. These fixed parts of the Mass
have always belonged to the faithful and must again belong to them!
How can one help
to save the Traditional Latin Mass and ensure its future existance?
Lex orandi, lex credendi (Legem credendi statuit lex orandi), that is,
The way we pray determines the way we believe. Let us then so often as possible
assist at Holy Mass and at other liturgical functions only there, where they
are celebrated in a worthy, pious, respectful and correct manner. The Mass and
sacraments, when carried out as they ought to be, are a true joy and comfort
for the soul. Above all, let us keep praying that the traditional Mass of the
Roman Rite will be restored to Catholic altars everywhere in the world. (We are
here referring only to the Latin Church, to which the majority of Roman
Catholics belong, as the various Eastern Rites of the Catholic Church – Byzantine,
Maronite, Syriac, and so forth – have remained unchanged and true to Tradition,
and thus do not need to be restored.)
AMDG ~ July 2004
Postscriptum: As of 7 July 2007 the Supreme Pontiff Pope Benedict
XVI, with his Apostolic Letter Motu Proprio ‘Summorum Pontificum’, has set free
from the approval of the local Bishop the Liturgy of the Mass, the Sacraments
and the Divine Office; has declared that the classical Roman Rite (called in
this Motu Proprio ‘the extraordinary form of the Roman Rite’) never has been
abolished or forbidden and must be held in honour; and has decreed that each
and every priest, in the celebration of
the Holy Mass, the Sacraments and the Divine Office, may make free use
of the liturgical books which were in use before 1970. Let us pray, that, in
spite of misinformation spread by the official Catholic press, and in spite of
the attempts of many Bishops to thwart also this Motu Proprio, as they have for
many years thwarted the Motu Proprio ‘Ecclesia Dei’ issued by Pope John Paul II
in 1988, that the Catholic Faithful will be able to claim what is rightfully
theirs, and that the Mass of the Tradition once again shall be offered upon
every altar – ‘ad laudem et gloriam
Nominis Sui, ad utilitatem quoque nostram, totiusque Ecclesiae Suae sanctae.’
!
Literature:
1) Aidan Nichols, OP, Looking at the
Liturgy. A critical view of its contemporary form, 1996;
2)
P. van de Kerckhove, Gebeden en Rituelen van de Heilige Mis;
3) Joseph
Ratzinger, Introduzione allo spirito
della liturgia, Edizioni San Paolo, 2001;
4) Catechism of the
Catholic Church. Nr. 1077-1112, 1995;
5) Romano Guardini, Lo
spirito della liturgia (Der Geist der Liturgie), 1930;
6) Alcuin Reid, OSB, The
Organic Development of the Liturgy, 2004;
7) Fortesque, O’Connell
& Reid, The Ceremonies of the Roman Rite Described (2003);
8) David Berger, Der Heilige
Thomas van Aquino und die Liturgie, 1997;
9) David Berger, Thomas
Aquinas and the Liturgy, Sapientia Press, 2004;
10) Klaus Gamber, Fragen in
die Zeit, 1999;
11) G. Hull, The Banished
Heart: Origins of Heteropraxis in the Catholic Church, 1995;
12) G. Hull, The Proto-history of the
Roman Liturgical Reform ;
13) John Parsons, A
Reform of the Reform?, 2001;
14) Jonathan Robinson, The
Mass and Modernity: Walking to Heaven Backward, 2004;
15) László Dobszay, The
Bugnini Liturgy and the Reform of the Reform, 2003.
16) Lugmayr, M., Handkommunion: eine historisch-dogmatische
Untersuchung, Stella-Maris-Verl., 2001;
17) M. Ramm, vertaler GMJ van
der Vegt, De H. Mis en
haar riten verklaard ;
18) H. Kunkel, vertaler GMJ van
der Vegt, Het Heilig
Misoffer ;
19) Benedict XVI, Motu
Proprio ‘Summorum
Pontificum’, 7 July 2007 ;
20) Benedict XVI, Accompanying
Letter to the Bishops of the Church regarding the extraordinary Roman
Rite.