Fr. Z's Blog

Diane Montagna posted on her Substack (I have one now also) a piece by distinguished liturgist Fr. Alcuin Reid who commented on Leo XIV’s General Audience on Wednesday 26 August. It was the last address about Sacrosanctum Concilium.

Leo said some odd things which have not gone unnoticed by either “side” of our contemporary liturgy challenges.

Here is the down low on what Fr Reid offered.  First, a panoptic view.  After, a look at the four letter word.

Fr. Reid criticizes a recent general audience address of Pope Leo XIV on Sacrosanctum Concilium, arguing that its claim that the post-Conciliar liturgical reform is “firmly rooted in the living tradition of the Church” is asserted rather than demonstrated. Gratis asseritur, gratis negatur, right?  But depending on who you are, that principle cannot be invoked, because… reasons!   Although a general audience is neither binding nor infallible, Reid fears that the statement will be weaponized to foreclose legitimate historical and theological questions about whether the reform fulfilled the Council’s requirement that innovations be genuinely necessary and grow organically from existing forms.  Hint: They didn’t (e.g., changes to the offertory prayers).

Reid identifies several weaknesses in the address. The Council called for an instauratio, or renewal, rather than a “streamlining” of the liturgy.  Yes, in the English translation from the Vatican, the word for Italian “rendere più lineare” is “streamline”. Historically, which does not whitewash everything that happened before 1962, the Roman Magisterium generally received, regulated, and extended organic developments. It did not periodically reconstruct the rites through centralized committees. The liturgy is also presented too narrowly as a vehicle of instruction and dialogue. Its primary character is cultic and sacramental. It is the Church’s worship, the privileged participation in Christ’s saving action, and, according to Sacrosanctum Concilium 10, the “fons et culmen…source and summit” of ecclesial life.

The address’s treatment of active participation is similarly inadequate. Liturgical words and gestures do more than facilitate a religious experience. They constitute the sacred rites through which the divine encounter is mediated. Traditional elements such as Latin, Gregorian chant, incense, and eastward prayer have acquired a privileged place through centuries of ecclesial use. The Council did not demand their abolition.  The Council demanded that they be retained.  That’s not what happened.

Reid also warns against sharply separating immutable divine elements from disposable human additions. Citing Cardinal Ratzinger, he argues that reducing the liturgy to the minimum matter and form necessary for validity treats everything else as arbitrarily changeable and severs the sacraments from their living ritual form.

He concludes that the address risks becoming ammunition in the “liturgy wars,” contrary to Pope Leo’s calls for unity and legitimate diversity. Reid urges the Pope to follow Benedict XVI’s more generous policy of making room for everything permitted by the faith, thereby fostering liturgical peace rather than renewed polarization.

One of the important points raised by Reid is Leo’s use, while reading what was prepared for him no doubt in the Dicastery under Roche (enemy of things traditional), of the word “thus”.  A small, but consequential word.  Here is Reid with my emphases:

And in his general audience today the Holy Father — intentionally or not — has certainly rallied the troops of those on the Vatican II fundamentalist side of the war (who cling to the reformed rites more rigidly than any so-called ‘traditionalist’ ever known).

He did so in the simple line: “the liturgical reform promoted by the Second Vatican Council is thus firmly rooted in the living tradition of the Church.” His “thus” implies a deduction and a decision that the demands of Sacrosanctum Concilium n. 23 that “there must be no innovations unless the good of the Church genuinely and certainly requires them; and [NB!] care must be taken that any new forms adopted should in some way grow organically from forms already existing” were respected. And if they were, there would be no problem — there would be no grounds for talk about a “reform of the reform” or of a need to continue to celebrate the unreformed rites.

The problem is, however, that whoever in the Dicastery of Divine Worship most probably put these words in the mouth of the Holy Father has had him utter the greatest liturgical non-sequitur of the past sixty or so years. So too, whilst the “thus” is clearly believed by the drafter, it does not follow from the evidence produced in the text. An undergraduate in any reputable faculty would have such work returned to him as unsatisfactory.

Do you see what that “thus” does?   

It legitimizes all of the innovations in the Novus Ordo that obviously did NOT develop organically from existing forms … as if they did.   

Again, the changes to the priest’s prayers at the offertory provides just one example.  The Novus Ordo Offertory prayers were modeled on Jewish Berakoth (blessing) prayers.

Vetus Ordo

Accept, O holy Father, almighty and eternal God, this unspotted host, which I, Thy unworthy servant, offer unto Thee, my living and true God, for my innumerable sins, offenses, and negligences, and for all here present: as also for all faithful Christians, both living and dead, that it may avail both me and them for salvation unto life everlasting. Amen.   …  O God, who, in creating human nature, didst wonderfully dignify it, and still more wonderfully restore it, grant that, by the Mystery of this water and wine, we may be made partakers of His divine nature, who vouchsafed to be made partaker of our human nature, even Jesus Christ our Lord, Thy Son, who with Thee, liveth and reigneth in the unity of the Holy Ghost, God: world without end. Amen.

Novus Ordo

Blessed are you, Lord, God of all creation. Through your goodness we have this bread to offer, which earth has given and human hands have made. It will become for us the bread of life. …  Blessed are you, Lord, God of all creation. Through your goodness we have this wine to offer, fruit of the vine and work of human hands. It will become our spiritual drink.

The Novus Ordo prayers obviously grew out of the existing TLM offertory prayers, right?  It is clear.  Thus, they reflect the conciliar mandate that changes must grow organically from existing forms.  Right?  RIGHT?!?

You might have your own four letter contribution at this point.

You see what they do, of course.  That side will always… always… demand that you deny the concrete evidence, what your senses, including common sense, tell you, and accept whatever they assert as the new, current truth.