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.
Dear Fr Z,
In response to your invitation to provide our own four-letter responses to His Holiness’s misuse of “thus”, I can only say that those of us familiar with Australian colloquial usage will be nothing less than thrilled by his description of the Novus Ordo as, inter alia, “rooted”.
(You may very well want to google this thoroughly for yourself before approving this post from me; but you did invite it :-)
In any case, please keep up your great work.
God bless, Paul
When the pope asserts something, it carries certain weight, no? I am so sick of traddies refusing to accept anything until they have pulled it into the narrow intellectual prison they have created for themselves and written ten million words debating the meaning of the word is.
Until TLM devotees develop a certain docility towards the Roman pontiff I think I would rather spend eternity listening to Gifts of Finest Wheat than spend 10 minutes in their company.
[And yet, here you are. Please don’t let us keep you from going somewhere else.]
Thank you for your summary, I sometimes find Dom Alcuin a bit much:-)
With regard to the Offertory prayers, I prepared a pamphlet (in pre-Summorum Pontificum days) comparing the respective Offertory prayers of the 1962 and 1970 Missals in parallel columns; they were part of the TLM info packets that we used to hand out at diocesan events, etc. Folks were shocked to see the vast tracts of empty space in the 1970 column; some thought they’d gotten a copy with a printing error! I always felt that comparison was one of the most useful ways of depicting what really happened to the Mass between 1964 and 1971, and why there were people like us fighting for the TLM!
I’ve discovered there are Catholics who think the main change in the Mass was switching to the vernacular. They have no idea that old prayers were changed & deleted or new ones made up. They really think it was about updating to not using Latin. No one wants to learn Latin so they don’t understand the point of TLM.
“When the pope asserts something, it carries certain weight, no?”
Maybe generally, yes, but the “certain weight” of the mere fact that the assertion was made is rather low. And when the assertion is made contrary to the available evidence and without supporting itself in the slightest, Catholics are not to believe it “perinde ac si cadaver essent.”
“Until TLM devotees develop a certain docility”
How much docility is satisfactory? Sounds judgmental…
“would rather spend eternity listening to Gifts of Finest Wheat than spend 10 minutes in their company.”
Todos, todos, todos… go out to the fringes… except for the trads below the mandatory threshold of docility to every twitch of the papal pen and tongue, am I right??
Andrea Grillo is having a field day with this. He’s posted about it SEVEN times since yesterday. “After forty years of captivity, first Francis and now Leo are restoring dignity to the Liturgical Reform.” he titles one of his screeds. He said that in light of Leo’s teaching, it is time to eliminate us from the Church.
Thank you for this!
Not having followed the link, yet, I did check the Italian original of the sentence: it has “dunque” which seems indeed ‘thus’ – though the dictionary I checked tells me there is also an expression “Va dunque!” If not implied, might that yet convey ‘part of the message’ for anyone with trenchant questions?
Sadly, there are already traditionalists insisting that, “No, what Pope Leo REALLY meant is that the VII documents are actually calling for the TLM, and NOT the Novus Ordo. In fact, it’s like Pope Benedict himself gave this address.” Yeah. Sure.
I’m no longer capable of the mental gymnastics required to be a Traditionalist Popesplainer. I leave that vigorous exercise and inevitable disappointment to more limber minds. I’ll take Grillo, Roche, and the actual words of Leo at their face value.
Meanwhile, I know Catholic couples with newborn babies who are delaying the baptism for several weeks in order for an FSSP priest to arrive and provide the Traditional form of the sacrament, while the diocesan priests and pastors who are RIGHT HERE have been ordered by the bishop to deny traditional baptism. (and, of course, they’re fully complying) Not sure how this is helping to save souls or promote unity in the Church, but I’m thinking these priests and bishops are going to have to answer that question to a Higher Authority at some point. And I ain’t talking about the pope.
Father Zuhlsdorf,
With great respect for you and the zeal and love you have for God and his Church, I can’t help but say that perhaps Fr. Reid and you are reading too much intent into the words that were spoken. You are correct in all the points you make about the liturgy itself. Who could debate this? But the mistrust is just too much for me. He got one word wrong. Why are we crucifying him for it? [Who’s exaggerating now?] Let him be wrong, at least in this. It’s not going to end the Church. She’s much stronger than that, even given how weak she is at this time.
Let’s all pray for Pope Leo. If everyone reading this comment said a prayer for him, it would do much good.
With filial respect and love.
[Thanks for the comment. If you drop a stone from a foot above the ground, it doesn’t do much damage. If you drop it from a great height – say, from the See of Peter – it potentially does great harm. Words are important. One word can have great impact, especially from on high. For example, and this is a bit dramatic to make my point, in July 1945, the Japanese prime minister Kantaro Suzuki used mokusatsu (“to ignore” or “withhold comment”) concerning the Potsdam Declaration. International reports rendered it as “reject with contempt.” That translation reinforced the Allied belief that Japan had refused the ultimatum preceding the atomic bombings. Results followed. We are in a situation today where people hardly care about papal pronouncements anymore. The last 15 years or so has so downgraded them that not many pay a lot of attention even when encyclicals come forth. If we want that trend to continue, sure, let’s just gloss over words from the Roman Pontiff and not bother to figure out what he is really saying. What’s worse? Use a fine tooth comb with a papal text or not bother to discern its nuances? There is a tension between those approaches. In medio stat virtus? Find it.]
@Uncle Mike – with the Council of Nicea and hundreds of years of fighting over one of the biggest heresies in early Church history coming down to the difference of “like substance” vs. “same substance” – the Church has a long history of understanding that specific words are extremely important.
And please understand that frustration with papal carelessness in words and decrees does not mean one is not also praying for the pope. My kids and I pray every day, multiple times a day, for Pope Leo (and also did for every day of the horrible and unnecessarily cruel reign of Pope Francis). However, concern for the Church and the Pope does not mean one has to fawn all over the current Pope.
Fr. Z:
Yes, Father, but he is also a human being with limitations. He’s going to make mistakes. Thank you sincerely for your reply. Please know of my (little) prayers for you and the Pope.