St. Thomas More Chicago

Fr. Robert Behnke

   In case you missed it, last Sunday at this Mass Father Campbell delivered what in my opinion was an excellent homily, using as his touchstone the recently issued instruction of the Congregation of the Faith’s instruction Ecclesiae Universae, which was sent to all the world’s bishops to clarify aspects of the motu proprio of the Holy Father Pope Benedict XVI Summorum Pontificum, in which the Pope extended the use of this ancient form of the Mass to any who desire it.  Among the practical issues settled are May one receive Holy Communion in the hand?—No; May altar girls be used?—No; May the vernacular be used for the epistle and gospel?-Only at Low Mass; Must the group requesting the ancient Mass have existed before the issuance of the motu proprio in July of 2007—No.  Using the recent instruction clarifying the motu proprio as a starting point, Father Campbell eloquently traced the ups and downs of the history of the Mass from the council until the present.  Today I would just like to add a few of my own thoughts and observations.
                Father Campbell remarked, I believe, that the decree of the Second Vatican Council on the liturgy, Sacrosanctum Consilium, was the first decree issued by the council.  Sacrosanctum Consilium was, in fact, issued in December 1963, only a year and two months from the council’s beginning.  This is an important point, because it demonstrates the supreme importance of the liturgy—especially the liturgy of the Mass—in the life of the Church.  As you heard last week, there really was nothing revolutionary in that document.  Rather than being revolutionary, I think it would be accurate to call the document evolutionary, because it evolved from the continuing evolution of the liturgy—again, especially from the liturgy of the Mass.  In the 1950s and 60s, I was growing up in a very traditional parish on the far northwest side of Chicago (St. Francis Borgia was so traditional that, even though the mandate had come down, not from the council as Father Campbell noted last Sunday—not from Rome—but from the Archdiocese of Chicago that by a certain date Mass had to be celebrated facing the people, the pastor Father Stokes had the altar in the new church which opened on Christmas of 1964 firmly cemented facing not the people but facing the large crucifix hanging over that altar—just as we have here); yet, during the 1950s, we ask a parish were singing English hymns at all Sunday Low Masses; at daily school Masses, which were all High Masses, the entire congregation—children and adults—sang all the ordinary parts of the Mass—Kyrie, Gloria, Credo, Sanctus, Agnus Dei—and of course they were sung in Latin.  This was the express wish of all the popes throughout the 20th century, beginning with Pope St. Pius X.  So my childhood parish—and a number of others (I found this out when I went to Quigley North for high school and compared parishes with other high school seminarians of the time—were doing what the popes had asked; what the council taught about the liturgy simply evolved from what the popes had been saying and what many were already doing in some form.
              Another point of importance demonstrating how the liturgy of the Mass was evolving concerns the missal we are using for this Mass.  What the 2007 motu proprio of Pope Benedict insists upon is that, for this form of the ancient Mass, the missal to be used is the missal of 1962, sometimes now referred to as the missal of Blessed John XXIII.  But that missal contained only two small changes—two small evolutions: the addition of the name of St. Joseph to the Roman canon, and the addition of four optional prefaces.  But the missal of 1962 itself followed the missal of just two years earlier—the missal of 1960—and that missal had many changes or evolutions: the second Confiteor just before Holy Communion was eliminated; the whole system of the liturgical rankings of feasts was overhauled (if you have a missal issued in the 1950s or before, the ranks of feasts will be simple, double, double major, double of the second class, double of the first class; in 1960 the ranks became simply first class, second class, third class, fourth class.  Before 1960, whenever the Gloria was not said or sung, the Mass ended with the priest saying or singing not Ite, missa est, but Benedicamus Domino; beginning in 1960, Benedicamus Domino was sung only when something liturgical followed immediately after Mass, like a procession.  And if you have even older missals, you will find other items that have been since changed or eliminated: the Holy Week liturgies were drastically changed by Pope Pius XII in 1951 and again in 1955.  Most major feasts once had octaves—the feast was commemorated in some manner at Mass for eight days.  One of the 1950s missals eliminated all octaves except Christmas, Easter, and Pentecost.  The point is that the Council recognized this ongoing evolution in the liturgy of the Mass and gave it renewed direction: congregational singing in Latin, the use of the vernacular for the scriptures and the peoples’ sung parts, but the retention of Latin as the universal Church’s liturgical language; all this is what Pope Benedict calls the hermeneutic of continuity.  But, as Father Campbell said last Sunday, this is hardly what happened after the council in most places.  Pope Benedict recognizes and admits this by his making the ancient form of the Mass readily available to all who want it—their request can now neither be ignored nor refused.  The Holy Father also tells the Church that this form of the Mass—the 1962 missal of Blessed John XXIII, being neither a relic nor a museum piece—will continue to evolve in the future, with new prefaces and new saints added to its calendar.  The pope admits that the 1970 missal of Paul VI was, the pope says, a new missal, rather than an evolution from the prior missals of 1962, and those coming as a result of the council’s decree on the sacred liturgy—the missals of 1964, 1965, and 1967.  There is a well-worn story about Pope Paul VI; the Holy Father enters the sacristy on the day after Pentecost in 1970.  On the cabinet, the sacristan has laid out green Mass vestments.  The Holy Father asks Why are the vestments not red for the Pentecost octave?  The reply is The Pentecost octave is abolished in the new missal?  Who did this, asks the pope.  Comes the reply: You did, Holy Father?
                  Dancing in the aisles; drums and banjos and electric guitars; vestments of burlap and drapery and upholstery materials; Michael, row the boat ashore, Kumbaya, and the famous line from Luther’s A Mighty Fortress is Our God:…For still our ancient foe doth seek to work us woe; His might and power are great and armed with cruel fate, On earth is not his equal…referring to the pope; Eagles’ Wings, and hands dirty from holding and grasping, now receiving the very Body of the Risen Lord; standing ‘round the altar, standing for the consecration, standing for Holy Communion—puling, saccharin melodies and self-congratulating lyrics: none of these things was either envisioned nor required by anything the Second Vatican Council said or did.  And one of the greatest mysteries to me is the illogical and arrogant opposition on the part of many clerics—especially my age and older—to any use of this ancient and reverent and God-centered form of the Mass; it is a mystery because, for those my age and older, it had to be this very form of the Mass that attracted them to the priesthood, that nourished their vocation in its earliest stages of growth.  Likewise, it was this form of the Mass that produced countless saints.  So many martyrs died for this form of the Mass.  So many were converted by this form of the Mass.  So many vocations to the priesthood, to the religious life, to faithful Catholic marriages were inspired by this Mass.  Pope St. Gregory the Great, Pope St. Gregory VII, St. Louis IX, St. Joan of Arc, St. Dominic, St. Francis of Assisi and St. Clare of Assisi, Ss. John Fisher and Thomas More, St. John Vianney, St. Elizabeth Seton, St. Katherine Drexel, Pope St. Pius X, St. John Bosco and St. Dominic Savio, St. Maria Goretti, St. Maximilian Kolbe, St. Padre Pio, St. Josemaria Escriva—the list could go on and on: they all met God in this very form of the Mass.  So it is a mystery to me why so many denigrate and ridicule and insult this Mass; I pray it is out of gross ignorance rather than out of gross malice.  Perhaps the greatest thing about Universae Ecclesiae is the pope’s insistence that that this ancient form of the Mass be given the honor and respect due to the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass.  Anything less, whether out of ignorance or malice, is truly gross.
                        St. Thomas Aquinas (who offered this form of the Mass each day his entire life as a priest, and who was inspired by this Mass to write such beautiful liturgical prose and poetry—the Pange Lingua/Tantum Ergo being a single example), when speaking of the variety of religious orders in the Church, liked to cite the psalm which, in the Latin version, describes the Church as circumdata varietate—surrounded by variety.  The pains and purgatories of the years after the council have taught us to treat variety with more than a little caution, since variety and pluralism come in two forms: legitimate and anarchic.  Pope Benedict wishes a legitimate liturgical variety in the present moment of the Church’s life: he names this the ordinary and the extraordinary forms of the Mass.  The Church must not misunderstand the meaning of these words: the Mass of 1970—what is often called the Novus Ordo—for the present moment is the ordinary form in that is continues to be what most Catholics ordinarily experience when they attend Mass.  The ancient Mass—the extraordinary form—is called that only because at the present moment its frequency of use is extraordinary when compared to the use of the Novus Ordo.  The pope clearly states that he wants both forms to be available for all, and each form to enrich the other.  Where God is leading the Church in all this remains yet a mystery.  But we have both comfort and the assurance of divine hope from the revealed word of God in today’s epistle of St. James—one of the so-called Catholic epistle: Every good gift and every perfect gift is from above, coming down from the Father of Lights, with Whom there is no change, nor shadow of alteration….  Until Our Lord comes again in glory, the Mass will always be what it has always been: the Mass.
Given The Fourth Sunday after Easter