The Holy Father, as Cardinal Ratzinger, celebrating the Traditional Mass in a Weinmar SeminaryThe Holy See announced today that the long awaited Apostolic Exhortation following the 2005 Synod on the Eucharist will be released next Tuesday and will be entitled Sacramentum Caritatis. It will be immediately available in Italian, French, English, German, Spanish and Portuguese.
There has been alot of speculation about what this document might contain, the Bishop's of the synod themselves called for a deeper sense of holiness in the Mass. The Holy Father did nothing whilst Cardinal to hide his own views on the current state of the Liturgy, if the Cardinal Electors knew little else about him, they certainly knew that.
In 2000 he published The Spirit of the Liturgy in which he said quite clearly that the present Missal "came ex nihil (out of nothing) from a committee after the Council". In this book he speaks about the importance of Mass being orientated to the ancient direction of Christian prayer, the East or at the very least to have the image of Christ at the centre of the liturgy, not the priest. He argues that the normal arrangement in parishes now gives a model of the church turned in on itself, priest looking at people, people looking at priest which mitigates against the idea of mission and the dominant idea of the Vatican Council of a pilgrim people of God. Nevertheless he is conscious of the dreadful damage that the drastic changes of the post-Council years did and not want to renew that.
That being said my wish list is:
- Encouragement to use the still valid option of facing East
- Encouragement of the use of Latin in the liturgy especially in the Ordinary, Sanctus, Agnus Dei etc
- Use of silence, especially during the Eucharistic Prayer
- Possibility of using the old offertory prayers
- Get rid of the acclamation after the Consecration
- Allow the use of the "Benedictus qui venit" after the Consecration, thus enabling the great music of the western tradition to be used more easily at Mass, Mozart, Palestrina etc
- Encourage greater reverence in the reception of Holy Communion, even if it means limiting communion under both kinds.
- Limit Concelebration
This is my top of my head list, add your own wishes in comments and next week we will see who shares the mind of the Holy Father.
18 comments:
get rid of ministers of communion
Why get rid of the Acclamation?
It would be nice to think that exact adherence to the rubrics would be reiterated as a responsibility of Bishops within their dioceses.
Your wish list is mine. One should not think for a minute that the situation is somehow better here in Roma. The Roman Rite has been effectively dismantled even in the Eternal City. Just last week I attended a "Solemn Mass" celebrated by a Cardinal in a basilica fitted out with a plexiglass "versus populum" altar, a plexiglass ambo, and plexiglass candlesticks! Behind it all was a glorious baroque altar treated as a mere background. At this same Mass there was no Latin, no plainchant, and no incense. It all makes one want to sing the Lamentations in the middle of the via della Conciliazione.
Father, you've been reading my mail...
;-)
Michael,
The Acclamations are a 1970sism which replace the cry "Blessed is he comes in the name of the Lord, Hosanna in the Highest", now tacked onto the Sanctus.
If you are using a Mass setting from anytime in the last 2,000 years, you have to either write something that fits the words of these Acclamations in the style of the composer, or say them or use a not very nice plainsong version. It doesn't work if you are using Mozart for example, whereas Mozart did write a very beautiful "Benedictus...".
Nick Bristow said:
GET RID OF ANONYMOUS
I'm afraid I clicked "delete" rather than "publish".
Encorage kneeling and genuflecting esp at Holy Communion.
Along these same lines, if you are within ready reach of a good library, you might wish to read:
"The New Eucharistic Prayers: Some Comments" by Geoffrey G. Willis, *The Heythrop Journal,* Vol. XII, No. 1 (January 1971), pp. 5-28.
Willis (1914-1982) was a scholarly Church of England clergyman who wrote a great deal on the origins of the Roman Liturgy (of which he was very fond), and this article anticipates some of the criticisms on this thread (as concerning the insertion of "acclamations" into the Eucharistic Prayer), but it goes beyond them in making a sharp critique of the three new EPs of the 1969 Ordo.
Willis in his later years wrote a book -- *A History of Early Roman Liturgy to the Death of Pope Gregory the Great* -- which was published posthumously by the Henry Bradshaw Society in 1994 and is well worth reading, and not least because of its sharp asides concerning contemporary "fancies" concerning liturgical history and practice.
Restore the prayers at the foot of the altar and the last Gospel.
Mandate reservation in the sanctuary except in cathedrals and shrines.
When Cardinal Ratzinger was elected to the Apostolic See he said to an over-optimistic traditionalist, 'Remember, I am no longer Prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, but have other responsibilities.' I have a suspicion that you and your commentators might be a little disappointed when the document is promulgated. I hope I'm wrong.
I agree with everything on Fr's list. In terms of the 1970 Eucharistic Acclamations, don't forget that the most widely used one is not even in the Missale Romanum - it's an ICEL accretion.
Willis' writings are worth reading. His comments on the new EPs is also included in the Association For Latin Liturgy's "A Voice for Our Time" (1994). I've been trying to get hold of his "A History of Early Roman Liturgy to the Death of Pope Gregory the Great" for months now, but it's out of print and difficult to find.
Slightly off-key, I know, but I hope we all realise that the great, revered Bishop Lindsay thinks that then-Cardinal Ratzinger's comments on the fabrication of the NO are "gravely irreverent" (Catholic Herald 16/2/07).
I do hope the good Emeritus of H&N is not too discomforted by whatever is in the Holy Father's Apostolic Exhortation when it is issued next week. I fear he will be somewhat apoplectic when the rumoured Motu Proprio is also published.
On the other hand, some of the roads around Grange-over-Sands(where he lives in retirement) could pass for some of the by-ways around Damascus - so there is hope yet.
"I have a suspicion that you and your commentators might be a little disappointed when the document is promulgated."
It is a wish list, in my prayer, I simply pray that the Holy Father finds the Pauline Rite some "roots" based in real scholarship.
Augustine,
Just yesterday I saw a copy of the Willis book listed for sale at either Bookfinder.com or else amazon.co.uk -- I think at 30.00 pounds, so it is not cheap. But I can assure you that it's worth having.
Btw, back in 1983, when I was a research student at Cambridge, I copied and sent to the then Prefect of the CDF a nice little scholarly article by the clergyman who subsequently edited Willis's posthumous book and wrote an introduction to it: "Eis anatolas blepsate: Orientation as a Liturgical Principle" by M. J. Moreton, in *Studia Patristica, Volume XVIII* ed. Elizabeth A. Livingstone (Oxford, 1982: Pergamon Press), pp. 575-590.
To be honest I really don't care about the apostolic exhortation. I am more interested in the so called motu propio.
William Tighe
Many thanks for information. I've checked and the Willis book is still listed. It may be the same item I searched for and ordered in September, only to be told last week that it is unobtainable. However, I've placed a new order today, so I wait in anticipation.
Thanks, too, for the details of the Moreton article. I wonder if you received a response from the then-Cardinal.
No, I never had a reply. I hope that he rec'd it. Later on (I met him only in 1985) I gave a copy to Fr. Aidan Nichols, who was pleased with it.
I don't like the Acclamation either. It's...so ridiculous, and needlessly innovative, and sappy, and...breaks so much precedent. To have all the people suddenly sing this little verse DURING the anaphora. Ugh.
But it is totally wrong to say that the "Benedictus Qui Venit" was "tacked on" to the Sanctus in the New Rite.
It was ALWAYS part of the Sanctus, an integral part. And with proper Gregorian Chant, it would always precede the consecration.
With proper chant, in fact, the priest could usually even wait to start the (silent) Canon until it was finished, as the chant is not long, longer, and ridiculously long like a lot of polyphony, which is often Baroque, over-the-top gaudiness deviating far from the medieval ideal.
In fact, the polyphony was often SO long, especially ridiculously long in the time of Mozart and such, that they couldnt reasonably wait to start the Canon after it was finished, or even finish it before the consecration...and thus started the practice of "singing over" the silent parts, and splitting up the sanctus into two parts "sung over" the canon, pausing for the consecration.
But this really a type of old rite abuse, though some people would deny it because abuses back then usually got reluctant approval in the end after becoming entrenched practice.
But singing elaborate baroque Sanctus over the canon is NOT the ideal to be promoted, especially not if you want the old rite to flourish again. It causes a disconnected, disjointed feel in the liturgy, like "two things are happening at once". The ideal is an integrated action. The whole, "priest up there doing his own thing, choir singing something the priest has already finished reading, people praying their rosaries" mentality was what led to the Novus Ordo in the first place.
The proper ideal, foreseen by the liturgical books, is the (much shorter) chant from the Graduale to be finished BEFORE the priest even starts the Canon. Polyphony that lasts so long that they have to split it up usually breaks the rule, anyway, that settings of the liturgical texts cannot repeat stuff as almost a type of troping. Palestrina's polyphony, the ideal as far as polyphony goes, sings all the words only once, and so does chant. That's what is allowed, no matter how much the long elaborations were tolerated.
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