Wide circles of Catholics abroad have been raising a question of conscience of undeniable importance. Brazilian readers have been poorly informed about this, making it impossible for them to follow the debates of great importance for the future of the Church that are developing around this issue.
Since it is a duty of journalistic ethics to keep the public informed of everything in contemporary reality that may legitimately interest them, and since it seems to us that our Catholic media cannot remain on the sidelines of this issue, Catolicismo is dedicating this issue to it.
These are doubts and perplexities expressed about the recent reform of the Mass. Even among clergy and theologians, there are those who see in the new Ordo an ‘opening’ towards Protestants (in the photo below, a Lutheran Supper celebrated according to the Swedish liturgy).
In the photo on the right, Paul VI appears alongside the six Protestants who participated as observers in the work of the pontifical commission charged with drafting the new text of the Mass. To the Pope’s right is Mr Max Thurian, a Lutheran from the monastery of Taizé.
In the apostolic letter Ecclesia Dei of 2 July 1988, John Paul II decrees that
“there must be respect everywhere for the spirit of those who feel tied to the traditional Latin liturgy, through an ample and generous application of the directives which were already emanated by the Apostolic See some time ago, for the use of the Roman Missal according to the typical edition of 1962” .126
He also asks the bishops and all those who carry out pastoral ministry in the Church to “guarantee respect for the just aspirations” of all the Catholic faithful “who feel they are tied to some previous liturgical and disciplinary forms of the Latin tradition”.
This important document considers what happened in the Church after Vatican Council II: the “Lefèbvre case”, which reached its climax with the unlawful Episcopal consecrations of 30 June 1988, is only the worrisome symptom of a widespread uneasiness that followed the liturgical reform that culminated in the Novus Ordo Missae of 1969.127 “The theological attraction of the Tridentine Mass” stated Cardinal Alfons Stickler “compares with the theological deficiencies of the Mass that emerged from Vatican II.”128 The result of the liturgical reform, according to Cardinal Ratzinger himself, “in its concrete realization (…) was not a reanimation but a devastation”.129
When, in 1969, the new Ordo Missae came into effect, some important members of the hierarchy and indeed many theologians and lay persons made a close criticism of the new liturgy of the Mass.130 Since October of that year, Cardinals Ottaviani and Bacci had presented Paul VI with a Brief critical examen of the Novus Ordo Missae, edited by a select group of theologians of different nationalities. In the letter they addressed to the Pontiff, it was stated that
“the Novus Ordo Missae (…) represents both as a whole and in its particularities a remarkable departure from the Catholic theology of the Holy Mass, as formulated in the twenty-second session of the Tridentine Council which, by definitely fixing the ‘canons’ of the rite, erected an insuperable barrier against any heresy that should attack the integrity of the mystery”.131
From that date on the appeals of faithful of every nationality began to multiply: they asked for the re-establishment, or at least the “par condicio” for the traditional Mass.132 We should also mention a “memorandum” in 1971 in which over one hundred important personages from the whole world asked the Holy See “to consider with the greatest seriousness the great responsibility that it would have in the history of the human spirit if it should not allow the traditional Mass to continue to exist”.133
Plinio Corrêa de Oliveira carefully followed the phases of the controversy that developed in the press and specialized magazines and kept his fellow countrymen abreast of the matter.134 The problem concerned every Catholic and, as such, the Brazilian thinker could not be indifferent since he was so attentive and sensitive to every matter that concerned the Church in any way. He studied the matter and had it studied, and sympathized with the study of Arnaldo V. Xavier da Silveira.135 However, at the request of a very highly placed ecclesiastical authority, he abstained from going public with the subject matter of the book.136
The conclusions of the book were the object of a solid and profound consensus among the members of the several TFPs without, however, becoming an official position of the associations.137
We may perhaps notice an analogy between the position that he assumed with regard to the Ostpolitik and that towards the Novus Ordo of Paul VI: in both cases, he demonstrated a “resistance” to what he felt was damaging to the faith and an imposition on his conscience.138 But whereas the position he assumed towards Ostpolitik was public, because it concerned that social order that is the responsibility of the laity to establish according to the doctrine of the Church, his attitude towards the new Mass remained extra-official and personal. Encouraged by the opinions of numerous distinguished bishops and theologians, Plinio Corrêa de Oliveira wished to remain faithful to the liturgical tradition in which he had been educated, convinced that the problem, in any case, lay within the more extensive crisis of the post-Conciliar Church, and that only in this light could the problem be one day resolved.
Notes:
126. Cf. the text of the Apostolic Letter by John Paul II in AAS, vol. 80, 1988, pp. 1495-7. Many religious institutes recognized by the Holy See have obtained permission to celebrate Holy Mass according to the traditional Roman Missal. Among these, the Society of St Peter, the Fraternity of St Vincent Ferrer, Opus Sacerdotale, the Benedictine monks of the Monastery of Sainte Madeleine du Barroux, the Institute of Christ the King Sovereign Priest, of Gricigliano.
127. On 3 April 1969 the apostolic Constitution Missale Romanum It was made up of two documents: the Institutio generalis missalis Romani and the new Ordo Missae in the strict sense of the word, that is the new text of the Mass and of the rubrics that accompany it. One of its main authors, Mgr Annibale Bugnini, secretary of the Consilium ad exsequendam Constitutionem de Sacra Liturgia, in his book La riforma liturgica (1948-1975) (Roma, Edizioni Liturgiche, 1983), reiterates the role played by Paul VI, who he indicates as “the real achiever of the liturgical reform.” “The Pope had seen everything, had followed everything, had examined everything, had approved everything” (p. 13).
128. Cardinal Alfons Stickler, L’attrattiva teologica della Messa Tridentina, Conference held in New York at the Christi fideles association in May 1995.
129. Cardinal Ratzinger, Klaus Gamber. L’intrépidité d’un vrai témoin, preface to Mgr Klaus Gamber, La réforme liturgique en question, (Le Barroux, Editions Sainte-Madeleine, 1992), p. 6.
130. Among the numerous critical studies on the “New Mass” and Liturgical Reform, for the most part composed of lay studies, we mention: A. Vidigal Xavier da Silveira, La nouvelle Messe de Paul VI qu’en penser?; Jean Vaquié, La Révolution liturgique, Chiré-en-Montreuil, Diffusion de la Pensée Française, 1971; Louis Salleron, La Nouvelle Messe, Paris, Nouvelles Editions Latines, 1976 (1971); Wolfgang Waldstein, Hirtensorge und Liturgiereform, Schaan (Fl), Lumen Gentium, 1977; Mgr K. Gamber, Die Reform der Römischen Liturgie, Regensburg, F. Pustet, 1979 (this work in the French version (cit.) contains prefaces by Cardinals Silvio Oddi, Joseph Ratzinger and Alfons M. Stickler); Michael Davies, Pope Paul’s New Mass, Dickinson (Texas), The Angelus Press, 1980.
131. The study, promoted by Una Voce-Italia, was republished by the same association together with a New Critical Examen of the “Novus Ordo Missae” the work of a French liturgicist and theologian (Il Novus Ordo Missae: due esami critici, Una Voce, suppl. to nos. 48-9 of the January-July 1979 bulletin).
132. Three international pilgrimages of Catholics took place in Rome to reconfirm loyalty to the traditional Mass and to the catechism of St Pius X (Cf. Guglielmo Rospigliosi, “La manifestazione dei cattolici tradizionalisti riconfermano la fedeltà al messale e al catechismo”, Il Tempo, 19 June 1970). A collection of the appeals up to 1980 in … Et pulsanti aperietur (Luke 11:10), Clarens, FI-Una Voce, 1980.
133. Among those who signed were: Romano Amerio, Augusto Del Noce, Marius Schneider, Marcel Brion, Julien Green, Henri de Montherlant, Jorge Luis Borges, the English writers Agatha Christie, Robert Graves, Graham Green, Malcolm Muggeridge, Bernard Wall, the violinist Yehudi Menuhin. Cf. the text and the list of those who signed, Una Voce, no. 7, July 1971.
134. Cf., for example, “O direito de saber”, Folha de S. Paulo, 25 January 1970 and, Catolicismo, no. 230, February 1970, in which he informed the Brazilian public of the first demonstrations of resistance to the Novus Ordo. Bishop de Castro Mayer published on his part a Carta Pastoral sôbre o Santo Sacríficio da Missa, in no. 227 (November 1969) of Catolicismo. In 1971, a large and documented article appeared edited by Gregorio Vivanco Lopes, “Sôbre a nova missa: repercussões que o público brasileiro ainda não conhece”, Catolicismo, no. 242, February 1971.
135. The already referred to study by Arnaldo Xavier da Silveira profoundly analyses the Novus Ordo taking into consideration complex theological, canonical and moral problems of authority. The book was launched in São Paulo in 1970 and was privately circulated before being published in French in 1975 under the title La Nouvelle Messe de Paul VI: qu’en penser? . The work merged three studies that had already been published in portuguese: Considerações sobre o Ordo Missae de Paulo VI (São Paulo, June 1970), Modificações introduzidas no Ordo de 1969 (São Paulo, August 1970), A infalibilidade das leis eclesiásticas (São Paulo, January 1971). “In his book, Mr. Arnaldo V. Xavier da Silveira expressly affirms his unshakeable fidelity to the doctrine and discipline of the Church. And if he raises certain delicate problems of Theology or Canon Law, he does so by first stating that he obeys, to the fullest extent perscribed by Canon Law, what the Church herself decides. This is precisely the TFP’s position. Therefore, our consciences are entirely tranquil as regards our entire union with the Holy Roman Catholic and Apostolic Church” (P. Corrêa de Oliveira, Sobre o decreto antiTFP de D. Isnard, “Folha de S. Paulo,” 27 May 1973; P. Corrêa de Oliveira, “The Vatican policy of distension”).
136. Cf., Sobre o decreto antiTFP de D. Isnard.
137. “Once the position of the TFPs as associations has been defined, it should be observed that their members and volunteers, as Catholics, personally feel the repercussions of the specifically religious problems that have convulsed the Church ever since the Second Vatican Council. It is inevitable that, simply in their capacity as Catholics, they should exchange their opinions abut these matters. In fact, this exchange of opinions has never given rise to dissensions. On the contrary, a firm and well matured consensus has arisen regarding the principal themes concerning the mysterious process of self-destruction the Church is in and about the smoke of Satan that has penetrated Her. (…) The entirely personal consensus of the members and volunteers of the TFP in certain matters foreign to the civic sphere does not consitute the official thinking of the TFP. But it gives rise to an extra-official consensus in the TFP. Cf. Imbroglio, Detraction, Delirium. Remarks on a report about the TFPs, (Pleasntville (NY) , The American Society for the Defense of Tradition, Family and Property, 1983), pp. 113- 14.