Open letter on the Canadian missal (regarding changes to the Mass liturgy).

Cardinal Ratzinger, a first-class theologian, and doctrine watch-dog for the Pope, has this past April published his memoirs. There he claims that the Church has suffered extremely serious damage since 1969 because of the drastic changes in the Mass liturgy, the novus ordo approved by Pope Paul VI. "Novus ordo" (new order) is shorthand for the new way of saying Mass, with corresponding new rites for all the other Sacraments. Some Catholics have always clung firmly to the Old latin Mass, variously called "Tridentine" or "of St. Pius V," or "of 1962" (the last year when it was slightly changed). Their numbers increase annually, and more bishops are allowing it in one or two churches, perhaps grudgingly. Meanwhile, the "progressive" Catholic Church is boldly undertaking a new English translation of the New Mass, with much new material, that is, changes, added. In February, the National Office of Liturgy (Ottawa) sent to all the Canadian bishops a huge mailing of well over a thousand pages of this new missal, being only the first instalment thereof. It is important to warn the whole Church in Canada of the dangers represented by this liturgical monster. I do so in the form of an open letter to our bishops. Perhaps interested readers might photocopy it, and add their own comments, and send same to their own bishop.

Dear Bishop,

Further to the February mailing of the new draft translation of the Roman Missal, I write to you some reflections on this liturgical material.

The rendering into English of the Latin, especially the collects and prefaces, is more faithful and attractive than was the old ICEL (International Commission for the English language) translation, in use up to the present. This is commendable. But there remain many arbitrary changes from the Latin. Some of these are feminist wordings in the so-called "inclusive" language.

Expanded text

The most obvious new trait in this package is expansion of the Catholic Liturgy. Large quantities of new prayers (not in the official Latin edition), new rubrics, and new "pastoral notes" have been added.

Thus, where the Latin Missal has exactly 1,000 pages, this new draft has 811 pages for the Sundays only, planned to be volume one of a three-volume Missal (Sacramentary). We can expect the total page count to rise to 2,000 plus. The same has happened for other liturgical books going from Latin to Canadian English. The Vatican's Latin funeral ritual has 91 pages (1969), while the Canadian version of 1990 has XVI + 433 pages. It is to be feared that priests, overwhelmed by all this quantity, will ignore the official book and settle for a people's pamphlet edition or "missalette," as, in fact, often happens.

New additions

Not only is the liturgical text greatly expanded, but it comes to us supplemented with an introduction (123 pp.) and pastoral notes (108 pp.), these being separate and new publications with no equivalent in Latin. These would demand not merely hours but weeks of study to do them justice. None of us has this kind of time. But why is it necessary in the first place? Why are the Catholic Liturgy books from the Vatican deemed to be so incomplete or so incomprehensible?

The reformed liturgy was supposed to exhibit a "noble simplicity" and "not require much explanation," be "short, clear," with "no innovations unless the good of the Church genuinely and certainly requires them." So we read in the Vatican Council's Constitution on the Liturgy, sections 23 and 34. The new ICEL-Canada liturgy appears to contradict all these rules of good Catholic liturgy.

Canadian liturgy?

There is a further danger in this expansion: that we may be witnessing the subversion or erosion of the Roman Catholic liturgy in favour of a "Canadian liturgy." The lex orandi (official version) is the Vatican edition. Might we not lose this precious statement of Catholic Faith in a ballooning Canadian rite where the Roman prayers are lost in the shuffle?

"Liturgy is received, not created," a great theologian once said; it may have been Romano Guardini. Much of the present flurry of creating liturgy is inspired not by faith but by trends and fashions, which come more from the spirit of the times than from the Spirit of God.

Not for the laity

Another drawback to giant liturgical books is their implicit exclusion from the hands of the faithful. A precious aid to Catholic faith and piety in our younger years (before 1960) was the beautifully bound daily missal which people brought to church. Such a handbook in future is going to be prohibitively heavy, expensive and complex. Throwaway missalettes should have been an interim, makeshift substitute. These will become permanently necessary if the liturgy yields to proliferation and novelty as the present missal package does.

A request

Could the bishops arrange for an alternative, literal, reverent translation of the Roman liturgical books? Its characterictics would be exactly those of the Latin typical edition, with nothing added, changed, or removed. The people's parts would be in the current approved translation so as not to confuse the faithful. Such an edition would win countless friends in every English-speaking nation, and be of great benefit to the faith. The Vatican, or Credo, or Adoremus, but not ICEL, could be approached to supply this translation. If the bishops also like the enlarged liturgy, the two could co-exist for a period of evaluation.

The question remains: where is the official mandate thus to expand or change the Catholic Liturgy as in the draft herein discussed?

Hoping that these remarks will be helpful, I remain . . .

Father Somerville is a pastor, liturgist and a composer who has a licentiate in Sacramental Theology from San Anselmo University, Rome.