The Roman rite: replaced or renewed?

By Fr. John W. Mole, OMI, Whither the Roman Rite?, Word of God Hour, Inc., P.O. Box 40067, 2515 Bank St., Ottawa, ON, K1V 0W8, 2000, pages 170, ([e-mail]).

Huge numbers of Roman Catholics today are unaware that 37 years ago (until 1964) the Catholic Mass was celebrated entirely in Latin, with many other ceremonial differences: a railing to fence off the sanctuary, at which communicants knelt and received Holy Communion on the tongue, and a great "high altar" where the priest prayed facing God, not the people. These are a conspicuous few of the hundreds of differences in the Catholic Mass (Roman rite) until the 1960s which are remembered today by a diminishing number of older worshippers.

Huge Catholic numbers are likewise unaware that today there is a large and growing number of fellow-Catholics who are offended and unsatisfied by the new way (Novus Ordo) of saying the Catholic Mass, and who earnestly seek out a place, with a priest, where the old Latin Mass is surviving. Or else they plead for more elements of the old way to be preserved, such as Gregorian Chant, a central tabernacle, well-trained altar boys (not girls), and so on.

Never in the history of the Catholic Church has there been such a revolutionary change in the Mass (and the rest of the Liturgy) as has occurred since the 1960s. Has it been a harmful revolution? Indeed it has! Millions of Catholics have stopped practising their faith in this period, tens of thousands of priests have quit the priesthood, religious orders are dying, and whole new currents of heretical opinion are flowing through the surviving Church.

How do we understand this enormous historical collapse? How can we grasp things, and take some deeper responsibility for what is happening?

Father John W. Mole, a senior Oblate priest-scholar in Ottawa, has provided a most helpful gift for our guidance. His book Whither the Roman Rite? analyzes the events in Catholic worship since (as well as before) those crucial 1960s. He handles with skill the theology, the piety, the personalities; he explores the movements, the plots and the politics; he illuminates the history, the holiness and its absence. With a professional background in journalism in the philosophy of communications, in religious bureaucracy, in military chaplaincy, and with a rich grasp of human culture, Father Mole displays in almost every paragraph some flash of his erudition and perception, always based on his Catholic faithfulness and charity.

But he does not hide his dismay at the consequences of a too radical and hasty change of the Roman Rite Mass just after the Second Vatican Council, 1962-65. The council bishops had intended a moderate reform, but "experts" had cleverly included a line about "even more radical adaptation of the liturgy" in the Council's constitution on the Liturgy (sec. 40), and Fr. A. Bugnini, who headed the Vatican commission to design and implement the changes, went ahead with drastic efficiency.

Pope Paul VI, who had appointed him, also approved his new "Roman Missal" in 1969. But by 1975, the now Archbishop Bugnini had been revealed as wild and dangerous to the faith in his methods. He was abruptly fired and sent to an Islamic country as papal envoy, in face-saving disgrace. Fr. Mole recounts dozens of fascinating details about the inner workings and personal dealings in the Vatican. He speaks with restraint, but also with candour, about human error, and especially sees poor liturgical judgement in Pope Paul VI.

Part I of the book (Chap. 2-4) tells the "Story of the Roman Rite" from the 4th century to the 1965 Council. Part II (Chap. 5-7) is the "Interruption of the story", the Bugnini attack on the Rite, and the "extremely grave damage" (a phrase of Cardinal Ratzinger, seen as a brilliant, faithful churchman by the author). This damage is suffered by the liturgy and by the Church. Part III, "Resumption of the story," is Fr. Mole's powerfully optimistic vision of the liturgical future, requiring at least decades of careful ongoing reform, and engaging the energies of popular and papal efforts to bring "reality" and "truth" and "tradition" back to Catholic liturgy.

Father Mole's overview discerns three significant streams in the Roman Catholic Liturgy today. One is traditional, maintaining the old Latin Mass. It includes the regretfully nows-chismatic Society of St. Pius X, begun by the late Archbishop Lefebvre of France. It is one million strong, with 500 priests and about four bishops. The faithful counterforce to this is the Priestly Fraternity of St. Peter, with over 50 priests, many vocations, and rapid growth in many countries, despite hostility by many bishops who see it as divisive.

The second stream is moderate-conservative, and wishes to gradually reform the new liturgy back to what was intended by the bishops of Vatican II in the sixties with full respect for all the values of their constitution document, not just the "radical" elements. This stream is seen in the Adoremus Society of Fr. Joseph Fessio; and the Society for Catholic Liturgy of Msgr. F. Mannion, Salt Lake City. Similar groups exist in France and England.

The third stream is the present majority of today's clergy and people, who are following and developing the new rite (Novus Ordo) of Catholic liturgy. Fr. Mole teaches that liturgy arises by custom, not by law. Our new liturgy suffers from having been "fabricated," not having grown organically in a healthy Christian culture. We have a gawky rite, not a venerable one.

Our author hopes and prays for a peaceful and fruitful co-existence of these three streams, leading toward a new Catholic worship in God's good time, worthy in culture and faithful in doctrine. He sees the abundance of young people and seminarians in the first stream as a sign of the richness it has to offer to the other two.

May all bishops, pastors, and liturgy lovers find time to read this superb Catholic essay, Whither the Roman Rite?