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September 8, 2017
In the years since the Second Vatican Council, the changes to the liturgy that sprang from it have sparked debate in some corners of the Catholic Church. Some have argued that some of the changes went too far and they have called for a return to some of the wording and practices of the celebration of the Mass before the Council.
Father Michael Johnston, center, Administrator of the Diocese of Nashville, celebrates a Mass at the Cathedral of the Incarnation in 2016. Having the priest face the congregation during Mass, instead of away from the congregation with his back turned, was one of the liturgical reforms of Vatican II that Pope Francis recently confirmed as “irreversible.” Tennessee Register file photo by Rick Musacchio
But in recent comments, Pope Francis called for an end to the debate.
“After this magisterium, after this long journey, we can affirm with certainty and magisterial authority that the liturgical reform is irreversible,” Pope Francis said Aug. 24 in a speech for Italy’s National Liturgical Week.
Instead of reconsidering the council’s reforms, the pope said, priests and liturgists should work on “rediscovering the decisions made” in reforming the liturgy, “internalizing its inspirational principles and observing the discipline that governs it.”
“The changes after the Council were very dramatic. We should be honest about that,” said Father Andrew Menke, director of the Office of Divine Worship for the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops. “I think some of the people would say, ‘Why can’t we have some of the changes and not all the changes.’ I think (Pope Francis) was saying, ‘No, we’re not going to start over.’”
The changes in the liturgy after the Second Vatican Council, which included celebrating Mass in the local language instead of Latin, having the priest face the congregation when standing at the altar rather than away from the congregation, and changes in the prayers of the Mass, had their roots in a liturgical movement that had begun decades before.
“The whole aim of the liturgical movement is that when I go to Mass I’m participating with my whole mind and my whole heart,” said Father Menke.
In its 2013 statement, “Stewards of the Tradition – Fifty Years after Sacrosanctum Concilium” about the Second Vatican Council’s Constitution on the Sacred Liturgy, the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops’ Committee on Divine Worship said, “One of the Constitution’s most influential propositions was its statement that ‘the faithful be led to that full, conscious, and active participation in liturgical celebrations called for by the very nature of the liturgy.’ The liturgy always has been and always will be about our taking part, our experiencing again and again, through rites and prayers, the central events of our redemption and sanctification in Jesus Christ.”
Pope Francis’ comments on the liturgy are in line with the general thrust of the liturgical movement since the 19th century, which is encouraging people’s full participation, Father Menke said.
“I grew up with the pre-Vatican II liturgy,” said Father Michael Johnston, the Administrator of the Diocese of Nashville. “Looking around the church, you would see people praying the Rosary or doing their own private devotions.”
As a seminarian, he followed the Second Vatican Council and the changes in the liturgy that followed. “I always found it to be exciting, and prayerful, and just a real opportunity,” Father Johnston said of the Vatican II changes in the liturgy and other aspects of the Church.
The liturgical changes encouraged communal worship, Father Johnston said. He was pleased to see Pope Francis endorse those changes.
‘Hope for a renewal’
In his address, the pope said the liturgical reform responded to “real needs and the concrete hope for a renewal,” which would offer a living liturgy where the faithful were no longer “strangers or silent spectators.”
For this reason, he added, the Church must continue to rediscover the reasons for the reform and “overcome unfounded and superficial readings, partial revelations, and practices that disfigure it.”
Pope Francis said the liturgy is “alive” through the living presence of Jesus. Liturgical signs, including the altar, direct the gaze of the priest and the faithful to “Christ, the living stone, who was discarded by men but has become the cornerstone of the spiritual edifice in which we worship.”
“The liturgy is life for the entire people of the Church,” he said. “By its nature, the liturgy is ‘popular’ and not clerical, because it is – as the etymology teaches us – an action for the people, but also of the people.”
The liturgy, he continued, unites Church members through prayer, and it “gathers in prayer all those who seek to listen to the Gospel without discarding anyone; it summons the great and small, rich and poor, children and elderly people, healthy and sick, just ones and sinners.”
“In the image of the ‘immense multitude’ celebrating the liturgy in the sanctuary of heaven,” Pope Francis said, “the liturgical assembly overcomes through Christ every boundary of age, race, language and nation.”
The liturgy is “not an idea to understand,” but rather a “source of life and light for our journey of faith,” he said. Therefore, the rites and prayers become “a school of Christian life” for the faithful “by what they are and not by the explanations we give them.”
“This is still the commitment I ask of you today: to help ordained ministers as well as other ministers – cantors, artists, musicians – cooperate so that the liturgy may be the source and culmination of the vitality of the Church,” the pope said.
Better understanding the liturgy
The debate over the Vatican II changes to the liturgy moved to the forefront in recent years with the adoption of a new English translation of the Mass and with Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI’s actions encouraging bishops to provide for the celebration of the Mass in Latin for those people interested in it.
And the Church continues to give pastors “a lot of discretion in the music, architecture of the church, vestments, how the servers are trained,” as well as whether to celebrate Mass facing the congregation, Father Menke said.
“At the same time, Pope Benedict … didn’t go back and change the liturgical books,” Father Menke said. “He was clearly critical of some things that have happened since the Council, but he didn’t want to do away with (the liturgical changes) completely.”
And neither do most Catholics, Father Menke added. “I’ve never had the impression that there’s a lot of people who want to go back to the pre-conciliar form.”
“The liturgy is never frozen in time,” Father Menke said. “We’re continually called to understand it better.”
But Catholics aren’t likely to see any major changes in the liturgy after Pope Francis’ speech, Father Menke said. “It seems to me, if there’s an impact the impact would be he’s telling us to get busy focusing on the liturgy itself,” he said. “Instead of (discussing) how it should have been done … here it is, use it.”