Fr Martin Sirju

In last week’s article I asked: should we give the Latin Mass as much weight as the Mass in the vernacular?

My answer to this was no, and my reason was that it did not reflect the more ancient tradition of the Church; it also suffered from a lack of scriptural warrant.

Let us look at some quotations from Sacrosanctum Concilium, the Vatican II document on the liturgy: “Mother Church earnestly desires that all the faithful be led to full, conscious, and active participation in liturgical celebrations which is demanded by the very nature of the liturgy.” (No. 14, italics mine)

These words have echoed loudly since the Council and it can be argued that “full, conscious, and active participation” presumes the use of the vernacular.

Yet it must be admitted that the Council, inclusive of Pope Paul VI, never expected the vernacular to catch on that quickly. In fact No. 36.1 says: “Particular law [i.e. local custom] remaining in force, the use of the Latin language is to be preserved in the Latin rites.”

This is not the end because the document is full of poise and counter-poise. In No. 54 we read: “In Masses which are celebrated with the people, a suitable place may be allotted to their mother tongue.

This provision is to apply in the first place to the readings and ‘the common prayer’, but also, as local conditions may warrant, to those parts which pertain to the people, according to the norm laid down in Article 36 of this Constitution.

Nevertheless, steps should be taken so that the faithful may also be able to say or sing together in Latin those parts of the Ordinary of the Mass which pertain to them.”

Put simply, the Council never expected the vernacular to catch on that quickly. Aidan Kavanagh writes: “Few could then have imagined that the entire liturgy would be vernacular within thirty years, making both worship and liturgy more accessible to the non-clergy.”

This leads to an important principle concerning the Council: the Council is an open event; it is not yet finished. If the Council were not an open event then we could argue, using the above references, that the Tridentine Mass should have the same force as the modern Mass (i.e. use of the vernacular).

But if we view the Council as an open event then we would have to take subsequent developments into consideration i.e. how the Mass promulgated by Paul VI in 1970 (i.e. the Mass as we know it today) has been received by the faithful at large.

I think it quite safe to say that the Mass in the vernacular has won widespread acceptance. I myself have often asked elderly parishioners which one they prefer and almost always they say the Mass in its present form. We can therefore confidently assert that the Mass promulgated by Paul VI in 1970 has been “received”.

“Reception” is a technical theological term. It does not only mean being aware of the changes wrought by Vatican II and understanding them but seeing how they have been accepted, assimilated and implemented in various dioceses throughout the world.

And reception is not complete as yet. Historical theologians tell us that it takes at least a century for teachings of a Council to be received. Vatican II is just 42 years old.

Let me now return to my point about the more ancient tradition. It is often said that the Latin Mass represents a more ancient tradition. It does not. The most ancient liturgical traditions of the Church testify to a plurality of languages not a uniformity of language.

We often presume the Roman tradition was always the main one in the Church; an understandable presumption since, as I said in my last article, tradition is something we conceive as being handed down unchanged.

We know now that is not true. Gary Wills, an eminent American Catholic historian, in his book Why I Am A Catholic (a misleading title since the book is really a brief history of the papacy) says that Roman influence was not very widespread for the first five hundred years of the Church. The first few centuries of the Church was dominated by Eastern Christianity.

Wills writes: “Rome simply did not have the resources – physical, intellectual or linguistic – to lead the Church yet: ‘Traditions of public service, higher education and literacy were also more developed [in the East]. The most distinguished schools of philosophy, law and science were in such cities as Athens, Beirut and Alexandria.’”

Peter Phan, Professor of Catholic Social Thought at Georgetown University, confirms this when he writes: “Historical studies of early Christian missions have also shown the fallacy of the conventional reading of Acts, with its version of the Christian expansion toward Rome and the West.

In fact, in the first four centuries, the most successful field missions were not in Europe but in West Asia and Africa, with Syria as the centre of gravity of Christianity before 500.” Here the context was very plural “with their enormous varieties of languages, cultures, theologies, liturgies and church practices”
(Commonweal, 12 Jan 07).

Hence there is no such thing as the most ancient liturgy of the Church but ancient liturgies of the Church – Greek, Syriac, Coptic, Armenian etc. The great Roman Rite (Latin) developed later and became dominant in the West but, on closer examination, even the West contained great linguistic and cultural diversity as evidenced by the work of patristic (writings of the early Fathers) scholar Peter Brown.

I have dealt with the aspect of antiquity. Next week I will discuss the scriptural warrant for liturgical variety and make some remarks in the light of Pope Benedict XVI’s motu propio regarding the Mass promulgated by Paul VI.