Angelus,

My reference to the "divine elements" comes from a quote by Pax from Mediator Dei:


What are the "divine elements"? The sacramental form is certainly a divine element. So my position is supported there. If you want to say "divine elements" are broader than that, give your authority.

The Canon of the Missal of Pius V is certainly laid out in that Missal. Of course. That's not an eternal, universal definition of a Canon that cannot be changed.

I've already addressed your argument about the Trentian canon. No, it doesn't say what you say it does. Quote me some authority, other than yourself, that the Canon of the Missal of Pius V, or a specific Canon in use by the Church at one point (and it has been changed), can't be changed.

Dear DecemRationis,

You are very close. Please expand on your sentence "...Sacrament of Eucharist of which the Mass is the vehicle."
"Canon" refers to the Canon of the Mass; what is this vehicle called...? Additionally, could you give the definitions of the word, "sacrament", and of "Sacrament of the Eucharist"; we will need it. Thank you.

Can you help me out a bit?  I'm not looking for a part-time job. 

DR, the authority is the Council of Trent. I have already said that at least 3-4 times. Here is the canon from Session XXII again:


The same concept (i.e., that the Canon of the Mass cannot be changed after Trent) is enshrined in Quo Primum by Pius V.

And my interpretation of the meaning and impact of Canon VI and Quo Primum is simply confirmed by the Catholic Encylopedia article when it says the following:


The CE article is not itself the authority. It simply provides the evidence that the Catholic Church interpreted Canon VI and Quo Primum to mean that the Canon of the Mass must remain "unchanged." Canon VI of Session XXII of Trent is the ultimate authority with Quo Primum (which is a Papal Bull, the most formal type of papal communication) as the confirmation from the Pope.

While the law issued by a pontiff is pending - as it was after Pius V issued it, and when the CE was written - of course no one could add to it or change it.

The article simply doesn't support a position that a subsequent pope couldn't alter the canon or other nonessential prayers used in the sacramental rite in a new or revised missal.

"Quo Primum is primarily a legal docuмent promulgating use of a certain liturgical book within the Latin Church. As a legal and administrative act it cannot bind a successor of equal status should he take the proper steps to depart from it.

Neither Pius V, nor any following pope, thought it was such. Two years earlier the same Pius V published Quod a nobis promulgating a Roman Breviary for general use which contains the same rules of use and prohibitions against alterations and threats of Divine retribution as Quo Primum. Urban VIII did not go into schism or heresy by changing the hymns and no one has suggested the 1911 breviary changes were illegal or invalid (although they were unwise)."

The Rad Trad: On the Validity and Legality of the Mass of Paul VI

There are two pervasive myths about S Pius V's liturgical interventions which will doubtless go on being purveyed until the Eschaton.

(1) That he suppressed the local rites of the Middle Ages, only permitting the survival of those which had existed for more than 200 years. He was a centraliser and a standardiser.

(2) That his actions, following on from Trent, are closely analogous to, and provide a close precedent for, what Paul VI did after Vatican II.

Each of these myths is a travesty of history. Each results from a reading of History with the hindsight of knowing What Happened Afterwards, instead of trying to understand events in their own historical contexts. Since devils reside in details, and since I have written before about what he did with his Missal, I shall focus today on what he did to the Breviary.

The papal docuмent Quod a nobis, which introduces the 'Tridentine Breviary', repays careful reading. The Divine Office put in place by Gelasius and Gregory and reformed by Gregory VII had, S Pius tells us, diverged ab antiqua constitutione. So the pope wishes it to be recalled ad pristinam orandi regulam. Some people had deformed this praeclara constitutio by mutilations and changes; an awful lot of people (plurimi) had been seduced (allecti) by the brevity of a Breviary produced by the Spanish Cardinal Quignon. Even worse, in provincias paulatim irrepserat prava illa consuetudo ["that depraved custom"], namely, that bishops in churches which, from the beginning, had used the Roman Office, were producing privatum sibi quisquam Breviarium.

What S Pius V is dealing with here is the chaotic liturgical result of a century of printing. It may be difficult for us to appropriate imaginatively the differences that this invention made. Only in the age of this new technology could trendy clergy buy and use in vast numbers the new slick and fast Quignon Breviary; only now could meddling bishops, full of Good Ideas, thrust their latest clever novelties with ease upon their helpless dioceses. The words of S Pius seem almost to describe the chaos which was to follow under Pius XII and his successors: "Hence the total disruption of divine worship in so many places; hence a complete ignorance among the clergy of ecclesiastical rites and ceremonies; so that numberless ministers of the churches carry out their duty unbecomingly, not without enormous offence to the devout".

S Pius was reacting to to this technology-driven chaos by a reinstatement of Tradition; by the elimination of novelty and by a return to what had been received. Hence, he provided a form of the Roman Breviary carefully emended by the best scholarship available to him. It was, of course, a paradox that his reform was itself carried through by the use of the same technology which had created the problem!! But that paradox does nothing to change the fact that his action was an assertion of Tradition, a repression of innovation.

S Pius V's reform was thus an act of deliberate and profound conservatism. This is shown by his treatment of local usages which dated from well before the invention of printing. As for uses which were of more than two centuries standing: "that ancient right of saying and singing their office, we do not take away". Recognising, however, that many who possessed such ancient usages might nevertheless themselves prefer the revision which he is now promulgating, he permits them to adopt it, but only if the Bishop and the entire chapter agree. Entire!! Come-lately diocesans were thereby restrained, according to the words of this legislation, from abolishing the ancient uses of their churches; apparently, it needed only one curmudgeonly traditionalist on the Chapter to interpose his veto and thus to preserve the local customs. This seems to me a fairly rigorous affirmation of the the traditional diversities with which a process of organically evolving liturgy had endowed local churches, combined with a determination to eliminate novel fancies which had corrupted liturgy since printing made it easy for hierarchs to impose their whimsies. I wonder what he might have said could he have known that, four hundred years later, his own successors would be using printing to impose their whimsies!

S Pius V's reforms, as I have said, are commonly described as symptoms of counter-reformation centralisation and as an attempt rigorously to standardise the worship of the Latin Church. I think this profoundly and anachronistically misreads both the liturgical situation which he is addressing; and the legal framework which he carefully puts in place. Previous popes had fairly recently flirted with the idea of radical revisions of the Breviary, intending thus to bring it into line with the ('Humanist') fashions of their age. But in S Pius V, a truly great pontiff, we see at its very best the ancient function of the Roman Church as a remora against innovation; as well as an assertion of the principle that the Tradition is not ours to destroy, but to hand on carefully with - as Vatican II actually says - only such changes as grow organically out of what is already there, and are truly necessary. (Among later pontiffs, perhaps Benedict XIV came closest to the instincts of S Pius V.)

If S Pius V had been a B Paul VI, he would have confirmed and extended the papal permission for the use of the Quignon breviary; he would have encouraged diocesan bishops to forge ahead with their own 'inculturations'. He did nothing of the sort; he did the opposite. Perhaps the only faint resemblance to the events of the 1960s is S Pius's somewhat root-and-branch approach to a Calendar which had become overloaded (calendars constantly silt up and then need to be dredged; it's a natural cycle like the successions of ice ages and interglacials)*. But that had the result of revealing old Roman treasures which an excessive Sanctorale had left unchanged in the physical texts while the newer insertions had been preventing their actual use. In the 1950s and 1960s, it was those archaic features themselves that fell victim to an elite in a hurry (during this Advent season, we might particularly remember the demise of the old Excita Sunday collects).

You are entitled to think what you like about the events of the 1960s. I have no power to pop you into my own personal private prison! But please do not go around saying that what B Paul VI did after Vatican II was indistinguishable from S Pius V had done after Trent.



Fr Hunwicke's Mutual Enrichment: S Pius V (originally posted February 2014) (liturgicalnotes.blogspot.com)

. . .

From a comment on another post on the blog:

S. Pius speaks of the Council's requirement to revise the Catechism, Missal, and Breviary. Next, I believe he gives the clue to the interpretation of Quo Primum: "edito jam, Deo ipso annuente, ad populi eruditionem Catechismo, et ad debitas Deo persolvendas laudes Breviario castigato, omnino, ut Breviario Missale responderet, ut congruum est et conveniens (cuм unum in Ecclesia Dei psallendi modum, unum Missae celebrandae ritum esse maxime deceat), necesse jam videbatur, ut, quod reliquum in hac parte esset, de ipso nempe Missali edendo, quam primum cogitaremus." So he's saying we did the Catechism, we did the Breviary, and so that there is congruity between the Divine Office and Mass, now we're doing the Missal.

So perhaps we can go back to Quod a nobis (1568) (link to text--Latin only, here's one in Spanish) to see why and to what ends the Breviary was revised. If the Mass was revised to conform to the Breviary, then maybe we can get some support for the printing-press theory there. Quod a nobis is the bull condemning, among other things, the Quignones breviary. This Bull seems the same as Quo Primum: there are a lot of breviaries out there--he calls out Quignones' work by name and abolishes it--and the desire of the committee of scholars is (as in Quo primum) to restore the "antiqua institutione" or "veteris Breviarii". The scholars did their work, says Pius, and we have a new--the new--Breviary. All others are then abolished other than those approved by the Apostolic See or those claiming 200 years' vintage.



Fr Hunwicke's Mutual Enrichment: S Pius V: the BIG MISTAKE, THE UNIVERSAL MYTH (liturgicalnotes.blogspot.com)

. . .

Another correspondent writing from the Middle East offers the parallel case of the 1568 docuмent "Quod a Nobis" which introduced the new Roman breviary two years before the new missal. This docuмent contains many expressions similar to "Quo Primum" regarding, for instance, the perpetual force of law, the obligation of use in all places, and the total prohibition of adding or omitting anything.

Our reader then comments: "As you are undoubtedly aware, St. Pius X radically rearranged the ancient Roman Psalter and changed a few lessons for a few days, and provided contracted lessons, among other changes in 1913. Moreover, he forbade the use of the old Psalter. This clearly shows that he was not bound by the prescriptions issued in 'Quod a Nobis' and since these are similar to those of 'Quo Primum,' those must not be binding either.

"I have found using 'Quod a Nobis' more effective because the adherents to 'Quo Primum' argue that it is restricted to the Ordinary (either whole or from the Offertory to Last Gospel), or to the Temporale only (despite evidence in encyclicals like 'Grande Munus' to the contrary). Since the Psalter is the most fundamental part of the breviary, no such statement can be made with regard to 'Quod a Nobis.'" ZE06111422



Pius V's 1570 Bull | EWTN

Perhaps, then, St. Pius X incurred the penalties of Quod a nobis and was therefore a non-pope. 

As often happens, the exaggeration of Quo primum comes from a reaction, and then an overreaction, to Montini's Prot rewrite of the Mass.  People are looking for some simplistic, easy, legalistic way to invalidate it ... except that SVs just say it's as simple as the fact that Montini was no pope.

To say as you said previous, what one pope binds, another is free to loosen, is to say that the authority of the pope is limited.

To say as you said previous, what one pope binds, another is free to loosen, is to say that the authority of the pope is limited.

This is to say QP of Pope St. Pius V did not have the authority to bind all his successors, which is to say that apparently, Pope St. Pius V attempted to do something which he had no authority to do.

This is what you are saying.

To paraphrase Fr. Wathen; And we say well then, if he did not have that authority then his authority was limited. We say that if his authority is limited, then all his successors' authority is limited also.

We say yes, the authority of the pope is limited, but it is not limited to establishing the liturgy of the Mass for all time, rather, it is limited to where a successor cannot discard this Mass because of a whimsy or a deviation in Catholic belief, and there has to be a deviation in Catholic belief on the part of pope Paul VI who would introduce such a mass  as what we have, the Novus Ordo Missae.

All this is to say it has nothing whatsoever to do with the idea that "it's as simple as the fact that Montini was no pope."