It is was as simple as this then we were still be hearing Mass in Aramaic and Hebrew. Evidently, there must be an Authority in charge to make the necessary modifications in all liturgical matters, as long as the substance of the Sacrament remains intact. This authority is the Sovereign Pontiff alone. St. Peter himself began to offer the Mass in the Greek language modifying it from what had been "received" in the Last Supper.
As the 1917 Code of Canon Law states and Pope Pius XII confirms it, it is the Holy See alone which has the right to enact the form of the Sacred Liturgy, as well as to approve the liturgical books. The ecclesiastical docuмents that deal with Divine worship, this is, the prayers, ceremonies, and rites of the Holy Mass belong to the realm of discipline; not dogma.
Cantarella,
You are invincible to facts so, in the end, this post is probably not for you. I am responding to your claim that,
"The Holy Mass belong(s) to the realm of discipline; not dogma." This post is lengthy but important. Our immemorial ecclesiastical traditions, the most important of which is the
"received and approved" Roman rite of Mass, are not and cannot be a matter of mere discipline open to the free and independent will of any legislator. It is by these immemorial ecclesiastical traditions only by which the faith can be known and communicated to others. They therefore are necessary attributes of the faith. This is essential to understand because there is no defending the faith without knowing and understanding this fact. After understanding that Dogma is the proximate rule of faith, this truth necessarily follows. Remember, the Iconoclasts were called
"heretics" because they destroyed the images of our faith. The immemorial ecclesiastical traditions are like images and those who would destroy them, or in any way set them aside, are enemies of the faith willy nilly. Upon these two essential principles stand or falls the success of defending the Catholic faith.
Let's begin with a quote that addresses immemorial ecclesiastical traditions in general.
They (the Modernists) exercise all their ingenuity in an effort to weaken the force and falsify the character of Tradition, so as to rob it of all its weight and authority. But for Catholics nothing will remove the authority of the second Council of Nicea, where it condemns those “who dare, after the impious fashion of heretics, to deride the ecclesiastical traditions, to invent novelties of some kind.... or endeavor by malice or craft to overthrow any one of the legitimate traditions of the Catholic Church”; nor that of the declaration of the fourth Council of Constantinople: “We therefore profess to preserve and guard the rules bequeathed to the Holy Catholic and Apostolic Church, by the Holy and most illustrious Apostles, by the orthodox Councils, both general and local, and by every one of those divine interpreters, the Fathers and Doctors of the Church.” Wherefore the Roman Pontiffs, Pius IV and Pius IX, ordered the insertion in the profession of faith of the following declaration: “I most firmly admit and embrace the apostolic and ecclesiastical traditions and other observances and constitutions of the Church”
St. Pius X, Pascenedi
Msgr. Klaus Gamber’s quote cited before is worth repeating. He said:
"However, the term disciplina in no way applies to the liturgical rite of the Mass, particularly in light of the fact that the popes have repeatedly observed that the rite is founded on apostolic tradition (several popes are then quoted in the footnote). For this reason alone, the rite cannot fall into the category of 'discipline and rule of the Church.' To this we can add that there is not a single docuмent, including the Codex Iuris Canonici, in which there is a specific statement that the pope, in his function as the supreme pastor of the Church, has the authority to abolish the traditional rite. In fact, nowhere is it mentioned that the pope has the authority to change even a single local liturgical tradition. The fact that there is no mention of such authority strengthens our case considerably.
"There are clearly defined limits to the plena et suprema potestas (full and highest powers) of the pope. For example, there is no question that, even in matters of dogma, he still has to follow the tradition of the universal Church-that is, as St. Vincent of Lerins says, what has been believed (quod semper, quod ubique, quod ab ominibus). In fact, there are several authors who state quite explicitly that it is clearly outside the pope's scope of authority to abolish the traditional rite."
Msgr. Klaus Gamber, The Reform of the Roman Liturgy
The important points of fact that can be drawn from Msgr. Gamber are: 1) That “the term
disciplina in no way applies to the liturgical rite of the Mass.”
2) That “there is not a single docuмent, including the
Codex Iuris Canonici, in which there is a specific statement that the pope, in his function as supreme pastor of the Church, has the authority to abolish the traditional liturgical rite.
3) That every papal docuмent on the immemorial Roman canon says it is an “Apostolic tradition” and thus no one has the authority to change theological principals with regard to the immemorial Roman canon because Divine and Apostolic tradition is immutable.
4) Canon law restricted (C.1257 in the old code and C. 838 in the new) limits the authority of the Apostolic See to “supervision,” Msgr. Gamber saying that, “It most certainly is not the function of the Holy See to introduce Church reforms. The first duty of the pope is to act as primary bishop (episcopus = supervisor), to watch over the traditions of the Church.”
5) Msgr. Gamber’s emphasis that,
"Liturgy and faith are interdependent. That is why a new rite was created, a rite that in many ways reflects the bias of the new (modernist) theology”. 6) Msgr. Gamber includes all the liturgical changes of Msgr. Bugnini when he concludes,
“So many of the liturgical innovations introduced … beginning with the decree of February 9, 1951 during the pontificate of Pope Pius XII reforming the Easter Week Liturgy; then the “new” Codex of Rubrics of July 25, 1960, long since changed again; then the many small changes made during the following years; and now the “reform” of the Ordo Missae of April 6, 1969 have proved utterly useless and indeed detrimental to the spiritual welfare of the Church.” Further proof that the immemorial Roman Rite, our “received and approved” rite, is not a matter of simple discipline can be found in Fr. Paul Kramer’s book,
The ѕυιcιdє of Altering the Faith in the Liturgy. This has already been posted but worth reading again:
The Tridentine Profession of Faith of Pope Pius IV, Iniunctum Nobis, prescribes adherence to the “received and approved rites of the Catholic Church used in the solemn administration of the sacraments.” The ‘received and approved rites’ are the rites established by custom, and hence the Council of Trent refers to them as the “received and approved rites of the Catholic Church customarily used in the solemn administration of the sacraments (Sess. VII, can XIII). Adherence to the customary rites received and approved by the Church is an infallible defined doctrine: The Council of Florence defined that “priests…. must confect the body of the Lord, each one according to the custom of his Church” (Decretum pro Graecis), and therefore the Council of Trent solemnly condemned as heresy the proposition that “ the received and approved rites of the Catholic Church customarily used in the solemn administration of the sacraments may be changed into other new rites by any ecclesiastical pastor whosoever.”
Fr. Paul Kramer, The ѕυιcιdє of Altering the Faith in the Liturgy
Pope Pius XII, in
Mediator Dei, said regarding the error of liturgist
"They wander entirely away from the true and full notion and understanding of the Sacred Liturgy, who consider it only as an external part of divine worship, and presented to the senses; or as a kind of apparatus of ceremonial properties; and they no less err who think of it as a mere compendium of laws and precepts, by which the ecclesiastical Hierarchy bids the sacred rites to be arranged and ordered."
Pope Pius XII, Mediator Dei
Pope Benedict XVI, said in his book,
Spirit of the Liturgy:
The Liturgy cannot be compared to a piece of equipment, something made, but rather to a plant, something organic that grows and whose laws of growth determine the possibilities of further development. In the West there has been, of course, another factor involved. This was the Papal authority, the Pope took ever more clearly the responsibility upon himself for the liturgical legislation, and so doing foresaw in a juridical authority for the forth setting of the liturgical development. The stronger the papal primacy was exercised, the more the question arose, just what the limits of this authority were, which of course, no-one had ever before thought about. After the Second Vatican Council, the impression has been made that the Pope, as far as the Liturgy goes, can actually do everything he wishes to do, certainly when he was acting with the mandate of an Ecuмenical Council. Finally, the idea that the Liturgy is a predetermined ''given'', the fact that nobody can simply do what he wishes with her, disappeared out of the public conscience of the Western [Church]. In fact, the First Vatican Council did not in any way define that the Pope was an absolute monarch! Au contraire, the first Vatican Council sketched his role as that of a guarantee for the obedience to the Revealed Word. The papal authority is limited by the Holy Tradition of the Faith, and that regards also the Liturgy. The Liturgy is no ''creation'' of the authorities. Even the Pope can be nothing other than a humble servant of the Liturgy's legitimate development and of her everlasting integrity and identity.
Pope Benedict XVI, Spirit of the Liturgy
Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger said:
“What happened after the Council was altogether different: instead of a liturgy, the fruit of continuous development, a fabricated liturgy was put in its place. A living growing process was abandoned and the fabrication started. There was no further wish to continue the organic evolution and maturation of the living being throughout the centuries and they were replaced -- as if in a technical production -- by a fabrication, a banal product of the moment. Gamber, with the vigilance of a true visionary and with the fearlessness of a true witness, opposed this falsification and tirelessly taught us the living fullness of a true liturgy, thanks to his incredibly rich knowledge of the sources. As a man who knew and who loved history, he showed us the multiple forms of the evolution and of the path of the liturgy; as a man who saw history from the inside, he saw in this development and in the fruit of this development the intangible reflection of the eternal liturgy, which is not the object of our action, but which may marvelously continue to blossom and to ripen, if we join its mystery intimately.”
Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, from his introduction in the French edition of Monsignor Klaus Gamber’s book, The Reform of the Roman Rite
Pope Pius XI refers to the "canon of faith" (i.e.: dogmas are "canons of faith") that Pope Celestine I "proposed and expressed" regarding the "formulas of the liturgy." Suffice to say, if liturgical prayer determines "belief" than prayer that is "received and approved" must be as equally as true as the doctrine that it determines. Once one realizes that liturgical worship is not and could never be a matter of mere discipline it make perfect sense. St. Prosper of Aquitaine’s maxim, “lex supplicandi legem statuat credenda; let the law of prayer determine the law of belief,” was first used in the context of his apology for the doctrine of grace when he said, “let our tradition of prayer confirm this particular belief.” It has been since widely cited in papal docuмents.
There is a primacy of worship over belief. “Jesus said to him: Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with thy whole heart, and with thy whole soul, and with thy whole mind. This is the greatest and the first commandment.” Matt. 22: 37-38. God is the author of Divine worship.
“And the liturgy is an undoubtedly sacred thing; for, through it we are brought to God and are joined with Him; we bear witness to our faith, and we are obligated to it by a most serious duty because of the benefits and helps received, of which we are always in need. Hence a kind of intimate relationship between dogma and sacred liturgy, and likewise between Christian worship and the sanctification of the people. Therefore, Celestine I proposed and expressed a canon of faith in the formulas of the Liturgy: ‘Let the law of supplication establish the law of believing. For when the leaders of holy peoples administer legislation enjoined upon themselves they plead the course of the human race before divine Clemency, and they beg and pray while the entire Church sighs with them.’”
Pope Pius XI, Divini cultus
Regarding the canon that the law of prayer determines the law of belief, we have the distinguished linguist and author of
Banished Heart, Geoffrey Hull, said regarding the meaning of the word “orthodoxy”:
“Reflective of the primacy of prayer over understanding is the semantic development of the term ‘orthodoxy’ in the Christian context. The Classical Greek compound noun orthodoxia originally signified ‘right opinion’. However, since the second component doxa had also the secondary meanings of ‘glory’ and ‘praise’, the word came, in the usage of Greek speaking Christians, to mean ‘right worship.’ Hence the Old Slavonic loan-translation pravoslavie (‘orthdoxy’, but literally ‘right praise’) adapted the secondary (Christian) rather than the primary (classical) meaning of orthodoxia”.
Geoffrey Hull, Banished Heart
It used to be that routinely get this ignorant sap that liturgy was just a matter of discipline in the 60s and 70s. With the great expansion of liturgical studies especially since 1990 this claim that the liturgy is a matter of mere discipline is still held by Novus Ordites and those formed by the SSPX who have a low regard for Dogma. It is an unfortunate fact that the person really responsible for this mess is none other than Pope Pius XII. In his encyclical
Mediator Dei, which in most respects is an excellent encyclical, took the liberty of inverting this "canon of faith" by Pope Celestine I and said, 'Let the law of belief determine the law of prayer.' He then set up the Liturgical Commission and placed Rev. Anabale Bugnini in charge with license to remake the law of prayer. Unfortunately for all the faithful, this man Bugnini was a certain Modernist and probable Mason and thus, it is his belief that formulated the Novus Ordo prayers and liturgical praxis.
The "received and approved" rites, including the immemorial Roman rite of Mass, is a canon of faith in the Tridentine Profession of Faith that must be believed with "divine and Catholic faith." No disciplinary subject, that are in the category of authority/obedience, is neither true nor false and can never be that object of Dogma.
But then Cantarella, What is Dogma to you?
Drew
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