Archbishop Lefebvre’s decision to settle upon the 1962 Missal and Breviary was not based upon anything but his strategy of compromise during negotiations with the Vatican: “Rome would never accept the pre-1955 books.”
1951, 1958 or 1962: Which Missal Should Be Used?
In the beginning, the traditionalist resistance to the Vatican II changes presented no unified front at all. The priests who initially refused to accept the Mass of Paul VI in the late 1960s and the early 1970s were few in number, scattered throughout the world, and conducted their ministry under difficult and often improvised circuмstances.
Though they all rejected the New Mass, these priests did not seem to share the same ideas about which version of the old Mass was “traditional” or “Tridentine.” When you assisted at one of their Masses, therefore, you could encounter anything from the initial Paul VI liturgical changes (1964), to the John XXIII Missal (1962), to the Pius XII rubrical reforms (1955-8), to the St. Pius X Missal (1951). What you would not find, however, was strict adherence to any one set of rubrics. (Behold the fruit of twenty years of successive liturgical changes!)
But in those days, if a Catholic was lucky enough to find the old Mass in any recognizable form, he probably gave little thought to the rubrical details. As the traditionalist movement developed and began to attract more priests and laity, however, the rubrical disparities started to become more evident.
Beginning in the mid-1970s, a considerable portion of the traditionalist resistance started to coalesce around Archbishop Lefebvre and his Society of St. Pius X. He alone was ordaining priests and sending them throughout the world to celebrate the traditional Mass. But here too, there was no uniformity.
During the years 1970-76, the liturgical practices followed at the Society’s seminary in Econe, Switzerland were a mish-mash. The daily community Masses there combined the 1964 changes of Paul VI, what “one did in France,” and elements of the pre-1955 rites that the archbishop and the seminary rector happened to like.
However, the first priest the archbishop ordained for his new society, Father Peter Morgan, used the pre-1955 (St. Pius X) Missal from the very beginning. Other English-speakers during the Society’s early days likewise promoted the old Missal and Breviary. Notable among these were the esteemed lay rubrician John Tyson, compiler of the annual Ordo (liturgical and rubrical calendar) for the Mass and Divine Office, and the seminarian Daniel Dolan. Priests in Germany also used the old books.
At the SSPX General Chapter in 1976, the archbishop and the priests prudently recognized the reality of this situation by accepting the use of the pre-1955 books in England, America and Germany. The Econe seminary and the French district of the Society would work towards using the 1962 Missal (that of John XXIII). This, Lefebvre explained, might not be the ideal, but would at least be an improvement over the practices then observed.
In the early 1980s, Archbishop Lefebvre began negotiating with the Vatican in hopes of regularizing the status of the Society of St. Pius X. One point under discussion was what liturgical books SSPX would be permitted to use. In 1982 the archbishop proposed that this be the last version of the liturgical books in force before the Vatican II changes were introduced: the 1962 Missal and Breviary of John XXIII. Lefebvre told Father Donald Sanborn (then the rector of the SSPX seminary in the U.S.) that he chose this because he thought that “Rome would never accept the pre-1955 books.”
The decision to settle upon the 1962 Missal and Breviary, then, was driven by the archbishop’s negotiating strategy, rather than by an examination of the intrinsic merits or demerits of these books.
On 5 May 1988, Archbishop Lefebvre signed a protocol of agreement with the Vatican to regularize the status of the Society. One provision specified that SSPX would continue to use the 1962 Missal and Breviary.
After the archbishop repudiated the agreement the following day and consecrated bishops in June of that year, the Vatican allowed the priests who left the Society over the consecrations to form priestly associations of their own. These societies were then offered some of the same terms that Lefebvre and SSPX were offered in the May protocol. As a result, the Priestly Fraternity of St. Peter and similar groups approved since 1988 ended up using the 1962 Missal. This in turn became the version of the Missal that Benedict XVI re-established in his 2007 Motu Proprio.
Thus, the rather convoluted tale of how SSPX, FSSP and priests who celebrate Mass under the provisions of Summorum Pontificuм ended up with the 1962 books. Ultimately it was nothing more than an accident of history.
Some traditionalist clergy use the 1958 reforms. For the most part, these priests are sedevacantists and have chosen these books as their norm based on the general idea that one should follow the liturgical books of the man they consider to be the last true pope. With all of this in mind, what principle should one then apply to the question of which Missal to use? On what basis should one decide the merits of the case?
Fortunately, we now have a wealth of information about how the New Mass came to be created. None of this was readily available during the early days of the traditionalist resistance. (During the ABL/Vatican negotiations: Ed.)
As we have seen in Chapters 2 and 3, we now know that there was a clear causal link between the modernist ideology of leading figures in the twentieth-century Liturgical Movement, the series of incremental liturgical changes introduced during the years 1955-62, the principles for liturgical reform laid down by Vatican II, and the creation of the Mass of Paul VI.
It was all one process, governed for the most part by one ideology and ordered to the same end — a total overhaul (read “destruction”) of the venerable Mass of the Roman Rite. Thus, the Traum im Herzen that Jungmann and others dreamt of in 1948 gradually became reality during the twenty years of liturgical change that followed.
It is therefore incongruous and illogical for those who reject the end product of this process (the Mass of Paul VI) to promote as the grand liturgical ideal one of the stages in the process (the 1958 or the 1962 liturgical books). You end up with more of a transitional Latin Mass than a traditional Latin Mass.
Bugnini himself, after all, said that these changes were but temporary steps towards “a general liturgical reform,” a “bridge toward the future” in making the liturgy “a new city in which the man of our age can live and feel at ease.” Catholics who do not feel at ease with the Late Bugnini of 1969, it seems, should therefore be equally discomfited by the Early and Middle Bugnini of 1955-62. Why use the bridge if you have no intention of going to the new city?
It is encouraging to learn that others have arrived at this conclusion based on their own examination of the evidence. One hears of priests in various Vatican-approved priestly societies dedicated to the old liturgy, notably the Institute of Christ the King, who make a point of using the pre-1955 liturgical books for some of the very reasons we have outlined here.
One can only hope that this awareness of the difficulties with the 1955- 62 reforms will spread, and eventually lead others to return, as a matter of principle and practice, to the 1951 Missal. This, one also hopes, will eventually lead to a reprinting of these liturgical books and their widespread diffusion.
While in a few of its details it may not include everything that even right-thinking liturgical specialists might desire, the Missal of St. Pius X nevertheless embodies the substance of the Church’s integral liturgical tradition. It is work untouched by the enemies of that tradition who destroyed the Mass and should be the basis for any future restoration of the liturgy that would be worthy of the name.
- Source: Rev. Fr. Anthony Cekada; Work of Human Hands - A Theological Critique of the Mass of Paul VI; Appendix; pg. 403ff (emphasis added)
Topic: The 1962 Missal (Read 203 times)