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FROM LIFESITE NEWS!

December 4, 2018 (LifeSiteNews) – Today is the 55th anniversary of the promulgation of the Second Vatican Council’s Constitution on the Sacred Liturgy, Sacrosanctum Concilium, which
took place on December 4, 1963. It is a cause for amazement just how
much nonsense people have attributed to it, how much harm they have
justified by airy appeals to its supposed requirements.

Today, there are few who could tell you accurately what Vatican II actually did say about the liturgy—and more importantly, what it did not
say. It may be helpful, therefore, to offer a brief overview of the
most salient features of the Council’s teaching on the liturgy.

The introduction of Sacrosanctum Concilium exhibits a
mystical, contemplative, symbolic vision of liturgy. The remainder
enunciates two controlling principles for renewal: first, “Mother Church
earnestly desires that all the faithful should be led to that full,
conscious, and active participation (actuosa participatio) in liturgical celebrations which is demanded by the very nature of the liturgy” (§14); second, “there must be no innovations
unless the good of the Church genuinely and certainly requires them;
and care must be taken that any new forms adopted should in some way
grow organically from forms already existing” (§23).

In a 1998 address, John Paul II explained the meaning of the first principle:

Active participation certainly means that, in gesture, word, song,
and service, all the members of the community take part in an act of
worship, which is anything but inert or passive. Yet active
participation does not preclude the active passivity of silence,
stillness, and listening: indeed, it demands it. … In a culture which
neither favors nor fosters meditative quiet, the art of interior
listening is learned only with difficulty. Here we see how the liturgy,
though it must always be properly inculturated, must also be
countercultural.

As for the second principle, the Constitution generally models the
modesty it recommends. It brings forward various proposals, yet there is
a surprising absence of the very things people most often associate with Vatican II.

Thus, the Council never said that Mass should cease to be in Latin
and should only be in the vernacular. The Constitution reaffirmed that
the fixed parts of the Mass would continue to be in Latin, the very language of the Roman Rite, but gave permission to vernacularize some
parts, such as the readings and the general intercessions (§36; cf.
§101). After stating that the people’s language may be used for some
parts, the Council added: “Steps should be taken so that the faithful
may also be able to say or to sing together in Latin those
parts of the Ordinary of the Mass which pertain to them” (§54). Latin
remains, to this day, the official language of the Roman Catholic Church
and of her liturgy. It is surprising, to say the least, that the
aforementioned desiderata of Vatican II are only rarely achieved.

The Council never said that Gregorian chant should be set aside in
favor of new songs. On the contrary, the Council acknowledged Gregorian
chant as “specially suited to the Roman liturgy” and deserving “foremost
place” (principum locum) in the celebration of Mass, along with the great musical compositions of our heritage (§114–§117). New songs could be added as long as they suited the liturgy—which most of the new songs after the Council didn’t and still don’t.

The Council breathed not a word about the priest “facing the people”
over a table. The Council assumed that Mass would continue to be offered
at an altar by a priest facing eastwards, so that priest and people
were together aligned towards the East, symbol of the Christ who is to
come—the universal custom of all liturgical rites, Eastern and Western, from the beginning. In fact, the rubrics of the Missal promulgated by Pope Paul VI presuppose that the priest is facing eastwards.

The Council never dictated that tabernacles be moved from the center
of the church, that sanctuaries be “reordered,” or that altar rails be
removed. It said nothing about receiving communion in the hand while
standing. It assumed that communion under both species would continue to
be of rare occurrence among the non-ordained (cf. §55); extraordinary
ministers of holy communion are nowhere mentioned. Lastly, the Council
did not downplay or discourage traditional practices of piety such as
Eucharistic adoration and Marian devotions.

Consider how Pope John Paul II, in a 2001 address, explained the essence of the Mass:

The celebration of the Liturgy is an act of the virtue of religion
that, consistent with its nature, must be characterized by a profound
sense of the sacred. In this, man and the entire community must be aware
of being, in a special way, in the presence of Him who is thrice-holy
and transcendent. Consequently, the attitude of imploring cannot but be
permeated by reverence and by the sense of awe that comes from knowing
that one is in the presence of the majesty of God. … [The Mass] has, as
its primary aim, to present to the Divine Majesty the living, pure, and
holy sacrifice offered on Calvary once and for all by the Lord Jesus,
who is present each time the Church celebrates Holy Mass, and to express
the worship due to God in spirit and truth.

Anyone who attends a Catholic liturgy ought to be able to see, hear,
and internalize the attitude and the aim of which the late Holy Father
speaks. Pope Benedict XVI taught us, in word and in deed, the very same
lessons. Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger wrote many years ago:

In the history of the postconciliar period, the Constitution on the
Liturgy was certainly no longer understood from the viewpoint of the
basic primacy of adoration, but rather as a recipe book of what we can
do with the liturgy. In the meantime, the fact that the liturgy is
actually ‘made’ for God and not for ourselves seems to have escaped the
minds of those who are busy pondering how to give the liturgy an ever
more attractive and communicable shape, actively involving an ever
greater number of people. However, the more we make it for ourselves,
the less attractive it is, because everyone perceives clearly that the
essential focus on God has increasingly been lost.

Thanks to many acts and documents of Benedict XVI, above all Summorum Pontificum, the
future of Catholic liturgy looks bright again—if only we will trust and
embrace the age-old tradition of the Church. This treasury of wisdom
and beauty is far more valuable than the wares of the so-called experts
who set up their trade in the temple. When the Lord in His mercy wills
it, He will prepare a whip of cords and drive them out.

The Christian people who have suffered so much from the “spirit of
Vatican II” deserve to know what Vatican II really taught and did not
teach about the liturgy—what it asked for, and what it did not ask for. Sacrosanctum Concilium will
not come off looking blameless, but it cannot be blamed for the most
obviously disastrous things that happened to the liturgy in the mid- to
late 1960s. For this, the blame lies largely elsewhere, as a new biography shows with utmost clarity.

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