As I write this, Campion College’s new freshmen students are beginning Orientation Week. I hope they will come to love the place as much as I do.

One new thing to some of them will be the worship in the college chapel; the liturgy here is more “traditional” than that of the typical parish. Once a week, Father says mass in the “Extraordinary Form”, the liturgy celebrated prior to the Second Vatican Council[1].  Even when the “Ordinary Form” of the mass is celebrated, it commonly involves elements many associate with the old form: some prayers are in Latin, Father sometimes celebrates facing the same direction as the people and the music includes Gregorian chant. 

At some point I hope to write something about the differences between the old and new forms but for now I want to focus on those traditional elements which Campion frequently uses in the modern form.

Some of my fellow “traditionalists” like to speak as if the pre-Conciliar liturgy had been in some kind of utopian state, that there was no reason for any change and that the solution to all the Church’s problems is to simply restore the liturgy to its pre-Concilia state. This view is not supported by the facts.

In the first half of the Twentieth Century, the average layperson had little engagement with the church’s liturgy. Klaus Gamber, a liturgical scholar greatly praised by Pope Benedict XVI notes that, for many people, attendance at mass involved praying private devotions like the rosary while the priest said the mass at the altar, the people had little idea, and no interaction with, what was being said[2].

This state lead to the birth of the “Liturgical Movement”, a movement which sought to foster a better understanding of and broader participation in the liturgy by the faithful. This movement was endorsed by Pope Pius XII in hiis 1947 encyclical Mediator Dei[3]. By the time John XXIII called the Council there was a widespread awareness of a need for some kind of reform.

Having acknowledged that need, I would argue that the reforms undertaken in the 1960s and 70s went far beyond what was needed; they certainly went beyond what the Council called for. It is frequently claimed that the Council abolished the use of liturgical Latin, commanded priests to say mass facing the people and mandated a variety of other changes. Those (including the current Pope) who promote a return of some traditional practices are thus accused of opposing the will of the Council. As I hope to show in subsequent instalments, this is not accurate; in many cases the Council simply did not say what is often attributed to it.

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Is this website meant to engage the wider public or just campion students? Terms like "pre-Conciliar liturgy" won't get the wider public. The empty homepage of this site looks like it is supposed to catch the thinker in public.
masquerading as not at all Catholic. But then the articles are all about intricate vatican details. There appears to be a huge disjoint here. You can't be both things...

Joe , June 21, 2009

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HI Joe,

Thanks for your feedback. Faithandreason,.com.au is for anyone who thinks about the great issues of life.

There is a natural bias towards discussions of the Catholic faith because Campion students have an abiding interest in the topic.
This does not preclude anyone else from contributing and in fact a wide range of topics is encouraged

Paul Abela , June 26, 2009 | url

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