Liturgical peace seems hard to come by these days. But it is my hope that Pope Leo, who has expressed on numerous occasions his desire for “unity” in the Catholic Church, will work toward a resolution of these issues that is pastorally sensitive to the needs of today.
Vatican II states that the Eucharistic liturgy “is the summit toward which the activity of the Church is directed; it is also the font from which all her power flows.” (Sacrosanctum Concilium). This is a powerful and unambiguous statement of the absolute centrality of the Mass for the life of faith and indeed for the entirety of the Church’s activity. No other action in the Church touches the lives of every Catholic at the very core of their religious identity.
It should not be surprising, therefore, that the liturgical reforms that transpired after the Council eventually generated some heated controversies, since the changes that were made were extensive and altered the older liturgy in a sweeping manner that few average Catholics anticipated.
Nevertheless, the Mass of Paul VI — the “Novus Ordo” — became the standard form of the Roman rite and was initially graciously embraced by most Catholics who were now able to worship in their own language and with far more dialogical participation in the Mass. Even the changed posture of the priest, who formerly faced away from the people, toward liturgical east (ad orientem) and now faced the congregation (versus populum), was taken in stride by most Catholics as simply one part of the newer way of doing things.
When the liturgical reforms were first promulgated, there was not, despite what you may have read from some well-known traditionalists, widespread consternation on the part of the vast majority of Catholics, who instead obediently accepted the Novus Ordo and adjusted their liturgical practice accordingly. To be sure, there was a small minority of traditional Catholics who objected to the changes, and strenuously so — but for the most part, Catholics around the world accepted the new liturgy with a peaceful disposition.
So what happened that changed this relatively unproblematic situation into one of rancorous division and debate? Why the sudden surge of late from a significant number of Catholics in the United States and Europe who are deeply critical of the Novus Ordo and who seek a return to preconciliar liturgical forms?
In order to answer that question, I need to situate the so-called liturgy wars within a wider theological and sociological context.
First, it needs to be noted that dissatisfaction with the Novus Ordo is not a worldwide phenomenon. The dissatisfaction seems to be, for the most part, a phenomenon that is found largely in the United States and some parts of Europe. Advocates for a return of the older form of the Mass — the traditional Latin Mass (TLM) — to wider usage dispute this claim and point to pockets of devotion to the old Mass even in Africa and Asia. But they are just that — pockets — and there is little evidence that many in those regions seek the old Mass as a preferred alternative to the Novus Ordo, or that there is a widespread dissatisfaction with the Novus Ordo within the Church in Africa.
My point here is not that the TLM could not “work” in Africa. It did before the Council and could probably do so again. The Novus Ordo works there, as well, and has proven itself a worthy liturgy for evangelization and inculturation. In some places, as in South Africa, the multiplicity of languages creates a problem for praying Mass in the vernacular. But few in those same regions know Latin either, so there is no reason why it should be adopted as some kind of “answer” to the problem of linguistic diversity. Indeed, the English language is probably a far better option in that regard.
The bottom line is that the Church has grown in Africa and has done so with both the Novus Ordo as the standard liturgy as well as the TLM before the Council. This is an important fact since the point is often made that the decline in religious participation among Catholics in the West after the Council coincides with the introduction of the liturgical reforms, with the clear implication that it was those very changes to the liturgy that led directly to diminished Mass attendance. But it would seem that African Catholicism can be at home with either liturgy.
But ecclesial growth is not confined to the global South. Even in the West, where Catholicism is in decline, generally speaking, there are numerous fruitful ecclesial movements, secular institutes and pious associations that are spiritually grounded in the Novus Ordo and have never agitated for a different liturgy. There is also the example of the charismatic renewal, which, though not my cup of tea, was firmly grounded in the spirituality of the Novus Ordo. Many vibrant parishes are alive in the faith because of, not despite, the Novus Ordo, which is celebrated with great reverence and beauty.
It is simply not true that the only place the Church is growing in the West is in TLM circles — so we should put to rest the common argument, so often heard, that the Novus Ordo simply cannot sustain and promote strong communities of Catholic faith. To be sure, one can find large areas where the Novus Ordo is celebrated in a shoddy manner. But so, too, can the TLM be celebrated in a banal way, and in the preconciliar Church, it often was. This, in turn, led to the movement to reform the liturgy, which began long before the Council.
If I can wax a bit autobiographical here, I attended the Newman Center at the University of Nebraska during my freshman year of college in 1977-78, and it remains to this day the greatest community of faith with which I have ever been associated. The Newman Center in Lincoln generated scores of priestly vocations and made the Diocese of Lincoln one of the few success stories in that regard during a period of deep decline in religious vocations in general. And yet, the liturgy there was full-on “folk group” guitar-Mass Novus Ordo fare, with music from the St. Louis Jesuits as our mainstay. We never got the memo that such “bad liturgy” was supposedly incompatible with a deep commitment to the faith.
In retrospect, I do think now that it was bad liturgy, at least in terms of our musical choices. But in so many of our discussions of liturgy, a broader theological context is missing. To wit: The decline of the Church in the West has far more to do with a crisis of faith in general — a crisis with multi-focal causes grounded in secularization — than with this or that liturgical form. Conversely, where a deep faith life is present in a parish, many liturgical forms can feed and sustain that faith.
A genuine Eucharistic revival can happen only where there is faith. And where there is faith, that revival can be nurtured by the TLM, the Novus Ordo, the Melkite rite and many others. In the interest of a truly synodal Church that is grounded in a robust and healthy pluralism, I would argue for a broad spectrum of liturgical forms existing side by side.
But now I will be blunt. Such a healthy liturgical pluralism is not helped by those in the TLM movement — a vocal minority — who take to social media and weaponize the TLM against the Novus Ordo, accusing the latter of being a “Protestant distortion” or even a Freemason ritual devised by Archbishop Annibale Bugnini. There is no such thing as an unchangeable “Mass of the Ages” that stands above the magisterial and universal jurisdictional authority of the pope. Contrary to claims that are often made by traditionalists, the Church does indeed have the authority to alter the liturgy, and she has done so.
Conversely, a healthy pluralism is also not fostered by those on the more “liberal” wing of the Church who weaponize some alleged “spirit of Vatican II” against any Catholic who simply wishes to see more traditional elements reintroduced into the liturgy. It is precisely this kind of devotion to a highly tendentious reading of Vatican II as a council that allegedly endorsed all manner of liturgical experiments, except those of a more traditional persuasion, that has led to the counter-revolt of the Latin Mass traditionalists.
I am thinking here as well of the many fine priests I know who wish to say the Novus Ordo liturgy in an ad orientem posture and who want to install altar rails, but who are told by their bishops that they cannot do so. Meanwhile, no such liturgical uniformity is invoked when more liberal priests routinely deviate from the rubrics, change the words of the liturgy on their own clericalistic authority, and so on.
The two extremes of a radical traditionalism and a “no liturgical enemies to the Left of me” progressivism feed off of one another, and neither of them can foster a healthy liturgical pluralism in a truly synodal Church. What is needed is a deep renewal of faith grounded in a Eucharistic revival, no matter the rite that is involved.
To that end, the recent National Eucharistic Revival sponsored by the U.S. bishops was the perfect complement to the synodal initiatives of our late Holy Father Francis. Theologically, and as Vatican II makes clear, the Eucharistic liturgy is what constitutes the local Church and connects it to the universal Church. It is Christ, present in the Eucharistic liturgy, who both grounds the local Church as full and complete in its own right, even as it is thereby connected to the entire body of Christ, the Church.
Therefore, a true synodality begins and ends with the Eucharistic liturgy. I can think of no better engine for driving a more synodal Church than the engine of the Eucharist. Furthermore, since the Church already has a multiplicity of liturgical forms — as it has for millennia — I see no reason why liturgical peace cannot be restored to the Church by a capacious and gracious allowance for a variety of rites in the Church. Liturgical unity is not the same as uniformity and, in fact, the latter often works against the former.
Along these lines, to the extent that there is a need for greater liturgical uniformity, perhaps we can begin by enforcing the rubrics of the Novus Ordo more rigorously, with the clericalism of some priests and their idiosyncratic liturgical changes made on their authority alone treated with the same disciplinary sharpness as we have seen with the TLM.