Rite and Liturgy | Denis Crouan, S.T.D. | From Chapter 1 of The History and the Future of the Roman Liturgy

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Since the Second Vatican Council, the liturgy has become the source of conflicting opinions. This situation has given rise to disputes that continue to divide those who practice their faith. But what has created this state of affairs? Author Denis Crouan shows how the decisions made by Vatican II that aimed at restoring the Roman rite were presented poorly, applied incorrectly, and often not applied at all. In many places the Mass has been turned into a permanent work-in-progress, in which the objectivity of the liturgy yields to the subjectivity of those who take part in it. Where does the current unwillingness to apply the liturgical rules come from? Why have the directives of the last council been ignored or circumvented? This book offers answers to the questions asked by Catholics who want to understand their liturgy better, so as to put an end to deviant practices that threaten Church unity.

What is a liturgical rite?

Still, in order that the "accessory" may be introduced into the liturgy and yield its fruits, care must be taken to fulfill two conditions:

–that the "accessory" does not become something cumbersome or more important than what is "essential", "substantial", or ,'modal", and that it does not become, for example, an opportunity for entertaining the congregations that have gathered in the first place to participate in the Church's liturgy (recall the famous "collage" pastoral letter [of the French bishops], which now clutters our sanctuaries with brightly colored posters and felt banners that are supposed to testify to the so-called participation of children in the liturgy).

–that the "accessory" does not make us lose sight of the "noble simplicity" that the rites should have (cf. SC 34).






Did Jesus "invent" a Christian liturgy?

Christian liturgies, whatever their forms may be, have their origin in the words spoken by Christ on Holy Thursday: "Do this in memory of me." We too often forget that without this commandment, which is disarming in its simplicity, we would never have had a liturgy. Should these words of Jesus be considered unique, original, "revolutionary"? Must we see in them a regulation that obliges believers to depart from the religious framework of the Jewish era in order to invent something entirely new?

Not at all. In the time of Christ, indeed, all of the Jewish laws had become identified with liturgical regulations that Mary, Joseph, and then Jesus himself observed faithfully. [2] Now, in his teaching and in his conduct, Jesus always affirmed the necessity of observing the law "to the letter", without changing a single iota. Christ simply wanted to fulfill, to complete these commandments with a supreme law that summarized them all: the law of love. That was the novelty.

Jesus would have had plenty of reasons and occasions to rail against all the abuses, the exaggerations, and all the liturgical deviations of his day. However he never did so: at no point do the Gospels present him to us in the guise of a proponent of liturgical reform, much less of a new liturgy. To the Apostles who ask him how to pray, he does not reply by inventing a "new" prayer; he is content to take up again the main themes of daily prayers and of the psalms, which he prefaces with the traditional invocation "Our Father, who art in heaven".

Finally, when Jesus institutes what will become the heart of all Christian liturgical prayer, the Eucharist, he makes the institution of his Paschal Mystery coincide with the anniversary of the Passover of Moses, in order to underscore the fact that the sacrament of the New Covenant is the prolongation and fulfillment of the Old Covenant.

The Apostles are faithful to the liturgical heritage

The Apostles, too, following the example of Jesus, did not create a new liturgy; in the Acts of the Apostles, we see them "day by day attending the temple together and breaking bread in their homes" (Acts 2:46).

This conjunction of two loyalties–fidelity to the Jewish liturgy on the one hand, and fidelity to Jesus' commandment ("Do this in memory of me") on the other–illustrates perfectly how compliance with a commandment just received is registered within the continuity of a liturgical prayer that is already venerable.

Over the course of the centuries this apostolic fidelity will find its expansion and its fulfillment in all the Christian liturgies, always proceeding by way of evolution and not by revolution.

The organization of the Christian liturgy and the progressive establishment of rites

Judeo-Christian in its origin, the newborn liturgical prayer of the Church will espouse cultural and therefore cultic forms of a more universal character as it gains non-Jewish neophytes, without thereby denying its Semitic and Old Testament origins.

At Jerusalem and then in Antioch, in Alexandria, in Rome, and later on in Byzantium, the same evangelical teaching, the same apostolic succession [filiation], and the same liturgical prayer unite all the Christian communities of the Empire, both in the eastern part and in the western part.

Although circumstances require that it be celebrated, during three centuries of persecution, in private dwellings or subterranean cemeteries, the unfolding of the principal liturgical act (the "breaking of the bread") is appreciably the same everywhere.

To the Eucharistic anaphora, which constitutes the "essential component" of the liturgy (the offertory, narrative of the Last Supper, Consecration, and Communion), other elements are gradually added: readings from the Letters of the Apostles, excerpts from the Gospel, prayers of intercession, processions, recitation of the Apostles' Creed and of the "Jesus prayer", and prayers of thanksgiving, etc., which will form the "substantial component" of the [particular] rite.

Liturgy and orthodoxy

In the fourth century, the end of the persecutions means for all of Christianity a new springtime and a flourishing, which is both theological and liturgical.

But the five mother churches (the apostolic Patriarchates of Jerusalem, Antioch, Alexandria, and Rome and, later, Constantinople) must now fight together against the first great heresies in order to preserve the true faith, or "orthodoxy". Reverence for the liturgy that has been handed down is what will guarantee fidelity to the true faith.

Thus, during the entire first millennium, unity of faith will be maintained along with unity of liturgical prayer.

Yet, even if the liturgical unity remains quite evident, it does not exclude legitimate differences, principally in the exterior forms and expressions of worship.

Indeed, the different cultures in which these churches take root and develop bring forth various cultic forms. So it is that in every liturgy the "accessory components", which are closely bound up with the local cultural contexts and associated with the "substantial components" of the worship as an expression of Christian prayer, give rise to different rites.

It is very important to recall here, in connection with the rest of our study, that the diversity of rites in the Church has never been the product of division among Christians, nor of any sort of anarchy, nor of a refusal to allow tradition to evolve; rather, it is the product of an "inculturation" willed by Christ himself, so that his Church might be at the same time "orthodox", faithful to her true beliefs and the true praise of God, [3] and also "catholic", faithful to her universal mission. [4]

Endnotes:

[1] Although we will place Gregorian chant in the modal part, since it is characteristic of the Roman rite and makes it possible to unify the essential and substantial parts of the liturgy, we will include the Latin language, considered in itself, in the accessory part of the liturgy, basing this decision on the teaching contained in the Preamble of the Roman Missal (section 12): "The Second Vatican Council, like that of Trent, examined in depth the didactic and pastoral nature of the liturgy. And since there is no Catholic who would deny that the rite carried out in the Latin language is legitimate and efficacious, it was able to concede . . . . that the use of the living [vernacular] language can often be very useful for the people, and it permitted its usage."

[2] Furthermore, it was in the area of liturgical observances, rather than that of his teaching, that the enemies of Christ sought at first to find fault with him.

[3] Cf. John Paul II, Letter Orientale Lumen ["Light of the East", May 2, 1995].

[4] The present chapter is to a great extent inspired by a conference given by Bishop Bernard Dupire at the Pro Liturgia Association, 79, rue du Général De Gaulle, 67560 Rosheim, France.