Peter Kwasniewski invites a mind experiment.
Let us run with this thought experiment for a moment. Imagine the Divine Liturgy of Saint John Chrysostom as our starting point. Now, take away most of the litanies; substitute a newly-composed anaphora (with only the words of consecration remaining the same); change the troparia, kontakia, prokeimena, and readings; greatly reduce the priestly prayers, incensations, and signs of reverence; and while we’re at it, hand cup and spoon to the laity, so they can tuck in like grown-ups. [By the way, I recently published at NLM two satirical posts that presented, in detail, such a “reform” of the Divine Liturgy of St. John Chrysostom: see here and here.]
Would anyone in his right mind say that this is still the Byzantine Divine Liturgy in any meaningful sense of the term?
Sure, it might be “valid,” but it would be a different rite, a different liturgy.
Just for good measure, let’s say we also remove the iconostasis, turn the priest around, take away some of his vestments and substitute ugly ones, and replace all the common tones of the ordinary chants with new melodies reminiscent of Broadway show tunes and anti-Vietnam folk songs. Now we’d have not only a different rite but a totally different experience. It is not the same phenomenon; it is not the same idea (in Newman’s sense of the word “idea”); it is not the expression of the same worldview; indeed, it is not the same religion, if we take the word in the strict meaning of the virtue by which we give honor to God through external words, actions, and signs.
We are our rites.
Change the rites and, over time, the content of what people who attend those rites will change.
Once their belief changes, their behavior will change.
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The only part of the belief of the laity that would change would be the belief in the need to be in communion with Rome, as they would return, en masse, to Orthodoxy not in communion with Rome. My phrasing here is based on the belief, widespread among younger Greek Catholic parishioners, and pretty much affirmed by Patriarch (aka Major Archbishop) Sviatoslav of the UGCC, that Greek Catholics are Orthodox in communion with Rome.
Not the main point of his comments, but I find the vestment comment weird since gothic style vestments are infinitely more aesthetically pleasing than fiddlebacks. I’ve never quite understood why a lot of people who talk about the beauty of the Tridentine Mass also want to also bring back its ugliest part.
The Ship of Theseus
This sounds like the philosopher’s conundrum I encountered in high school. It had to do with a typewriter. How many keys, and ink cartridges and housings could one change before it was no longer the same typewriter? The assumption in the typewriter example, however, was that a part would be replaced by an identical part, which revealed the nature of the thing itself. It could still be a typewriter if all the Smith-Corona parts were replaced with IBM selectric ones, but it wouldn’t be a Smith-Corona one any more.
Obviously not, but for Catholics Traditiones custodes was an exercise of raw power by the late Pope Francis to impress his Anselmianum pals, including the bearded chap who hates both the old Mass and St Carlo Acutis (the second seems to be that his devotion to the Holy Eucharist was against V2 or something like that). It’s an Emperor Has No Clothes type of scenario.
Folk songs? I swear our arrangement for the last few years came straight from Rankin-Bass TV productions, where the Gloria has some tension and some drama and some comedy in it, the Sanctus sounds like a return from commercial break …
I’ll definitely second the “emperor has no clothes phenomenon”. Mix that with a little of the revolutionary thirst for power (even if I sink the ship, I’m the captain and you all have to do what I say!!!) and a little desire to really be told their … proclivities are just style points, and it’s no wonder we’re in this condition. No wonder at all.
Regarding the loss of musica sacra: I’ve witnessed certain music in certain NO regions in which their melodies remind me that of the opening tune of a typical sitcom with opening credits. Other NO melodies have a circus kinda feel like as if some guy dressed in a military/police kinda uniform is wearing one of those mechanical musical boxes you wear over your neck with a strap, and you activate the music box by manually rotating a crank handle (don’t know what they are called, but I’m sure you get the picture). In other words, there is nothing sacred about the music other than the lyrics, and even those can be questionable.
This reminds me of Father Hunwicke’s argument (made by both proponents and opponents of the NO) that the Roman Rite no longer existed because the means by which the bread and wine become the Body and Blood of our Lord is different in the NO. Correct me if I am wrong: The NO calls down the Holy Spirit whereas the VO (the Roman Rite) asks or pleads that the offerings be acceptable and this acceptability to the Father causes them to become the Body and Blood of our Lord.
Ever since I read this on his blog ( and listened to his lectures about this on YouTube), I have wondered what if this is correct: To be valid the offerings must be acceptable? Are offerings in a clown Mass acceptable? Is it acceptable to the Father for the offerings to be treated disrespectfully?
@R2D Good question
@ ProfessorCover: that change from what I recall was made with the Orthodox in mind. There was a historical dispute with them over whether or not the epiclesis in the Roman Rite was explicit enough. Orthodoxy views the epiclesis as more important than the words of institution and you had some on the East who doubted the validity of the Roman Eucharist because it was much less explicit.
An example of what’d I’d consider a reasonable ecumenical change.
@R2D This is from Father Hunwicke’s blog posted on 22 Oct 2017:
“ There are rumours that in some secret Vatican angulo a Eucharistic Prayer is being confected which may be used by both Catholics and Protestants. I wonder if it will be usable by Evangelical Anglicans … if it includes any suggestion of ‘offering’ the Eucharistic Elements, it won’t be. Secondly, I wonder if it will be usable by Byzantines. When, in 1928, the Church of England proposed a revision which included an Epiclesis, Orthodox critics made very clear that that Epiclesis did not match up to Byzantine standards. Orthodox can be very rigid!“
This may explain why the “reasonable ecumenical change” did no good. In the VO we ask that our offerings be taken up to heaven, I don’t want to give that up.
I’m not really sure how citing a 1928 ecumenical discussion with Protestants about the pre-1969 epiclesis has any bearing on the current epiclesis.
There were Orthodox who questioned the validity of the pre-1969 anaphora because it didn’t include an explicit epiclesis. Basically while some Orthodox recognized the TLM as valid, some did not view it as actually confecting the Blessed Sacrament because of its implicit vs. explicit epiclesis that the overwhelming majority of Eastern Christian Divine Liturgies use. The thing you find so reverent is what some Orthodox viewed as making it invalid — it didn’t call down the Holy Spirit explicitly.
The short of it is that the 1969 edits were made so that they would comply explicitly with both Catholic and Orthodox sacramental theology. St. Paul VI had begun work on reconciliation with the Orthodox Churches and while the invalidity of the Roman epiclesis was not the majority opinion, it would have been an issue preventing future reunion down the line.
As there’s nothing in Catholic sacramental theology excluding an explicit epiclesis, he essentially solved the issue with a stroke of a pen rather than spending decades resolving a question where only the Orthodox questioned a non-essential stylistic form (the choice of implicit epiclesis over explicit) and we had no substantive objections to an explicit one.
I’m sure there might be a handful of monks on Mt. Athos that question St. Paul VI’s version now, but generally speaking all the Orthodox accept the validity of the reformed missal, which was not the case prior to the reforms of Paul VI. That’s a positive change.
@R2D
The Epiclesis, as in the point in time that the Holy Spirit is called down, not the presence of this set of words, in the Divine Liturgy is less rigidly defined than in the Roman Mass. The specific point of epiclesis and its specific placement in the NO 2-4 prayers exacerbates things from an Orthodox point of view (charges of legalism and disorder in the liturgy). The issue that the Orthodox have is with the Aristotelian/Thomistic need to define and delineate things explicitly, whereas, for the Orthodox, there is greater room for mysterion — for the Orthodox, there is no singular point of epiclesis – the whole thing is the act of calling down the Holy Spirit, not some specific point.
ALSO FYI: The validity of the Eucharist, and the rest of the sacraments, for the Orthodox, traces not to the words used but to whether or not they see a living faith in the Western Church. For those that reject, it is all of the Western sacraments that are rejected; it is not about the words but whether or not there is the Divine and Orthodox Faith present in the Roman Church. For those who accept validity, it is not something that is “official,” but traces back to how much they see the Divine and Orthodox Faith present in the Roman Church and how much they do not, not the specifics of the words used.
Lurker 59: there’s also the implicit vs. explicit question, which was a historical point of conflict between the Orthodox and Rome. The majority opinion in the East was that the implicit one used by Rome was valid for the reasons you mentioned, but this wasn’t universally held.
The position of the epiclesis in the Roman Rite is different than the position in the East and that was maintained by St. Paul VI. Otherwise the changes around the epiclesis in the anaphora align it more with the eastern churches than had been the case before the Pauline reforms.