21 March 2024

Palm Sunday (1)

I am going to reuse three pieces about Palm Sunday which I wrote some years ago. My reason is that they offer a radical alternative to the narrative we normally accept about the meaning of Palm Sunday.

I think I will leave in place the old threads.

 The liturgies for Palm Sunday which are in use, de jure or de facto,  in the 'Roman Rite' of the Latin Church are:
(1) S Pius V
(2) Pius XII (1955)
(3) The Novus Ordo.

I am not going to say much about (3). I am going to explain why, in my opinion, (2) is as bad as, if not worse than, (3), and I will explain what was lost when (1) was displaced by (2).

A spin-off from this is: we need to understand that 'the Council' is not the problem; Hannibal Bugnini was put in place by Pius XII, and the mayhem which the pair of them created in 1955 was just the first stage of the deformation of the Roman Rite which some good people erroneously attribute to 'Vatican II'. Pius XII should not be thought of as a Hero of Tradition.

My own personal view is that I would not inconvenience myself in order to attend (2), which is what you will find in the Missal of 1962, mandated by Summorum Pontificum. If you can be happy with Bugnini, you might as well go to a decently performed staging of (3) ... the sort of thing which the Oratories manage so superbly. (Indeed, there are one or two details, such as a fuller provision of Readings at the Easter Vigil, where (3) is more traditional than (2).)

The Priestly Fraternity of S Peter have had an indult to use (1). I regard that as a very positive move. I hope it is made permanent and universal. In one or two other places which I think I will tactfully not mention, (1) is happily in use. It was the rite originally employed when the SSPX began its mission in this country.

To be continued.

25 comments:

Brussels priest said...

I believe that the use of the older form for the Triduum has been given to everyone using the Vetus Ordo 'pro tempore'. I am not sure that it is an indult as such, but stand to be corrected.

We certainly benefit from this permission in the Institute of Christ the King and I seem to remember seeing photos in numerous churches last year of the older form in apostolates not served by the so called 'Traditionalist orders'.

What a sadness that so many faithful will be deprived of these rites this year.

E sapelion said...

Yves Chiron in his biography of Annibale Bugnini makes the case that Bugnini's role in the Pian Commission was that of secretarial organiser not of manipulator. Chiron found that Bugnini made few interventions in the meetings, and of course he had no direct access to Pius XII. So he can probably be acquitted of the errors of 1955, and perhaps be credited with their later correction.

Zephyrinus said...

Thank You, dear Fr.

100% agreed.

ccc said...

It was my understanding that SSPX used 1967 Tres Abhinc Annos from 1 NOV 70 to 29 NOV 70, tried the NO after that First Sunday of Advent and within 2 years reverted first, back to the 1967 Tres Abhinc Annos, and then to the 1962 version.

It is also my understanding that many people think the 1962 rite was preserved by the Agatha Christi indult, when it, in fact, preserved the 1967 emendations of Tres Abhinc Annos. Thusly, Britain is the only place in the world, where besides certain monasteries, the 1967 Mass is also indulted.

Pulex said...

Oh, how quickly we have become spoiled! In the 80s and 90s, and perhaps up to 2007, the traditionally minded faithful would have given everything just to have access to the Mass according to the 1962 Missal. Even after 2007 it is still unavailable in so many places. And now our yesterday heros Pacelli and Sarto have become the bad guys. To be sure, am quite happy with the availability pre-1955 rubrics. In fact one SSPX priest I know uses them throughout the year, not just during the Holy Week. However, it would be an opposite error (with respect to the errors of modern liturgists) to claim that the 1962 version is equal to or worse than that of 1969. Apart from some unfortunate details, there is the traditional Ordo Missae, signs of reverence towards the Blessed Sacrament, etc. These were the things the innovators did not dare or were not allowed to touch before "the Council". One should prudently continue to rediscover the sacred tradition in its fullness, but let's also be grateful for what we have received so far through the immense generosity of God.

Victor said...

@Pulex: mind you, our distinguished host was not speaking of the rite as such, only of the palm sunday liturgy.

Rubricarius said...

The SSPX from its inception exhibited a wide range of liturgical praxis. Generally speaking the French clergy coalesced around somewhere between 1965 and 1967 whilst the English and German members gravitated towards what one would term ‘pre-1956’. Thus England, Germany, the NE District of the USA, Australia and a few other places used the pre-Pius XII books. This variation in praxis was recognised, and sanctioned, in the first SSPX ‘General Chapter’ of 1976. There is a video of the SSPX’s first 25 years in the UK which shows for a minute or so the traditional rites of Palm Sunday, Maundy Thursday (at the wrong time) and Good Friday with a rare view of black planetis plicatis (from 00:17:50).

The old rites continued to be celebrated in a few, rare, locations most notably at the Church of the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem (where they continued until the mid-1990s to be replaced by the Pauline rites at the traditional times). It would be a generalisation to claim everyone attached to the old rite was content with 1962. Personally I took the decision to avoid it from 1990.

For some of us ‘Pacelli and Sarto’ were never heroes.

Pertinacious Papist said...

The correspondence between Catholic convert, Evelyn Waugh, and London Archbishop Heenan over the liturgical changes of the 1950s is telling:

The first liturgical changes remarked upon by Waugh were the revisions of the Easter vigil in 1951 and the abbreviated new rite of Holy Week in 1955, with its changes, omissions, and “endless blank periods,” which left him “resentful of the new liturgy.” Other changes included the dialogue Masses of the 1950s, which were never made obligatory until the introduction of the vernacular in the 1960s, accompanied by persistent confusion occasioned by conflicting statements from Rome. “Repeatedly standing up and saying ‘And with you’ detracts from [the] intimate association” of uniting oneself to the action of the priest, he complained in 1965. Waugh lived through the Second Vatican Council, which nearly undid him.

One wag suggested that Waugh suffered “Death by Novus Ordo,” though the jest is more clever than accurate. Pope Paul VI’s New Mass was not promulgated until 1969; Waugh died three years earlier, about an hour after attending a private Latin Mass on Easter Sunday celebrated by his friend, Fr. Caraman. Yet, if the liturgy were understood as a “permanent workshop” of innovation — as it was by Fr. Joseph Gelineau, S.J., whom the chief architect of the new Mass, Archbishop Annibale Bugnini, described as “one of the great masters of the international liturgical world” — it would be accurate to say that Waugh’s bitter trial was an effect of the accelerating and seemingly interminable experiments in what he called “the new liturgy,” which he endured in the decade until his death the year after the Council ended.

Indeed, Waugh suffered immensely. In a 1965 letter to Archbishop Heenan, Waugh begged him, “Please pray for my perseverance.” He declared further that “every attendance at Mass leaves me without comfort or edification. I shall never, pray God, apostatize but church-going is now a bitter trial.” Even then, he kept his acerbic sense of humor, writing to Lady Diana Cooper, “If you see Cardinal [Augustin] Bea [in Rome], spit in his eye.” Several months later, he wrote to Msgr. Lawrence L. McReavy, asking, “What is the least I am obliged to do without grave sin? I find the new liturgy a temptation against Faith, Hope and Charity but I shall never, pray God, apostatize.” A year later, a month before he died, Waugh wrote to Lady Diana Mosley, “The Vatican Council has knocked the guts out of me.... I have not yet soaked myself in petrol and gone up in flames, but I now cling to the Faith doggedly without joy. Church-going is pure duty parade.” The Thursday after Waugh died, his daughter wrote to Lady Diana Cooper, “Don’t be too upset about Papa.... You know how he longed to die .... I am sure he had prayed for death at Mass.”

-- From my review in the New Oxford Review, posted with permission of NOR): http://pblosser.blogspot.com/2012/10/undone-by-permanent-workshop-review.html

Richard Ashton said...

Oh dear, how are we relative newcomers to the traditional world to make sense of all this? Do I walk to the NO? Drive for one hour for 1962? Or drive for 2 hours for pre-1955?

Romanitas Press said...

The Bugnini Myth has long debunked concerning the Holy Week Reform, which was Pope Pius XII's work from start to finish.

Cf. specifically Fr. Charles Murr's book, The Godmother: Madre Pascalina... and the diaries of Cardinal Antonelli, The Development of the Liturgical Reform.

Michael Leahy said...

The arrogance of these people, using our liturgical heritage as their playtoy, their mere matter for experiment.

Fr John Hunwicke said...

Dear Romanitas press

I doubt whether Papa Pacelli penned the whole thing without any help or assistance.

And, if he did take advice, I feel little doubt that Braga and Bugnini were among the advisers, since it was they who produced the detailed and official commentary on the Pacelli Holy Week.

Fr John Hunwicke said...

Dear Incognita

Moi, I would go to the NO if I knew it would be decently done, and would include the Canon Romanus.

Otherwise, 1962.

Moritz Gruber said...

In my view, the point is not whether the changes sprung from the Pope's own head or who of his advisers did what later in life - nor even so much along the lines of "this was a dangerous precedent for what was later to come.

They ought to be judged according to their own merits. Also, being in the nice position of having a Pope around to do the supreme-authority thing, Eastern-Orthodox- (and possibly and High-Church-Anglican-?) style "freezing in" of liturgy out not to be principally our thing, if you pardon the colloquialism. The rather different principle of respecting tradition and, hat-tip to G. K. Chesterton, not tearing down a fence before having learnt what it was there for [but possibly after having learnt that] very much ought to, though.

In which sense, I don't see any of the reforms being reforms for the better, except
(1) possibly, but by no means certainly, the veritas horarum for the liturgies of Holy Thursday, Good Friday and the Easter Vigil,
(2) possibly, but even less certainly, the possibility of Holy Communion on Good Friday,
(3) the renewal of baptismal promises, in itself (I don't think many trad-minded people would agree, but - which is no argument, but I'm not yet giving out any arguments - I do really like that one),
(4) maybe maybe maybe with a very very heavy heart the reduced prophecies for the Easter Vigil; though it is but obvious justice that monasteries and retreat centers should be granted to choose to do all twelve of them if they so desire, which they will; similarly perhaps cathedrals.

No arguments here, as yet, this would be a longer issue. (The argument for the latter is that people should rather come to a reduced version of this important night than not come at all, being busy with Easter preparations and returning to Church on Sunday morning. Let it be noted that these issues are all connected together: without the change for no. (1), there would have been anticipated Easter Matins&Lauds on Holy Saturday evening which takes, even very solemnly, no more than one hour and half.)

Moritz Gruber said...

On second thought concerning the number of Easter Vigil lessons, the goal of having a briefer liturgy (if one does aim for it, which is by no means obviously the thing to choose; but also not obviously not so) could be served by a much more traditional-style way to break the traditional requirement of twelve sung prophecies: allow the prophecies to be read in the manner of silent Masses, while either all of them or possibly a collection a collection of them, is read by altar servers in the vernacular, with ... er ... the aid of a microphone. (It's still more traditional than cut eight of them.) Reading twelve of them, assuming readers with a decent reading-pace, is probably done rather faster than singing four of them.

Moritz Gruber said...

(5) possibly, but not certainly, praying the litany before the consecration of baptismal water.


But let’s respect Chesterton‘s fence: I have not understood (yet) what is the significance of consecrating the water first and then pray a long litany afterwards. But there may be one. -I mean apart from „the schola will need some time to sing Sicut cervus, and the clergy can conveniently do the procession to the font in the meantime“.

Rubricarius said...

@Moritz Gruber,

Moritz, I am sorry but the liturgical vandalism you suggest is the equivalent of digging up Westminster Abbey's Cosmati pavement and replacing it with paving stones. That series of OT readings are ancient and based on the Jerusalem Armenian lectionary, common to several rites. The old Roman Holy Saturday propers are a venerable and ancient set of texts and one of the treasures of the traditional rite. In the old days it was called simply 'Holy Saturday' and no one, or almost no one called it the 'Easter Vigil'.

In the language of liturgy 'Vigils' ordinarily refers to Mattins, particularly in Monastic usage where monks get up at peculiar hours - even Novus Ordo houses e.g Mellifont Abbey whilst the praxis for good seculars was to anticipate Mattins in the late afternoon. Indeed the highlight of Holy Week in Cathedrals was not the Holy Saturday morning service but Paschal Mattins with the triumphant invitatory 'Christ has risen' which at Westminster was when the Cardinal pontificated on Holy Saturday evening. Our ancestors in the Faith made even more of Paschal Mattins with the 'Rising' ceremonies interpolated into Mattins along with the visit of the Three Marys to the empty tomb.

As to 'veritas horarum' do the new rites meet that criteria - I think not. The traditional Roman Missal has all the ferial Masses of Lent, from Ash Wednesday though to Holy Saturday celebrated after None with Vespers following. Indeed one can note the correlation of the oratio super populum with the collect of Vespers. One does not have to look far to see uses where Mass and Vespers are integrated into a single service - in the Roman rite the only surviving example of which is Holy Saturday.

Holy Saturday in the Roman rite also has another unique feature the Lucernarium. Even until comparatively late times some rite preserved a Lucernarium for each day of the Triduum e.g.Rouen Cathedral. Would you suggest that the liturgies of Maundy Thursday and Good Friday should also be nocturnal? Significantly Roman Holy Saturday preserves an ancient arrangement. The Byzantines. sometime around the turn of the first millennium moved the Lucernarium of Holy Saturday from Vespers to Mattins of Easter - with spectacular effect it must be said.

I would posit there was nothing wrong with either the rites or times of traditional Roman Holy Week. What was needed was a wholesale restoration of a real Paschal Vigil - Paschal Mattins- to all parishes.

Moritz Gruber said...

Dear Rubricarius,

with all due respect, your comment brought this Father Brown quote to my mind (though I do not deserve to compare myself to Father Brown): "I always try to say what I mean. But everybody else means such a lot by what I say." Sorry.

I did not, nor did I mean to, suggest anything, including the things I wrote about. What I was saying is that among all the changes that did happen, these (but as far as I see only these) were not obviously changes for the worse. I did not say, or imply, anything more; but I do stand by that statement.

I would posit there was nothing wrong with either the rites or times of traditional Roman Holy Week. I don't disagree to that. Nor did I, last week.

I might say (though I didn't, last week) that once the momentous decision to have evening Masses on a regular basis has been taken and assuming it is not reversed, it becomes rather hard to defend not having one of these on Holy Thursday of all days. ("Rather hard", not "impossible": you might even then justify it by saying: "we do have to keep, or return to, tradition for this particular week, and besides, people need their time to do their Seven Altars Walk and to come for Tenebrae in the evening". But rather hard.)

What was needed was a wholesale restoration of a real Paschal Vigil - Paschal Mattins- to all parishes.

In case some parishes did not have that, I quite agree that that should have been restored there (and probably the Second Vespers of Easter too, even granting that parishes do not have the resources to have Sunday Vespers on a regular basis).

Allow me to be, for the time being, agnostic (in the strict sense of the word) about whether I would choose, in an ideal world with no other problems and everyone firm in the Catholic faith, its replacement by an Easter Vigil Mass (with Easter Matins&Lauds, which I agree are important, sung at midnight after refreshments, slightly elevated by alcohol though not tipsy; or possibly in the morning before Mass).

-- About the term "Easter Vigil": Languages, including usages, may differ. In the one I somehow took up, Matins are always called Matins (or, well, "the Reading Hour", but that is a different matter), and "Vigil" means "day preceding a feast, usually with an at least traditional Fast attached to it, though that may later have been dispensed from". So, the Vigil of the Assumption of Our Lady, etc., the Vigil of Christmas (called "Christmas Eve" by the people) and also the Vigil of Easter.

Holy Saturday is called Easter Vigil in the Roman Missal. Apart from the names, though, its situation is the liturgically rather interesting one that "the Office, up to the None, is of Holy Saturday, but Mass is for the Vigil".

Moritz Gruber said...

To the topic though,

the rite where I attended was rather interesting.

It was FSSP, and they once had the indult to do 1954 and all of us were happy about it. (Which, just as a piece of neutral information, at the time "Friday at 3 pm, Saturday at 9pm".) As that one apparently expired our pastors considering the Church-political climate begrudgingly returned to 1962 for the time being ... sort of.

Alas, we had no Missa sicca, and the Passion was abbreviated at the beginning (no Last Supper).

But we did have what I'd have missed even more than the Missa sicca: the actual Sunday Gospel of Palm Sunday Altera autem die, sung in solemn markedly different tone (though without the pause for Munda cor meum). I do consider it rather astounding that what was once the actual Sunday Gospel was not even left as part of the Passion, but cut away entirely. And what I fascinating thing to treat the fact that Pilate sealed the tomb and watched it as a "and you know what did happen in that watched tomb" sort of proclamation of the Resurrection! I never knew it could be read that way until I first heard it sung on Palm Sunday.

(Also, we obviously had the Last Gospel of St. John, because why in the world would you leave it away when the folks are singing a Marian hymn in any case, as they do on other Sundays.)

Rubricarius said...

@Moritz,
My apologies if I, inadvertently, misunderstood your earlier comment.

Yes, I agree that with widespread evening Masses the situation today is different to what it was in times past.

The Roman Missal certainly referred to the Vigils of the Epiphany, Ascension, John the Baptist etc and those days had a Mass in the morning of the days before major feasts. However, if you do look further you will also see the use of the term Vigiliae for nocturns.

I must however categorically disagree with your last sentence. The traditional Roman Missal’s title for Holy Saturday is simply Sabbato Sancto D I Cl Statio ad S. Joannem in Laterano. The word ‘Vigil’ does not appear at all in the day's title or rubrics.

Moritz Gruber said...

Dear Rubricarius,

thank your for the reply, and also the correction. Must have been confused by all the "24.12. Vigil 25.12. Christmas" stuff.

It remains true in my view that substantially Mass, or rather the liturgy that includes Mass, is the Vigil (with one interesting jump into Easter Sunday, to wit its First Vespers, and then out of it again), while the Office is the Saturday - a situation unique in the liturgical year -; but I was wrong to assume it was called with that name.

vetusta ecclesia said...

To what pass have we come that we " tactfully" do not mention the locations of these liturgies . A similar suggestion has been made in my diocese.

vetusta ecclesia said...

To what pass have we come that we " tactfully" do not mention the locations of these liturgies . A similar suggestion has been made in my diocese.

Greyman 82 said...

One thing I've learned quite recently, largely from reading this blog, is that the damaging reforms of the liturgy of the Latin Rite did not begin after Vatican II, but started a few years before it, when Pius XII was still Pope. Traditionalists cling to the 1962 Missal, confirmed by Summorum Pontificum as authorised for general use, but that 1962 Missal is a corrupted, eviscerated, and in some respects, "dumbed-down" version of the true Tridentine Missal. It saddens me that "experts" consciously jettisoned parts of our liturgical heritage, seemingly for no good reason. What good was the 1955 revision of the Palm Sunday liturgy expected to produce? "If it ain't broke, don't fix it" comes to mind.

E sapelion said...

@Greyman 82, but it was broken, and held together by string and sealing wax. As the Catholic Encyclopedia mildly put it in 1917 about Holy Saturday "... not to dwell upon the explicit references to "this most holy night" contained in the prayers and the Preface of the Mass, all bring home the incongruity of carrying out the service in the morning, twelve hours before the Easter "vigil" can strictly speaking be said to have begun."
As to the Mass, the only form which is truly unchanged in 1570 is the missa privata celebrated without a congregation. Fr Fortescue expressed his view privately, and intemperately, to a friend "... whatever beauty interest or historic value, or dignity, the Roman rite ever had has been utterly destroyed by the [curial bureaucrats*]"
*the terms used here are pugently unflattering.