When the Vatican Gets It Wrong

In 1755, the papacy undertook to reform the liturgy of the Byzantine Rite for Byzantine Christians in communion with Rome. But when they did so, a critic made a startling accusation against the Vatican officials responsible for such efforts. 

He noted that “the popes with timely wisdom have had new editions of the missals of the Copts, Maronites, Illyrians, etc., published by the Congregation for the Propagation of the Faith after a careful examination of each of them,” performed by “Cardinals, Prelates, theologians, and men trained in the languages of the east.” But he went on to say that, regarding the Byzantine liturgy, 

previously, in their utter ignorance of the Oriental liturgies and rites which existed in the eastern church before the time of the schism, some…theologians whose expert knowledge was confined to the western rite, used to condemn every detail which differed from this rite.

Accusing the Vatican curia of “utter ignorance” of the liturgy, even of the Byzantine liturgy, is quite the claim. It is difficult, if not impossible, to imagine anyone in the Church today, at least in a position of authority, saying something similar about the modern reform of the Roman Rite. But the critic in question knew whereof he spoke: Prospero Lambertini (1675-1758), better known as Pope Benedict XIV, was one of the most capable scholars ever to occupy the Petrine See, and the above quotations come from his encyclical Allatae Sunt (1755). 

The difference between Benedict XIV’s frankness and modern Church leaders is striking. Going back to Paul VI, defenders of the modern Roman Rite have suggested that the liturgical reforms of the 1960s were the work of the Holy Spirit. Pope Francis and many of his supporters have claimed that those reforms are “irreversible.” At a lower level, theologians, liturgists, and lay faithful have not been shy in accusing those who find fault with the modern rite of being “schismatics,” “Protestants,” and in general, reprobates of the lowest kind for suggesting those reforms were anything but a rousing success.

Why the difference? One cannot explain this entirely by the personalities of those involved (though these are always important to consider). Nor is it because the Holy Spirit descended to earth in the 1960s and covered the missal of Paul VI with his mantle. The causes are more subtle, though no less important for all that.

The first thing to understand is that the Church attempted to reform the liturgy in the past and has not always been successful. Many Catholics like to compare the post-Vatican II reforms with those the Church undertook after the Council of Trent (1545-1563), for example. Part of the reason is that most people consider the Tridentine reforms a success, and defenders of the modern reform want to associate the reforms of Paul VI with that of Trent.

But the Church, at times, has also attempted to reform the liturgy unsuccessfully and eventually withdrawn those reforms. The most famous example of this is the so-called Quinones Breviary, named after Cardinal Francisco Quiñones (1482-1540). A radically simplified version of the breviary, published in 1535, it anticipated many changes which Thomas Cranmer made to the Divine Office in constructing the English Book of Common Prayer. After heavy criticism, the Church proscribed the Quiñones Breviary in 1558.

Another example of this from modern times is the Pian Psalter, sometimes known as the Bea Psalter. Under Pope Pius XII, the Vatican attempted to revise the Latin psalter and replace it with a translation in classical Latin. One critic charged it with being a “direct frontal attack on Christian tradition,” and it proved highly unpopular. The Vatican withdrew it from circulation shortly before the Second Vatican Council.

Other reforms which managed to endure still attracted heavy criticism and are now recognized as being mistakes. Urban VIII’s revision of the hymns of the breviary in the seventeenth century provides an example of this. Urban VIII was a poet and thought he could improve the breviary by revising its selection of hymns. The consensus today among liturgical scholars is that despite Urban and his advisors being eminently qualified, their reform was “a tragic mistake.”

Finally, even though most people view the Tridentine reforms as a success, the same liturgical scholars who created the Novus Ordo were critical of the classical rite prior to Vatican II. That is why they wanted to construct a new one in the first place. They believed the old liturgy was no longer suitable for modern society and could not be properly “updated” piecemeal, necessitating its complete replacement.

If that is the case, then why is the new liturgy beyond reproach? I suppose one can believe that it really is the direct work of the Holy Spirit and therefore beyond criticism. One could note that many liturgists have invested their entire careers if not their entire lives in the fundamental rightness of the reformed liturgy and are loath to admit they could be wrong. But I want to focus on one specific reason so many react so badly to criticism of it, one that illustrates a problem that goes beyond liturgical issues.

It relates to the way the Church’s authority operates in a “mass” society. Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry once noted that Catholicism has often presented different “versions” of herself to the faithful, depending on their intelligence and level of education. This was partly due to the Church’s symbiotic relationship with the ancien régime, a society of orders or estates divided by birth, law, and custom. In a comparable way, different liturgical customs served the needs of the distinct parts of society.

Modern revolutions, industrialization, and modern media destroyed all this in the nineteenth century. As a result, governments, including the Vatican, had to appeal to and placate “the masses,” an undifferentiated social order instead of a diverse one of stratified estates. This necessarily changed the way the faithful experienced and related to the liturgy. With modern technology and mass education, the kind of differentiated worship that obtained in the old pre-Revolutionary society became increasingly difficult to maintain. 

This is because the Church’s liturgy became an object of mass attention in the same way that, say, education did in the 19th century. Education was not a source of conflict with absolute rulers in the ancien régime because it involved only a small section of society. But the introduction of universal education made it an existential struggle, as it now affected the beliefs of everyone. It is not an accident that the Liturgical Movement began almost at the same time and pushed uniformity in the liturgy, eliminating, for example, the last vestiges of the Gallican liturgy in France. 

A similar impulse motivated the engineers of the new Roman missal in the 1960s. They discouraged popular devotions like the Rosary but also strove to eliminate things like silent prayers, which only the priest said, to make the Mass more immediately the property of everyone without distinction. Moreover, much of Catholic worship appeared to them as merely the residue of feudal or baroque societies rather than an expression of genuine piety. The liturgical scholars who influenced Vatican II understood the liturgy in a historically relativistic way, and they felt that such expressions of faith were no longer meaningful in a modern, “democratic” society. The liturgical scholars who influenced Vatican II understood the liturgy in a historically relativistic way, and they felt that such expressions of faith were no longer meaningful in a modern, “democratic” society.Tweet This

This change went hand in hand with centralization of authority in the hands of the pope during the 19th century; and from the time of St. Pius X on, popes have increasingly involved themselves in reforming the liturgy in a way they never had before. As Joseph Ratzinger noted in his book The Spirit of the Liturgy, “After the Second Vatican Council, the impression arose that the pope really could do anything in liturgical matters.” 

This leads me to my main point. One reason Catholics often treat any criticism of the Vatican as verboten, and not only in liturgical matters, arises from an awareness of how much the Church’s authority depends in practice upon public opinion, in a way it did not previously. No longer supported by elites, the Church is an authoritarian institution dependent on the good will of the Catholic “masses” for her practical effectiveness. Any message she communicates with these “masses” necessarily affects everyone all at once, even outside the Church. (I have non-Catholic friends who are quite aware of current rumors regarding the suppression of the Latin Mass, for example.) 

Thus, any criticism of pope or Church seems like a threat to her because any diminution of its authority harms its ability to communicate with and to a mass society. Catholics know that social media will broadcast any criticism of the Church instantaneously across the world, true or not, with our current media technology. Thus, criticism, even from small groups like Catholic traditionalists, appears suspect to Catholics who conceive of the Church as a “mass” institution with an infallible authority and little else. 

This is especially true of the liturgy, as it is the most important public expression of its faith. The Church revised every single liturgical book in her tradition during the 1960s, partly to communicate better with the non-Catholic world. To admit the Church botched this reform would make that authority appear less credible to that world. Church leaders are hyperaware of this, as are the faithful; and it is only natural for Catholics to be protective of the Church’s authority. However, this hyperawareness feeds the illusion that the Church and pope constitute an authority that can never err, when, in reality, his infallibility is limited to his teaching authority and that only under certain prescribed circumstances. 

We should all be concerned about the reputation of Holy Mother Church and defend her when it is appropriate in the public sphere. There is no lack of slander and lies being spread against the Church in this age when everything is broadcast everywhere to everyone all the time. But it is a leap from this to insist one must praise every decision the Church makes as a great success, lest it somehow injure her authority. Sometimes, the Vatican just makes mistakes, even significant ones. Insisting upon North Korean style adulation for every utterance or decision the pope makes does not help the Church’s image or her authority. On the contrary, it degrades it. As does the demonization of anyone who points out such mistakes. 

It may not be convenient, given the historical circumstances, but making dubious claims to save the Church from criticism does not make her failures go away, nor does it help her reputation. The assertion that the liturgical reform was the immediate work of the Holy Spirit and the belief that the Holy Spirit directly chooses popes are cut from the same cloth. Both are pious fictions meant to protect the Church’s image when she screws things up. Neither are true, and no one should be excommunicated—in either social or ecclesiastical terms—for respectfully pointing out that they are not.