Cardinal Robert Sarah has reopened the debate on the best 'direction' for worship, favouring the direction of 'liturgical east', the same direction as the Faithful in the nave, over 'versus populum', facing the people over the Altar like an executive facing his underlinings over a desk.

He said in an interview: “But as soon as we reach the moment when one addresses God – from the Offertory onwards – it is essential that the priest and faithful look together towards the east. This corresponds exactly to what the Council Fathers wanted.”
In honour of this occasion I repost a video recorded in 2014. To learn more on the theology and history of the debate, see the FIUV Position Paper here.

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I posted a number of photos here; I have finally posted up a short video, including snatches of the very lovely music sung on this occasion.

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The Traditional Mass on the Chatres Pilgrimage. Not as off-putting to young people as Pope Paul VI imagined. Photo by John Aron.

Liturgical conservatives and progressives argue endlessly about this. Their argument will never be resolved, both because Sacrosanctum Concilium was and the subsequent magisterium has been self-contradictory, but also because neither side in the debate is willing to be honest about the historical facts. I am sorry to be harsh, but having read the output of both sides of the debate over a number of years, it is time it was said.

First, Sacrosantum Concilium: how is it self-contradictory? It makes few concrete suggestions, but it does make some. It calls for wider use of the vernacular (63); the removal of 'useless repetition' (34), and a more 'lavish' presentation of the Scriptures in the readings, arranged 'prescribed number of years' (51). It leaves further details to local initiative and an official commission. On the other hand, it says (23)

there must be no innovations unless the good of the Church genuinely and certainly requires them; and care must be taken that any new forms adopted should in some way grow organically from forms already existing.

It is perfectly obvious that the this double condition is not satisfied by the concrete suggestions the document itself makes. There is no precedent in the liturgical tradition of the Church, in any Rite, for a multi-year lectionary, and to suggest that such a thing could grow 'organically' out of a single-year lectionary is obviously absurd. There is no precedent for a mixing of Latin and the vernacular in the liturgy, or for the liturgy to be translated into dozens of vernaculars for different countries. The principle militating against 'useless repetition' is entirely foreign to the Church's liturgical tradition. And none of these changes could possibly, in advance, be said to be required 'genuinely and certainly' by the good of the Church.

From this fundamental self-contradiction, you can draw any conclusion you like. Perhaps the 'general principle' of section 23 should control our interpretation of the specific examples of reforms; perhaps it is the other other way around. The fact is, there is no coherent programme of reform in Sacrosanctum Concilium. Let's not engage in make-believe. It is a compromise document with provisions pointing in different directions.

It was, however, interpreted by those appointed to interpret it, and the Novus Ordo Missae was signed off by Pope Paul VI. So what liturgical style are we guided towards by the official documents, documents of the 'living magisterium' as the conservatives like to call them, which accompanied and followed the promulgation of the new missal?

Well, these documents too are mutually contradictory. The architect of the reforms, Archbishop Annibale Bugnini, made a great deal of the provision of Sacrosanctum Conciium 34:

The rites should be distinguished by a noble simplicity; they should be short, clear, and unencumbered by useless repetitions; they should be within the people's powers of comprehension, and normally should not require much explanation.

This is his justification for rewriting practically every Latin prayer in the Missal, and then authorising its translation into kindergarten English: projects which were, of course, officially approved and given authoritative promulgation by the Church's Supreme Legislator, the Pope. Where does the 2011 'new translation' come from? It comes from a much later document, the 2001 Instruction Liturgiam authenticam which states (27):

The fact has to be faced: in proposing a 'hieratic', 'sacred' liturgical register, it introduces a liturgical principle for the guidance of translators which simply is not to be found in Sacrosanctum Concilium or in the numerous documents of the 1970s and 1980s, documents like the toe-curling Directory for Masses with Children in 1973. There had been a massive conservative push-back in the 1990s and Liturgicam authenticam was the result. So patent was the contradiction between the two eras that Liturgicam authenticaum actually abrogated a whole raft of official guidance from before 1994:

We need to face the fact: the magisterium's own interpretation of Sacrosanctum Concilium is a moving target. It was quite different in the 1970s than it was by the mid 1990s. Who knows where it will be in ten years?

Let me give a couple more examples: on the use of Latin and on Gregorian Chant.

Latin: for. Sacroscantum Concilium
36. 1. Particular law remaining in force, the use of the Latin language is to be preserved in the Latin rites.
101. 1. In accordance with the centuries-old tradition of the Latin rite, the Latin language is to be retained by clerics in the divine office.

Pope John Paul II: Dominicae Cenae (1980) 10:
[Latin is] an expression of the unity of the Church and through its dignified character [it] elicited a profound sense of the Eucharistic Mystery. ...The Roman Church has special obligations towards Latin, the splendid language of ancient Rome, and she must manifest them whenever the occasion presents itself.

Instruction Ratio fundamentalis institutionis sacerdotalis (1980):
the Council is far from having banned the use of the Latin language. Indeed, it did the contrary. Thus the systematic exclusion of Latin is an abuse no less to be condemned than the systematic desire of some people to use it exclusively. Its sudden and total disappearance will not be without serious pastoral consequences.

Latin: against. Pope Paul VI, Nov 26 1969
No longer Latin, but the spoken language will be the principal language of the Mass. 

If the divine Latin language kept us apart from the children, from youth, from the world of labor and of affairs, if it were a dark screen, not a clear window, would it be right for us fishers of souls to maintain it as the exclusive language of prayer and religious intercourse?

Dozens of official references to the allegedly beneficial effect of putting the liturgy in the vernacular, as something done by the Council, could be cited.

Chant: for. Sacrosanctum Concilium
116. The Church acknowledges Gregorian chant as specially suited to the Roman liturgy: therefore, other things being equal, it should be given pride of place in liturgical services.

Pope Paul VI: Sacrificium laudis 1966 (to religious superiors)
One can also wonder whether men would come in such numbers to your churches in quest of the sacred prayer, if its ancient and native tongue, joined to a chant full of grave beauty, resounded no more within your walls.

Paul VI Voluntati Obsequens 1974
... the liturgical reform does not and indeed cannot deny the past. Rather does it "preserve and foster it with the greatest care." It cultivates and transmits all that is in it of high religious, cultural and artistic worth and especially those elements which can express even externally the unity of believers.

Chant: against. Pope Paul VI, Nov 26 1969:
We will lose a great part of that stupendous and incomparable artistic and spiritual thing, the Gregorian chant.

Instruction Concerts in Churches 1987:

Further to my recent posts about Montessori and children, I'm reposting this from 2014. I've not been keeping up my review of Mgr Basil Loftus output recently, but whenever I look at his columns I see that they make just as much sense as they ever did.

Children at St Mary Magdalen, Wandsworth, a Mass with Chant propers and polyphonic Ordinary.

Every now and then Mgr Basil Loftus makes reference to singing in Mass. It appears to be one of his many obsessions. A classic was his suggestion that when the General Instruction recommends a chant or song at Communion, this rules out adherence to the Instruction Redemptionis Sacramentum's requirement that the Communion Plate be used, and the recommendation in that instruction, now a requirement of our own Bishops' Conference, that the Faithful make an 'act of reverence' before receiving Communion, because of the difficulty of multi-tasking...

It is not surprising, therefore, that when he turns his attention to chant and hymns he comes out with the usual muddle and deliberately misleading claims.

He starts by quoting Archbishop Sample of Portland, Oregon:
'It is clear that the Council calls for the liturgy to be sung. In recent decades we've adopted the practice of singing songs at Mass. We take the Mass and attach four songs or hymns to it. But this is not the Church's vision. We need to sing the Mass. It is meant to be sung. The texts of the Mass are meant to be sung.'

Children at the LMS Pilgrimage to Holywell.

Loftus' comment on this typifies his disregard for making sense, as well as good manners or respect for his superiors:

The archbishop's observation, while very helpful, is also both simplistic and deceptive.

Was it a subeditor who added the phrase 'very helpful'? Or is Loftus able to hold two incompatible judgments in his head at the same time?

His reason for saying that Archbishop Sample is being 'simplistic and deceptive' is that he cannot get his mind around the very simple point that the Archbishop is making: that when hymns are sung, in the Novus Ordo, they are sung instead of the singing of a liturgical text. The General Instruction says: you can sing the Introit chant, or something else. Later on, you can sing the Offertory chant, or something else. At Communion, you can sing the Communion chant, or something else. If, each time, you find yourself singing a hymn, you are doing so at the expense of singing the chant texts set for the day.

Ok, so she's not in exactly the right place, but she's doing her best... Palm Sunday with the FSSP in Reading.

Of course, the wider legal and textual situation in the Novus Ordo is a nightmare of confusion and mixed signals, which I have addressed, a little, here. Nevertheless, Archbishop Sample is right that by replacing the chants with hymns, we are moving from a liturgical text - an ancient, Catholic, liturgical text, in fact - to something which is at best para-liturgical, and often not even Catholic.

Loftus' argument against the use of the liturgical texts is the typically patronising argument that chant is not appropriate for ordinary people in ordinary Masses.

The aura, ethos and culture of a monastic Mass cannot easily by transplanted in a parish Sunday Mass. Nor is it always appropriate to try to do so. Not many abbots presiding at conventual Mass in their monasteries have the ethereal, numinous and meditative qualities of their organ-led Greogorian-chant shattered by a four-year-old returning from the children's liturgy and informing him: "I want to wee."

Venerating a relic of St Gregory the Great, the codifier of the Chant repertoire, at SS Gregory & Augustine in Oxford.

Has Loftus ever actually seen a Mass with chant being sung with a congregation with lots of small children? Anyone tempted by his line of argument urgently needs to get themselves to the regular, sung Traditional Mass celebrated in places such as Reading, by the Fraternity of St Peter, St Bede's, Clapham Park, or Blackfen. I have taken my children, who range from six months to ten years of age, to such Masses all their lives, and I have myself sung, yes sung chant, at the great majority of those Masses, in a large number of locations with fellow worshipers from every corner of the land and every walk of life, so unlike Basil I know exactly what I am talking about. The reality is that children respond to the atmosphere created by chant at least as much, and I would say actually more, than adults.

The atmosphere created by chant is at least in part a matter of association: that is to say, it is learnt. To compare like with like, therefore - adults and children equally unfamiliar with chant - then small children are at a huge advantage, because they learn fast, they have no preconceptions, and they are imitative. They want to do what other people are doing.

When the association is embedded, in children and adults, again if we are comparing like with like, then children again have a big advantage, because - as anyone who knows children knows - children are conservative. Once a habit is established, the way the Christmas tree is decorated or the table is laid, children naturally stick fast to it. Once they've learnt that chant accompanies an activity for which they need to be quiet, they will be very resistant to anything contradicting this principle.

Servers at a funeral in the Oxford Oratory.

I suppose Loftus may have in mind an unfair comparison, between adults who have a dim recollection of chant as associated with the sacred, coupled with a vague sense of duty about how to behave in church, and children whose liturgical instincts have been un-formed as a result of infrequent visits to church, and mis-formed by hyper-active 'kiddies hymns' and 'children's liturgies'. If children behave inappropriately for those reasons, however, it is the grown-ups who are to blame.

What the four-year-old of Loftus' fantasy needs, then, after his visit to the loo, is an end to the 'children's liturgy', and consistent exposure to chant, ideally at the Traditional Mass. If he observes other people lower their voices in church, with a little encouragement he will do the same. Small boys can be more prone to restlessness in church than girls, but wait a couple more years and he'll be joining the serving team, and your problems are over.

Obviously, this is not going to happen if there are girls serving. But that's just reason number 94 for making sure it is the Traditional Mass.

There are many other errors in the article, but as usual I can't address them all. For example, the Gloria is not a hymn in any usefully descriptive sense: it is not metrical. Like the Psalms, it can be sung using Gregorian Chant because this can cope with texts which don't have strict dum-di-dum rythms and lines of equal length. (It is called a 'prose'.) Metrical hymns have a very long history in the Roman liturgy, in the Office, but never - never - in Mass, until vernacular hymns crept in as a result of Protestant influence.

Noting that the Vatican II document on the liturgy, Sacrosanctum Concilium, allows a range of musical instruments to be used in the liturgy, Loftus writes:
If the bagpipes is the chosen instrument, then the type of music must be tailored to it. This may exclude Gregorian chant.

A bizarre attempt to put the cart before the horse: to claim the right to choose the instrument and then fit the music to it, regardless of liturgical considerations. However, it is not a well chosen example. I learned on the Chartres Pilgrimage that it is perfectly possible - strange, perhaps, but perfectly possible - to play chant melodies on the bagpipes, from the chap in the picture.

As a service to the public, I have put together quotations on a range of themes from Loftus' published writings, mostly his Catholic Times columns, in a dossier here, and made one of his most theologically egregious articles, on the Resurrection of Our Lord, available here.

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