During
an interview with Armin Schwibach of the Austrian Catholic news
website kath.net on Christmas Eve, Cardinal Kurt Koch, Prefect of the
Congregation for Promoting Christian Unity, was asked to comment on
the connection between talk about a “reform of the reform” of the
liturgy and the post-conciliar crisis in faith. A translation of his
answer follows.
Cardinal Koch:
Given the inflationary use of the word “reform” nowadays, the
initial question arises also in talking about Rome’s reform of the
liturgy: what is to be understood sensibly by “reform” in light
of the Christian faith? This is a question about the fundamental
alternative: Is a reform a matter of a rupture with history thus
far, so that with it something new has begun that is no longer
identical to the previous thing needing to be reformed? Or must we
understand “reform” according to the meaning of the word, so that
reform has to do with being able to rediscover the original form of
the reality that has to be reformed, so that a liturgical re-form
takes its orientation from that fundamental form of the Christian
worship service that is prescribed by the Church’s Tradition? The
question of liturgical reform is therefore very closely connected
with the question of the correct interpretation of the Second Vatican
Council.
Because the reform
of the liturgy after the Council was often regarded and carried out
with a hermeneutic of discontinuity and rupture, this view departed
in quite a few points from the great liturgical vision of the
Council, which is centered on the Paschal Mystery of the death and
resurrection of Christ. With reference to this Pope Benedict XVI,
already when he was a Cardinal, judged that most problems in the
post-conciliar development of the liturgy are connected with the fact
that the Council’s approach to this fundamental mystery was not
sufficiently kept in mind.
The call for a
“reform of the reform” therefore includes the critical further
inquiry, whether in the post-conciliar development of the liturgy the
wishes and decision of the Council Fathers were really implemented or
whether the results independently went beyond them. Or to put it
positively: a “reform of the reform” can have no other aim than
to reawaken the true heritage of the Council and to make it fruitful
in the Church’s situation today. Just as the Council was preceded
by a liturgical movement, the ripe fruits of which could be brought
into the Council, so the Holy Father sees today also the necessity of
a new liturgical movement, which he of course considers in light of a
larger liturgical tradition. Only in this more comprehensive horizon
can it be fruitful in an ecumenical respect also.
Comments:
Cardinal Koch is remarkably candid in admitting that “the reform
of the liturgy after the Council was often regarded and carried out
with a hermeneutic of discontinuity and rupture.” During the first
half of the twentieth century, many of the leaders of the liturgical
movement were German-speaking abbots and religious (e.g. Ildephonso
Herwegen, Odo Cassel, and Pius Parsch). In some places they obtained
permission from Rome to introduce
ad
experimentum the
vernacular in worship and other innovations such as the “dialogue
Mass”. Vindicated and emboldened by the success of their ideas at
the Council, many professional liturgists then mistook “creativity”
and “relevance” for liturgical principles and turned the
post-conciliar German liturgy into a perpetual laboratory.
Cardinal
Koch also alludes obliquely to the “ecumenical” pressures that
were brought to bear on plans for Catholic liturgical reform. In
surveying the intellectual landscape in the pre-conciliar years,
historian Roberto de Mattei writes, “The biblical-liturgical
movement and the philosophical and theological tendencies merged into
a broader ‘ecumenical’ movement, which was also characterized by
a strong anti-Roman sentiment.” Selected non-Catholic clergymen
had “observer” status at the sessions of the Council. But there
were Council Fathers and periti
(experts) working on the conciliar Commissions who insistently
reasoned, “No, the Council cannot say or do that, because it would
offend the Orthodox or the Lutherans, it would not promote
ecumenism.”
The
de-emphasis of sacrificial language in the
Novus
Ordo
Mass was not something called for explicitly by the Vatican II
Constitution on the Liturgy
Sacrosanctum Concilium.
But it was on the unofficial agenda to try to make the Catholic Mass
more like Protestant worship, in the name of “ecumenism.” The
Prefect of the Congregation for Promoting Christian Unity is now
saying, though, that ecumenism is best served, not by changing the
prayers of the Church’s liturgy to please one group or another, but
by returning to “the true heritage of the Council,” “a larger
liturgical tradition” that is not just attuned to twentieth-century
concerns but rather is “centered on the Paschal mystery.”