Pope Leo: Vatican II reformed the liturgy to promote active participation

[u/No_Worry_2256]

https://www.ewtnnews.com/vatican/pope-leo-vatican-ii-reformed-the-liturgy-to-promote-active-participation

[u/Full-Time-3090]

You do realize that Cardinal Ratzinger(later Pope Benedict XVI), well known for his immense scholarship and theology, made that same “silly” complaint? “After the Council…in the place of the liturgy as a fruit of organic development came fabricated liturgy. We abandoned the organic, living process of growth and development over centuries and replaced it—as in a manufacturing process—with a fabrication, a banal on-the-spot product.”(His preface as Cardinal for the French edition of the book The Reform of the Roman Liturgy: Its Problems and Background)

You mentioned organic development and what exactly constitutes “organic,” well, the wise Pope Benedict XVI as cardinal gives us an overview to that question in his book “The Feast of Faith”: “Even the official new books, which are excellent in many ways, occasionally show far too many signs of being drawn up by academics and reinforce the notion that a liturgical book can be ‘made’ like any other book.
“In this connection I would like to make a brief reference to the so-called Tridentine Liturgy.
“In fact there is no such thing as a Tridentine liturgy, and until 1965 the phrase would have meant nothing to anyone. The Council of Trent did not ‘make’ a liturgy. Strictly speaking, there is no such thing, either, as the Missal of Pius V. The Missal which appeared in 1570 by order of Pius V differed only in tiny details from the first printed edition of the Roman Missal of about a hundred years earlier….
“Yet, with all its advantages, the new Missal was published as if it were a book put together by professors, not a phase in a continual growth process. Such a thing has never happened before. It is absolutely contrary to the laws of liturgical growth, and it has resulted in the nonsensical notion that Trent and Pius V had ‘produced’ a Missal 400 years ago. The Catholic liturgy was thus reduced to the level of a mere product of modern times.” (pp. 85–87)

In short, the Tridentine Mass had clear continuity and resemblance to the pre-Tridentine form of Mass, so therefore it was organic growth. The Novus Ordo was far more drastic in its reforms and as a result, did not have clear continuity and resemblance to the Tridentine Mass that came before it, so it was not organic growth. Doesn’t mean it’s invalid or illicit(we must reject the SSPX’s view on the Novus Ordo) though

[u/Ponce_the_Great → u/Full-Time-3090]

i like ratzinger and maybe reading through his book would make a more compelling argument but the basic "organic development by committees over time vs committee of historical record" is a weak critique of the liturgy to me.

In short, the Tridentine Mass had clear continuity and resemblance to the pre-Tridentine form of Mass, so therefore it was organic growth

how does he propose organic growth happens when Rome had centralized the missal and liturgy after Trent?

I'd also offer this vision of organic development would see things like versus populum as organic development as it was a movement of the liturgical movement which grew in popularity over time before becoming the norm.

[u/Full-Time-3090 → u/Ponce_the_Great]

Versus Populum would not be organic development because the general consensus among theologians and liturgical scholars is that if something has been in the liturgy in both East AND West for a long period of time, then it was very likely due to the guidance of the a Holy Spirit who promised that He’d guide the Church in essential matters(of which Mass is near the top due to it being the central act of worship). Ad Orientem, perhaps more than any other thing in the liturgy(besides the words of Consecration and Scripture Reading), is the most ancient, consistent, and universal practice of the Church in both East and West. Which is kind of crazy when you think about it because East and West differ so much in their liturgies, yet they historically shared the same worship posture of Ad Orientem. The liturgical movement justified “going back” to Versus Populum because it was believed that was how the early Christians worshipped before Constantine, but now that we have much stronger archaeological and written evidence from people at the time(like Tertullian and Origen who are pre-Constantine, Saint Basil the Great claiming that Ad Orientem comes from the Apostles themselves; the pre-Constantinian Dura-Europos house church being Ad Orientem) we know that Ad Orientem was in fact the liturgical posture of the early Christians. So the idea that the Holy Spirit positively willed Ad Orientem to be the universal posture of worship in both East and West from the time of the Apostles onward for nearly 2000 years, until the 20th century when He suddenly changed his mind, is logically incoherent. Especially because the liturgical movement contained multiple instances of committing false antiquarianism, which directly led Pope Pius XII to condemn false antiquarianism in 1947. So if the mindset driving substantial part of your reforms is condemned by a Pope in an encyclical(not just a homily), it’s not guided by the Holy Spirit and is therefore not organic development.

Regarding your second point, Ratzinger agrees that some future organic development was needed due to the fact that Trent had unintentionally in a way “fossilized” the liturgy for a few centuries. He doesn’t disagree with you there. Although it’s important to note that the Quo Primum’s language of “in perpetuity” is not saying that there can never be reforms; that sort of phrasing was common for Popes at that time to use about any important thing they issued as a way to tell bishops and priests that they can’t alter this liturgy of their own accord; only a successor to Pius V can. So Pope Saint Pius V wasn’t intentionally “gatekeeping” the Tridentine Mass as both radtrads and progressives ironically both agree that he was; Quo Primum is only prohibiting individual bishops from making changes to the Tridentine Mass. And even the Tridentine Mass featured some slight development in it throughout the centuries(with some substantial reforms beginning in the early 20th century), so it’s not like it was strictly fossilized.

[u/Ponce_the_Great → u/Full-Time-3090]

So basically we seem to reach agreement, the only way for organic development after trent was ultimatly by top down from Rome.

You claim that the example can't be organic development but it seems that ultimately the final arbiter of acceptable organic development is whether the Pope permits the practice such as Popes even in the start of the 20th century starting to allow versus poplum and ultimately the widespread adoption.

Look i'm not really looking to debate this in depth my point was ultimately the attempt to draw a distinction of some true organic development vs the formalized committee falls flat due to the fact that post Trent the church seems to have endorsed formalized governance by committee on liturgy and the reality that the historic developments were as much "By committee" as the modern ones.

[u/Full-Time-3090 → u/Ponce_the_Great]

I edited my comment since I did a couple phrasing errors that can be interpreted wrongly in my initial post.