RIGHTS and DUTIES ARISING from the NATURE of the LITURGY Considerations in the Light of the Motu Proprio Magnum Principium

RIGHTS AND DUTIES ARISING FROM THE NATURE OF THE LITURGY Considerations in the light of the Motu proprio Magnum principium Mario Lessi Ariosto, S.J. While the Prooemium of the Constitution Sacrosanctum Concilium affirms that its aim is instaurandum atque fovendam Liturgiam1 it adds that the framing of this requires calling to mind “quae sequuntur principia”2. It is for this reason that in articles 5-13 the theological-pastoral basis of the Liturgy is summarised beginning from art. 11, where the fundamental pastoral principle level “active participation”3 appears, which is further clarified by the adverbs “scienter, actuose et fructuose”. In the articles that follow “participation of the people of God” at liturgical celebrations is specified by other noteworthy adjectives such as: “interna et externa” (art. 19), “plena/plenaria”, “communitatis propria” (arts. 21, 41), “pia” (art. 50), and also with: “facilis” (art. 79), where the Constitution speaks about the possibility of some sacramentals being administered by the laity, although the adverb “facile” was already used along with the verb “percipere” in art. 21. Active Participation The entire work of the reform of the liturgy is to be orientated towards conscious, active, communal, unhindered participation, as part of art. 21 says: “Qua quidem instauratione, textus et ritus ita ordinari oportet, ut sancta, quae significant, clarius exprimant, eaque populus christianus in quantum fieri potest, facile percipere atque plena, actuosa et communitatis propria celebratione participare possit”*. To explain this text it is useful to recall what Dom Cipriano Vagaggini, OSB, wrote in 1964 in The Fundamental Ideas of the Liturgy Constitution, in a paragraph intended to explain “the principal dispositions of mind needed for reform”. This section was headed: “Not to impose unnecessary difficulties on the people”. There he writes: “In a word one can say that the fundamental wish of the Council in this material is once more to make the liturgy wholly unadulterated and authentic. This is to say that it not only responds well pastorally from an effective psychological, 1 Art. 1. “the reform and promotion of the liturgy”. 2 Art. 3. “the following principles”. 3 For active participation or other synonymous or equivalent expressions: cf. arts. 11, 14, twice, 21, 27, 30, 31, 37, 41, 48, 50, 53, 56, 79, 83, 85, 87, 90, 100, 113, 114, 118, 121, 124. For a reflection of a general nature cf. H. SCHMIDT, Il popolo Cristiano al centro del rinnovamento liturgico, in: La Civiltà Cattolica, 115 (1964) I, 123ss; J. Card. LERCARO, La participation active, Principe fondamentale de la réforme pastorale et liturgique de Pie X, in: La Maison Dieu, n. 37 (1954), 16-24; for a more doctrinal reflection cf. J. PASCHER, Das Wesen der Tätigen Teilnahme, Ein Beitrag zur Thelogie der Konstitution über die Hl. Liturgie, in: A. A. Miscellanea liturgica in onore di S.E. il Card. Giacomo Lercaro, Roma, 1966, vol. 1, 211-229. * In this restoration, both texts and rites should be drawn up so that they express more clearly the holy things which they signify; the Christian people, so far as possible, should be enabled to understand them with ease and to take part in them fully, actively, and as befits a community. 1 didactic and communal point of view, but also to the overall aims to which, by its nature it should respond. The liturgy is a complex set of signs – words, objects, gestures – that should express a sacred reality, in order that through them the people understand and are able to take full part in them. In practice, therefore, having an authentic liturgy means to have a liturgy in which the texts and rites, which are signs, clearly express for the people the sacred reality they signify and which the people, without unnecessary difficulties, can be fully immersed without unnecessarily obscuring the transcendence of the divine”4. With the Motu proprio Magnum principium, and in particular its two programmatic opening words, Pope Francis has recovered for the Latin Church a greater faithfulness to the requirements of art. 36 of the conciliar Constitution Sacrosanctum Concilium bringing back to mind what Blessed Pope Paul VI said in addressing the Members and Experts of the Consilium ad exsequendam Constitutionem Liturgicam on 19 April 1967. Expressing his dismay at an attack directed against Cardinal Giacomo Lercaro in a publication in which the authors intended to defend the conservation of the Latin language in liturgical celebrations, the Pope, while not entering into the question of Latin, expressed himself as follows: “quae certo est quaestio digna ad quam diligenter attendatur, sed non eiusmodi ut solvi possit qui magno illi principio adversetur, per Concilium confirmato, ex quo preactio liturgica, ad populi captum accommodata, intellegi quaeat et qui alteri repugnet principio dicimus ex quo animi sensus intimi et sincerissimi sermone qui in ipsa vulgi consuetudine viget exprimantur”5. The conviction that guided Paul VI to grant, in a gradual way, the use of the vernacular to those who participate in liturgical celebrations is clearly apparent in this text in two convergent directions: that of the comprehension of texts and that of the possibility of expression in the language used in everyday life. They are two principles that refer to each other. Paul VI noted that, above all, the Council confirmed this first principle, which he referred to as the “magnum principium”. From the time of Pope Saint Pius X6 it 4 In La Sacra Liturgia rinnovata dal Concilio, Studi e commenti intorno alla Costituzione Liturgica del Concilio Ecumenico Vaticano II, a cura di G. Baraúna, OFM, Torino, 1964, 1965, 60-61. 5 AAS 59 (1967) 419 emphasis ours. “Latin is an issue certainly deserving serious attention, but the issue cannot be solved in a way that is opposed to the great principle affirmed by the Council, namely, that liturgical prayer, accommodated to the understanding of the people, is to be intelligible. Nor can it be solved in opposition to another principle called for by the collectivity of human culture, namely, that peoples’ deepest and sincerest sentiments can best be expressed through the vernacular as it is in actual usage”. Documents on the Liturgy 1963-1979, The Liturgical Press, Collegeville, 1982, 228. 6 Pius X uses the term “active participation” in an general sense in which the accent seems to have fallen on the adjective “active” in as much as it is opposed to some ways of doing things that reduced the Christian people to a passive being. In the Motu Proprio Tra le sollecitudini of 22 November 1903 where it affirms: “Filled as We are with a most ardent desire to see the true Christian spirit flourish in every respect and be preserved by all the faithful, We deem it necessary to provide before anything else for the sanctity and dignity of the temple, in which the faithful assemble for no other object than that of acquiring this spirit from its foremost and indispensable font, which is the active participation in the most holy mysteries and in the public and solemn prayer of the Church” AAS 36 (1903-4) 387-388 (the authentic Latin text translates active participation with “actuosa communicatio”). Note that such “active 2 had been repeatedly formulated in fact within the framework of the Liturgical Movement, whose aim was to give back to the Christian people an understanding and a love for the liturgy in such a way that their participation would involve them from their very depths. Pope Pius XI repeated it in 1928 in a new way in his Apostolic Constitution Divini cultus7. The principle was taken up by Pope Pius XII in the encyclical Mediator Dei as the end to reach8 in the bilingual editions of the Rituals, regulated by norms9 and applied even if with a certain amount of caution in various concessions granted by the Holy See 10. Prior to Mediator Dei it is evident that this desired and regulated “active participation” had not reached the level of vocal expression and so did not require the translation of liturgical texts. The first concessions of vernacular languages were in regard to the Rituals, the Biblical Readings in the Mass, and the prayers and chants of the people. In 1963 the Congress for Liturgical Studies in Lugano explicitly asked the Holy See: “Pour faciliter la participation plus fructueuse du peuple à la liturgie, le Congrès demande très humblement que les Ordinaires des lieux aient le pouvoir de permettre au peuple, selon les circonstances, non seulement d’entendre la Parole de Dieu dans sa langue, mais également d’y répondre en priant et en chantant dans la même langue y compris la messe chantée” 11 . The request was both broad and moderate regarding readings and prayers and chants of the people. The extension of this to sung Masses was based on the fact that Germany had been granted use of the vernacular also for the chants of the Mass, a derogation from what had always been participation” had to be implemented at the time of Pius X notwithstanding the fact that Latin was the only language permitted in liturgical celebrations. During his pontificate the Pope also uses “participation” in a more sacramental- theological sense when one reads “nec sacrae mensae participes fieri coeperunt infantes” in the Decree of the S. Congregation for the Discipline of the Sacraments Quam singulari to indicate the time which Pius X wants to end by opening participation in the Eucharist to those who have reached the use of reason, AAS 2 (1910) 578. Certainly this latter sense is more specific and cannot but have its source in “participatio” employed in the Roman Canon and in a good number of the prayers of the Roman Missal.

Load more