"Mediator Dei 50 Years On"

MEDIATOR DEI: FIFTY YEARS ON
By Rev Fr Ephraem Chifley O.P.

Edited text of an address given to the Annual Liturgical Conference of the Ecclesia Dei Society, Templestowe, 20 July 1997.

(The following text is reproduced from the Oriens website: www.ozemail.com.au/~oriens).

"Moonlight and Lovesongs..." The scene is Rick's Café Americain. It is Casablanca. Sam is playing the piano. She comes into Rick's. She sees Rick, her former lover. He doesn't see her. "Go on Sam, play it," she says, "Play As Time Goes By." This classic moment of the silver screen never ceases to cast its magic spell over us all. As the song itself says, "Moonlight and lovesongs are never out of date..." It is passing strange that modern liturgists do not seem to have cottoned on to this basic fact of human existence.

This year on November 20th it will be the fiftieth anniversary of the promulgation of Mediator Dei by Pope Pius XII. While I am sure that there will be one or two discreet soireés to celebrate the event, I am as yet unaware of any street parties being organised.

Many people unfortunately, have assumed that like Quanta Cura and Pascendi Dominici Gregis it has been quietly buried in the Vatican archives, only to be consulted by historians, archaeologists and tourists who have lost their way in the Apostolic library. But today I would like to reassure you that the fundamental things still apply as time goes by. It is still the same old story. Mediator Dei is a classic that can bear frequent repetition, just like the old songs.

The Contents of Mediator Dei

Mediator Dei is divided into four parts. The first part is entitled The nature, origin and development of the Liturgy in which Pius XII outlines the Church's teaching on the liturgy as such:

The sacred liturgy, then, is the public worship which our Redeemer, the Head of the Church, offers to the heavenly Father and which the community of Christ's faithful pays to its founder, and through Him to the Eternal Father; briefly, it is the whole public worship of the Mystical Body of Jesus Christ, Head and members. (p 20).

Part two of Mediator Dei deals with the nature of the Eucharistic worship of the Church. It speaks of the institution of the Mass at the Last Supper, the continuation of the sacrifice of Calvary in the Eucharist, the ministry of Christ as a true Priest, and also as victim. It examines the nature of the Eucharistic sacrifice and the part to be played in it not just by the ordained priests but by the people. It exhorts the people to worthy and frequent communion and exhorts them to suitable thanksgiving after communion. It also deals with the adoration of the Eucharistic species outside of Mass in Benediction and in the pious custom of visiting Our Lord in the tabernacle.

The third part of Mediator Dei treats the Divine Office, explaining how it relates to the whole of the Church's liturgy and encouraging the singing of the offices of Vespers and Compline on Sundays by the laity. It also explains the seasonal and sanctoral cycles of the Church's liturgical year.

The fourth part discusses the principles which guide the question of non-liturgical devotions. and last, but not least, the pastoral principles that pastors should use in revivifying the liturgical life of their parishes.

Part Two: Selected Themes

True and False Liturgical Development

The Holy Father distinguishes between true and false liturgical reform, mentioning favourably the classical liturgical reform of the nineteenth century Benedictines. These reforms were an attempt to revive the liturgy by encouraging the legitimate participation of the laity in it. The incremental reforms which preceded the 1962 Roman Missal might be seen as a product of this movement. Thus we find the cleaning up the proliferation of saints on the general calendar, reducing the number of commemorations at Mass, suppressing the Confiteor before communion, restoring Holy Communion to its place in Mass rather than outside the liturgy, encouraging frequent worthy communion, encouraging priests to consecrate hosts for the people at each Mass rather than using hosts from the tabernacle. We might characterise such a movement as the desire for sensible and organic change based on an understanding of the liturgy, both as an object of historical study and as a lived reality, always with a view to making the Christian mysteries more easily understood and more reverently celebrated. Such development is a sign that the Church, the Bride of Christ, is alive and well, responding to the promptings of the Holy Ghost.

Even among those dedicated to such pious outcomes, however, there was the opportunity for excesses and exaggerations. Pius XII was anxious that such tendencies did not spoil what he obviously considered a movement of great promise. Mediator Dei has clearly in its sights the sort of errors and abuses which have become so lamentably familiar in our own day. So let us then round up the usual suspects.

Among the first concerns of Pope Pius in Mediator Dei is unauthorised liturgical innovation, which to his mind constitutes a clear rejection of the nature of the Church itself as a Divinely ordered hierarchical society. He mentions this problem in about a dozen places, most significantly in paragraph 62.

He was also concerned with the problem of what he described as archaeologism. This is something with which we are all familiar. (Every parish liturgical seminar begins with "In the early Church, they did.......or did not.) He terms this archaeologism "a wicked movement, that tends to paralyse the sanctifying and salutary action by which the liturgy leads the children of adoption on the path to their heavenly Father."

Modern errors

Scattered throughout Mediator Dei we can find a number of references to erroneous beliefs or practises which affect the celebration of the liturgy. Perhaps the most important of these is a false opposition between private prayer and liturgy. The liturgy is not a substitute for private devotion, nor is private devotion a substitute for the liturgy. They are two separate though interrelated realities. Personal devotion is sterile without the liturgy, just as a liturgical celebration is fruitless without proper devotion. Liturgy must be recollected and flow into our private prayer, enriching and enlivening it. So too our private prayer finds its fulfillment in our joining ourselves to the Holy Sacrifice and in our eucharistic communion with Christ.

Thus the form of the liturgy should reflect its objective status as a medium of sacramental grace, not the supposed devotional requirements of the congregation. As Pope Pius pointed out in Mediator Dei participation in the liturgy exists at a number of levels depending on the spiritual advancement, education and role of the person involved (p. 114-115). The liturgy, however, ought never to be tailored to meet the needs of individual, but rather individuals should be challenged to meet the needs of the liturgy. Likewise, beyond a helpful liturgical catechesis, the people should be left to participate in whatever way they find helpful. He also exhorts care in making sure that the rubrics are adequately followed.

We might also point to a misguided piety which prefers the exclusive celebration of Low Mass, which will multiply unusual and unapproved private devotions while failing to give due reverence to the ceremonies prescribed by the authority of the Church. High Mass ought not to be considered an occasion of sin nor an indication of moral debility.

Sometimes this preference for Low Mass over and against Solemn Mass is as a result of nostalgia. Mediator Dei is quite clear that the liturgy does change sometimes for the better, for the health of the Church and for our spiritual benefit. If we are to be faithful to the principles upon which the traditional Mass is based then we cannot pretend everything must be precisely as we remember it. A judicious use of the vernacular in the readings, the introduction of suitable bidding prayers at Mass, a greater use of traditional texts for the prefaces of the Canon, for example, are elements of legitimate and indeed approved innovation that we might consider for the future without prejudicing the integrity of traditional worship. How much more so should we respond to the Church's call to foster Gregorian chant and Sacred Polyphony rather than ephemeral vernacular hymns of dubious artistic merit, whose only virtue seems to be relative antiquity.

Mediator Dei also denounces errors to do with the sacrifice of the priesthood at the altar. While he promotes the social aspect of the Holy Liturgy he reproves those who would say that Mass should not be offered without a congregation, or that several priests may not say Mass at the same time at several altars or that the people must in some way ratify the sacrifice for its efficacy. The people offer the sacrifice through the priest, not along side him. The priesthood of the baptised and the ordained priesthood are ordered to one another. There is no opposition between the priest's offering and that of the people, since the one Christ is offered. Most importantly each member of the faithful should offer themselves with Christ to the Father.

The Holy Father also points out errors to do with the reception of Holy Communion. The reception of Holy Communion at Mass is necessary for the priest but not for all the faithful, for whom it is only highly recommended. It would be false doctrine that would lead a priest to refuse to celebrate the eucharist unless the people were to communicate. The essential element of the Mass is the Sacrifice but Mediator Dei nonetheless commends frequent communion, worthily prepared for. It also encourages priests to communicate the faithful from hosts consecrated at the same Mass at which they have assisted rather than from those reserved in the tabernacle. (p126)

Conclusion

Standing between us and Mediator Dei is the Second Vatican Council. Considering the extent to which the documents of the Council on the Liturgy rely on Mediator Dei, it is perhaps time for us to lay claim to the positive results of this Council rather than squeamishly avoiding it. The Second Vatican Council is among the most important events of the twentieth century. We cannot pretend that it did not happen. This is not to say that we should ignore some of the ambiguities which laid the ground for the pastoral disaster which followed the Council. It is to be hoped, however, that if we maintain a stance of intelligent but critical acceptance of the Council then needed clarification of ambiguities will be given by the Church's Magisterium in the decades to come, as seems to have been done in the Cathechism of the Catholic Church with regard to the question of Religious Liberty.

Fifty years on, the reform of the liturgy envisioned by Pope Pius XII is still in large measure unrealised, caught up as it was in the social tumult of the post-war period and the cultural turmoil of the 1960s and 1970s. The reassertion of liturgical tradition consequent upon the decree Ecclesia Dei has provided an opportunity to view again the achievements of Pope Pius XII's great liturgical encyclical. The way forward to a better appreciation of the classical liturgical forms in the modern Church lies in the principles enunciated there.