Why the Extraordinary Form Is Extraordinary
Sometime in 1970 Pope Paul VI was made an offer which he tragically refused. The Pontiff had just banned the millennial old Roman Missal throughout the world. Forever. The ancient majestic form of the Mass was halted with the suddenness of a bird slamming into a plate glass window. Sir Kenneth Clark, leading a glittering roster of the world’s leading artists and intellectuals, offered the Pope their eternal gratitude if he would but rescind his abrogation of the classical Roman Mass. They argued that it fused the Europe we now know. Furthermore, it communicated an ineffable mystery within an artistic liturgical form unsurpassed in aesthetic achievement. History tells the rest. Liturgical technocrats won over art and tradition, and Paul VI delivered to the world his Novus Ordo Missae, or the Missa Paulinus.
Axiomatic for every Catholic is the dogmatic fact that Christ's sacrifice of Calvary is made present at every Mass. This must never be in question when we compare the value of one liturgical form with another. Justified disgust at enormities at Novus Ordo Masses these days should lead no one to say there is no Mass. Unless certain strict norms for validity are flouted, every Mass is an immolation of the Immaculate Lamb of God for our salvation. Period. Once this is understood, a discussion can develop without fear that certain strong positions suggest disloyalty to the Church.
Fifty years distance from the second Vatican council and its liturgical reforms give all of us sufficient objectivity to weigh them appropriately. For decades growing numbers of scholars have begun a sustained, growing, and pointed critique of the Novus Ordo Missae. Chief among them:
Pope Benedict XVI (Feast of Faith, The Spirit of the Liturgy, et. al)
Monsignor Klaus Gamber (The Reform of the Roman Liturgy)
Father Aidan Nichols, O.P. (Looking at the Liturgy, Lost in Wonder)
Alcuin Reid
Peter Kwasniewski
Martin Mosebach
Catherine Pickstock
Michael Fiedrowicz
The superiority of the Ancient Mass can be argued from four theological perspectives: mystery, sin, prayer, and adoration. Before beginning this analysis it cannot be stressed enough that every valid Mass contains these properties ex natura ipsius rei. What is permissible to argue is which form more effectively communicates these properties. A diamond set within a tangle of weeds communicates less of its value than when it is set in a solid gold engraved encasement. Same diamond; different communication. In one, the beauty of the jewel is obscured; in the other it radiates. So the forms of the Mass.
Mystery
By mystery we mean the presence of the Divinity which is incomprehensible and ineffable. Not in the sense of a puzzle, but rather like a sunset: never fully understandable, but irresistibly attractive. Rudolf Otto, the noted religious phenomenologist, aptly expresses it in the phrase, mysterium tremendans et fascinans (a mystery overwhelming and simultaneously captivating). The Ancient Roman Mass is saturated with conspicuous mystery. It employs an evocative ensemble of symbols to evoke a thick mood of sacred mystery. Aside from the several dozen precise rubrics executed during the Mass, the central one must be the priest silently praying the Canon.
A psychological separation is effected here, and it strikes dramatically. The muted sacerdotal voice signals the commencement of a stunning Divine Act which is unmistakable by the palpable stillness. Only the ruffling of heavy vestments and the tinkling of silver bells interrupts it. Paradoxically, this stark separation produces a simultaneous intimacy, as well as a heightened longing. It resembles the whispered conversation of lovers, where more audible words would injure the intimacy of the moment. Thus God descends upon our altar by the hushed words of the priest only to take us to Himself, here and unto heaven. This penetrating sense of mystery is only deepened by the priest facing God. He is seen not only as leading the faithful to heaven, as a captain leading men to war, but simultaneously separated from them as he conducts the business of Calvary in persona Christi.
The use of the Latin language consummates this sense of mystery. Not that mystery rests upon incomprehensibility. But its use does rest upon a distance from the commonplace, the ordinary, the pedestrian. A necessary dissimilarity with the familiar is critical in establishing contact with the world of the supernatural. Otherwise mystery melts into the quotidian and drab imitation of the marketplace.
Sin
The elaborate penitential choreography of the Foot Prayers (Psalm 42) and the nine Eleisons immediately ushers priest and faithful into a vivid awareness of their sinful lot. Indeed, the humble and pronounced kneeling, then profound bowing of the servers and priest while they recite these galvanic prayers, drives this point home with thunderous clarity. The Ancient Mass possesses an exquisite series of Offertory prayers which highlight our sinful approach to the thrice holy God. The mandatory striking of the breast is a potent act that accompanies each entreaty for mercy: Sanctus, Agnus Dei, Domine Non Sum Dignus. Each time, there is recalled Saint Augustine’s haunting query:
“If Christ were to stand before you now, what would you think, not of Him, but of yourself?!”
Instantly there comes to mind the scene of Saint Peter pleading with Christ to depart from him, a sinful man. Or, the Magdalene washing Christ’s feet with her hair. Yet this searing awareness of sin does not frighten or distance rather, it deepens the aching for the Savior Who alone relieves our sinful misery. Sin’s palpable presence in the Ancient Roman Mass acts as magnification of Christ’s pity for man brought to its highest pitch on Calvary. The solemn words of the Creed become real, “for us men, and for our salvation He came down from heaven.” Though the sorrow for sin envelopes us, the compassion of Christ envelopes all the more. Saint Paul’s words seem to settle firmly in our souls, "But where sin abounded, grace did much more abound” (Rom. 5:20) with an understanding powerfully branded onto men’s hearts.
Prayer
Even a superficial glance at the prayers of the Ancient Roman Mass resonates with a clarity, beauty, and spiritual refinement that sweeps the faithful into the depths of the mystical sacrifice. This prayerful reverence is sustained at every moment. The faithful are never victimized by idiosyncrasy or idiocy, precisely because the inflexibility of the Ancient Roman Mass protects them. No matter that the priest is uninspired or uninspiring, weary or even a simpleton, the Ancient Roman Mass makes each priest do exactly the same thing and that same thing is sublimity itself. It gives flesh to the old Catechism definition, “prayer is the lifting up of the mind and heart to God.” Each of the prayers of the Ancient Mass is an encyclopedia of doctrine; compact, unambiguous, clarifying, and stirring. Take the Collect of the Feast of Saint Aloysius Gonzaga:
Father of love, giver of all good things, in Saint Aloysius you combined remarkable innocence with the spirit of penance. By the help of his prayers may we who have not followed his innocence follow his example of penance. Grant this through our Lord Jesus Christ, your Son, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, God, for ever and ever.
Each sculpted sentence is a pleading before God’s throne for the salvation of our souls and temporal protection from adversity. Each prayer is like a miniature cameo, brevity wedded to doctrinal poetry. Or, perhaps like a range of towering mountain peaks lifting us higher and higher so we can touch the face of God.
Such hieratic vocabulary seems almost alien to the Novus Ordo Missae. And by design. The necessary decade long revision of the Roman Missal begun by Pope John Paul II and completed by Pope Benedict XVI is proof that something in the Novus Ordo Missae cried out for redress.
For its fabricators intentionally traded sacral expression for a more pedestrian style better suited to their latitudinarian interests. Even the preferred vestments of the Novus Ordo Missae exhibit this drab utility. Each resembles items from a neighborhood thrift shop rather than the sumptuous splendor befitting the celestial court of the Immolated Lamb of God. Look at the van Eyck Ghent Altarpiece and see what I mean.
Adoration
Because we are not angels the Church recognizes that each movement of the soul must be accompanied by an action of the body. The interpenetration of soul and body in man, constituting a whole and undivided person, demands it. While the principal act of man at Mass is adoration, it is stillborn if not joined to physical acts: kneeling, genuflections, bows, striking of the breast. The Ancient Roman Mass is teeming with these gestures. They are directed to Christ present in the Most Blessed Sacrament and to the person of the priest, who acts in persona Christi. If a stranger were to walk in upon an Ancient Roman Mass he would not for a moment think he had walked in a chance gathering of friends. Like a clanging cymbal close to his ear, he would know he had stepped in upon Something unlike anything on earth. For instance, each time the priest moves the Sacred Species, that action is both preceded and followed by genuflection. This is adoration writ large.
No casualness, only strict precision of movements. No improvisations, only perfect adherence to prescribed words. No bonhomie, only attention to God and His grandeur. No performance, only the homage of adoration before the throne of the Savior. All but the dimwitted can see that Someone must be present here beyond human words. These gestures of adoration draw the soul like a magnet, sundering distraction and leaving the soul exposed to the elevations of grace. No doubt, a priest celebrating the Novus Ordo Missae can create this ambience of adoration, but this is rare. For its very intrinsic structure does not lend itself easily to such postures of latria. The ethos of the Novus Ordo Missae is an informal elasticity, which is anathema to the Ancient Roman Mass.
Jacques Maritain wrote the preface to the 1936 classic, The Mystery of the Church, by distinguished Thomistic theologian Father Humbert Clerissac. In it he writes movingly of his attendance at the Masses of Father Clerissac. Read this text of Maritain carefully. Could this have been written of most Masses of the Novus Ordo Missae?
The Mass, said St. Vincent Ferrer, is the highest work of contemplation. I never assisted, and I believe I shall never again assist, at Masses offered with so much perfection, exactitude, completely recollected love, and supreme and almost terrible majesty of those Masses of Father Clerissac which I had the happiness of serving throughout one year. He pronounced the words of consecration in an unforgettable way, in a voice that was low but astonishingly distinct, in so energetic a tone that it seemed to pierce the heart of God. The sacrifice of the Mass was truly for him the consummation of all things: the supreme action. He often advised people to unite themselves to it in such a way that they put, so to say, their whole life into the chalice of the priest, offering it with him for the four principle ends of this oblation of Jesus Christ through which the work of our redemption is accomplished each time that it is renewed.
So why is the Extraordinary Form extraordinary?
Need one even ask?
Father John A. Perricone is Professor of Philosophy at Saint Francis College (Brooklyn, NY). He received a Ph.D. in Philosophy from Fordham University (Bronx, New York). Numerous talks by Father Perricone can be found on our website www.KeepTheFaith.org. Father Perricone offers the Traditional Mass each Sunday at 9:00 am at Our Lady of Sorrows Church, Jersey City.
(Article was originally published in Latin Mass Magazine - Christmas 2021)
[ Image credit: Incensing the Altar at St. Vincent Ferrer Church, NY, NY, Copyright Jon Stulich Photo 2021 ]
