by Michael Davies
1979 AND 1993
The Revised Ordinal of 1989
Taken from THE ORDER OF
MELCHISEDECH
On 29 June 1989 the Congregation for Divine Worship and the Discipline
of the Sacraments promulgated, with the approval and the authority of Pope
John Paul II a revised edition of the 1968 Ordinal (Editio
Typica Altera). Only the rite for the ordination of priests will be
examined in this appendix. The first point that must be made is that the
"native character and spirit" of the 1968 rite remain, and that the 1989
rite is manifestly inferior to the traditional rite as a liturgical
expression of Catholic teaching on the priesthood, even if somewhat less
inferior than that of 1968. Anglicans would be unlikely to modify to any
great extent the enthusiastic welcome with which they greeted the 1968
Ordinal because it was "an 'ecumenical' ordinal in the best sense, in that
it avoids much questionable terminology and is clearly expressive of the
theological aggiomamento of Vatican
II" (see Chapter VIII). By questionable terminology Anglicans mean, of
course, prayers in the traditional rite which make explicit the fact that a
priest is ordained primarily to offer sacrifice. The Anglican
Church Times specified prayers in
the traditional rite of which it disapproved, the suppression of which it
claimed, with every justification, signified "a distinct movement away from
medieval and Counter-Reformation theology" (Ibid.).
It stated with considerable satisfaction that:
For instance, that prayer has gone which spoke of the power of a priest to
"transform bread and wine into the Body and Blood of Christ by an immaculate
blessing". The former words at the delivery of paten and chalice have also
disappeared: "Receive the power to offer sacrifice to God and to celebrate
Masses (sic) for the living and the dead."
The official teaching of the Church of England in Article XXXI of its
Thirty-Nine Articles, to which every Anglican minister must subscribe in
their strictest literal interpretation, is that the Mass is a "blasphemous
fable and a dangerous deceit". Cardinal Newman insisted, having tried to
evade the literal meaning of the article himself in his Oxford Movement
days, that this means the Mass itself is "in all its daily celebration from
year's end to year's end, toto orbe
terrarum, a blasphemous fable."
1
The prayer containing the form of the Sacrament of Order is referred to
either as the Oratio Consecrationis
Presbyterorum or the Prex
Ordinationis Presbyterorum. For the sake of consistency the latter
term only will be used, abbreviated to Prex.
The traditional Prex is one of the
most venerable texts in the liturgy of the Roman Rite. It can be found with
only minor differences in the Leonine Sacramentary of the early seventh
century.
2 This Sacramentary has been attributed to Pope Leo I, who
died in 461, but his authorship is far from certain, although he may well
have composed some of its prayers. It is, however, certain that the prayers
it contains were already of great antiquity when included in the collection,
some of them dating back in all probability to the fifth century and beyond.
The manuscript itself is housed in the Chapter Library at Verona, and is
hence referred to frequently as the Veronese Sacramentary.
The Prex itself in both the
traditional and 1968 ordinals is, like the actual form of ordination which
it contains, indeterminate. The form does indeed state that the ordinands
are to be raised to the priesthood, but so does the form in the Anglican
Ordinal. The traditional Prex is,
the essential form apart, primarily of a narrative character. It describes
the growth of the Old Testament hierarchy in which men of lesser degree and
lower rank were chosen to be associates and helpers of the high priests.
Reference is made to the fact that the priestly ministry of the Old
Testament did not lack the means to offer sacrifices for the people's
welfare and perform sacred rites, which could be taken as implying that the
men about to be ordained would fulfill the same function, but this is not
stated specifically. It could be argued quite reasonably that this passage
in the Prex does no more than state
what happened before the advent of Our Lord, whose Apostles are cited only
as having teachers of the faith (doctores
fidei) to assist them in their work of spreading the good tidings (praedicationibus
impleverunt) the world over. No mention is made of any sacrifice
being offered by the Apostles or by their teaching companions who are not
actually designated as priests within the text of the
Prex. After the form which ordains
the new priests has been pronounced there follows in the traditional rite a
prayer expressing the hope that they will be "prudent helpers of their
bishops", and in the 1968 rite, in the only significant change made to the
Prex itself, this prayer has been
replaced by one that the new priests may be fellow-workers of the bishops
"so that the words of the Gospel may reach to the farthest parts of the
earth", echoing the reference to those who helped the Apostles with their
preaching (doctores fidei) in the
prayer that preceded the form.
As was explained in Chapter VII, the traditional Ordinal contained numerous
prayers which gave explicit sacerdotal signification to the indeterminate
Prex, and every one of these prayers
was removed during the composition of the 1968 rite. This meant that
although the 1968 Ordinal still retained the
Prex from the traditional rite
virtually unchanged, the Prex no longer received a sacrificial connotation
from the actual rite in which it was situated, but, as Dr. Francis Clark is
cited as accepting in the introduction to this book, from a
determinatio ex adiunctis external
to the rite itself. He explains that this supplies "due meaning which is no
longer explicit in the ritual forms". The allegation that I made in the
first edition of this book that the indeterminate
Prex of the traditional rite no
longer received a sacrificial signification from other prayers of the 1968
Ordinal, an allegation confirmed by Dr. Clark, was also conceded in a very
dramatic manner in an explanation of the rationale behind the revision given
by a spokesman for the Congregation for Divine Worship and the Discipline of
the Sacraments (CDWS), written in Spanish, and published in the February
1990 issue of Notitiae, Number 283.
The commentary was signed Pere Tena, and will be referred to throughout this
appendix as the CDWS commentary. What I have termed a dramatic confirmation
of the thesis of this book occurs in the following passage:
Until the year 1968, the theology of the Roman
Prex was made explicit and otherwise
corroborated by other elements occurring in the rite . . . With the reform
of 1968 these elements which I have just mentioned disappeared in the First
Editio Typica. . . . The theology
of the Prex of the Veronese
Sacramentary became isolated within the rite unconfirmed by euchological and
ritual explanations, in order to express the identity of the priestly
ministry in a more concrete fashion.
The CDWS also conceded that:
It must be admitted that the reception given to the text of the
Prex ordinationis since the time of
the First Editio Typica (1968) has
not been totally positive. It has, in fact, aroused frequent criticism from
both bishops and priests as well as the ordinands themselves.
Archbishop Bugnini, the principal architect of the 1968 rite, also conceded
that the reception given to it was "not totally positive". He claimed that
"the reformed rites of ordination were generally accepted as satisfactory",
3
but admitted that: "Some were of the opinion that the rite had been
impoverished and was now less solemn and impressive. There were requests
that the suppressed actions be restored, at least in some form".
4
As was explained in Chapter VII, among those who protested was Cardinal John
Heenan, the Archbishop of Westminster, England. He expressed publicly his
outrage that the bishops of the world had not been consulted during the
reform of the Ordinal, and that it had arrived on their desks as a
fait accompli. He protested that
this was the kind of thing that broke the bishops' hearts, and insisted that
the new form was far less attractive than the old (Chapter VII).
An English bishop who wrote to congratulate me on my book remarked:
Many of the omissions in the New Ordination Rite, e.g. "Receive the
power to offer sacrifice to God and to celebrate Mass both for the living
and the dead in the name of the Lord", and the reference to the forgiveness
of sins at the end of the Mass are an impoverishment indeed. The Episcopal
Conference of England and Wales was very upset about them. Cardinal Heenan
wrote to ask if they could be retained. The reply received was an emphatic
"No".
The most evident manner of overcoming the isolation of the
Prex within a rite from which the
CDWS admits the prayers imbuing it, with a sacrificial connotation had been
removed in the First Editio Typica,
would have been to restore at least some of these prayers' whose
disappearance had so distressed the Bishops of England and Wales, while
giving such satisfaction to the Editor of the Anglican
Church Times. The restoration of the
Accipe potestatem alone would have
removed the ambiguity of the new rite by the inclusion of one unequivocally
sacrificial prayer within the ordination rite itself. But, alas, the
ecumenical ethos which evidently pervades the Sacred Congregation for Divine
Worship and the Discipline of the Sacraments made such a simple and
effective remedy unthinkable. The Fathers of this Congregation decided,
incredible as it may seem, to attempt to remedy the deficiencies of the 1968
rite by making drastic changes in the only appreciable portion of it
preserved intact from the traditional Ordinal-----the
Prex itself. In its commentary upon
the 1989 rite, the CDWS accepts the necessity for this Second
Editio Typica to make "the actual
celebration of the priestly Ordinal a sufficiently eloquent presentation of
the mystery and identity of the priests, who, through the ministry of the
Bishop, Christ the Lord makes participants in His priesthood through the
power of the Holy Spirit." In other words, the 1989 rite of ordination
itself should make clear the nature of the priesthood without the need to
resort to the kind of external ex adiunctis
factors cited by Dr. Clark as imparting a Catholic determination to the
indeterminate rite of 1968. The CDWS claims that the 1989 revision has
achieved this aim, and it will now be examined in detail to discover the
extent to which its claim is justified.
The Bishop's Charge
It is explained in Chapter VII that the Bishop's Charge in the 1968 rite
makes specific the intention of ordaining a sacrificing priest, although in
muted tones when set beside the prayers of the traditional rite which have
been abolished. No Evangelical Protestant could possibly use the Bishop's
Charge with a good conscience. But, as is made clear in that Chapter, the
words printed in the ordinal
constitute no more than a model homily, and the ordaining bishop is free to
substitute his own homily for it. It is not mandatory as was the Bishop's
Charge in the Traditional Ordinal. Nonetheless, even though not mandatory,
the inclusion of this specific affirmation of the sacrificial nature of the
priesthood within the New Ordinal must be considered as imparting a
sacrificial signification to the rite as a whole. The 1968 Bishop's Charge
remains unchanged in the 1989 rite except for two variations which are both
insignificant. They occur in the opening paragraph and in the seventh
paragraph beginning: Munere item
sanctificandi. The changes are printed in italic. Wherever texts from
the 1968 and 1989 rites are set in parallel columns the new material will be
indicated in this way.
|
1968 Rite |
1989 Rite |
This change does nothing to clarify the nature
of the priesthood.
|
Munere item sanctificandi in Christo fungemini. Ministerio enim tuo
sacrificium spirituale fidelium perficietur, Christi sacrificio
coniunctum, quod per manus tuas super altare incruenter in
celebratione mysteriorum offeretur. |
Munere item sanctificandi in Christo fungemini. Ministerio enim tuo
sacrificium spirituale fidelium perficietur, Christi sacrificio
coniunctum, quod una cum
iis per manus tuas super
altare incruenter in celebratione mysteriorum offeretur. |
This change also does nothing to clarify the nature of the priesthood,
but, if anything, could appear ito endorse an error condemned by Pope Pius
XII in
Mediator Dei, that is to say
that the sacrificial immolation of the Mass is not performed by the priest
alone acting in persona Christi, but
acting as the representative of the faithful:
To avoid any mistake in this very important matter we must clearly
define the exact meaning of the word "offer". The unbloody immolation, by
which after the words of consecration have been pronounced, Christ is
rendered present on the altar in the state of victim, is performed by the
priest alone, and by the priest in so far as he acts in the name of Christ,
not in so far as he represents the faithful.
Pope Pius went on to explain that there is a perfectly orthodox
sense in which the faithful can be said to offer with the priest:
But when the people are said to offer with the priest, this does not
mean that all the members of the Church, like the priest himself, perform
the visible liturgical rite; this is done only by the minister Divinely
appointed for the purpose. No, they are said to offer with him inasmuch as
they unite their sentiments of praise, entreaty, expiation, and thanksgiving
with the sentiments or intention of the priest, indeed with those of the
High Priest Himself, in order that in the very oblation of the victim, those
sentiments may be presented to God the Father also by the priest's external
rite. The external rite of sacrifice must of its very nature be a sign of
internal worship; and what is signified by the Sacrifice of the New Law is
that supreme homage by which Christ, the principal offerer, and with Him and
through Him all His mystical members, pay due honour and veneration to God.
As the 1989 Ordinal has been approved by the Pope, our presumption must be
that the words "in union with them" mean that the faithful offer with the
priest in this orthodox second sense, but this does not alter the fact that
the addition does nothing whatsoever to clarify the nature of the
priesthood.
The Bishop's Charge must, then, be accepted as imparting a Catholic
signification to the entire rite, but it cannot be considered as making "the
actual celebration of the priestly Ordinal a sufficiently eloquent
presentation of the mystery and identity of the priests", which the CDWS
claims is now the case. Some equally clear affirmation of the sacrificial
ethos of the priesthood within the mandatory section of the ordination rite
itself would be necessary to achieve this.
The Examination of the Candidate
The questions put to the candidates contain very few changes from the
1968 Ordinal. There is one completely new question which does nothing
whatsoever to clarify the specifically sacrificial role of the priest, which
makes one wonder why it was added. It does, however, echo part of the
explanation of the duties of a priest given by the bishop in the Anglican
Series III Ordinal (see Chapter IX): "He is to lead his people in prayer and
worship, to intercede for them, to bless them in the name of the Lord, and
to teach and encourage by word and example."
|
New Promise |
|
One of the promises has had words added which do refer specifically to
the priestly vocation of offering sacrifice and absolving the faithful from
their sins. The additional words are indicated in italic.
|
Vis mysteria Christi ad laudem Dei et sanctificationem populi
christiani, secundum Ecclesiae traditionem, pie et fideliter
celebrare? |
Vis mysteria Christi ad laudem Dei et sanctificationem populi
christiani, secundum Ecclesiae traditionem,
praesertim in Eucharistiae
sacrificio et sacramento reconciliationis, pie et fideliter
celebrare? |
It is said that even here the compilers could not bring themselves to use
the term "sacrifice of the Mass", but it would be unreasonable to conclude
that anything else could be meant by the term "Eucharistic Sacrifice" in a
rite approved by the Pope in which the nature of this sacrifice had been
made clear in the Bishop's Charge, but this involves once more looking
outside the actual rite of ordination to clarify one of its texts, whereas
had the term "Sacrifice of the Mass" been used it would have removed the
least trace of ambiguity. It is equally sad that the term "Sacrament of
Reconciliation" is used rather than the traditional term "Sacrament of
Penance" which had been used hitherto in official documents such as the Code
of Canon Law. The term "reconciliation" is far more compatible with the
Anglican concept of absolution as either a prayer to God or a statement
about God, which was explained in Chapter VI. This is, as far as I can
discover, the first time that the term "Sacrament of Reconciliation" has
been used in a document of the Magisterium or in the
editio typica of a liturgical text.
Up to this point, the only improvement in the mandatory text of "the actual
celebration of the priestly Ordinal" has been the addition of the words
praesertim in Eucharistiae sacrificio et
sacramento reconciliationis, to a question in the Examination of the
Candidates, and, as has been explained, despite the refusal to use the term
"Sacrifice of the Mass", the term "Eucharistic Sacrifice" in this context is
one which it could be imagined that Anglicans would find difficult to use in
good conscience, but is, in fact, a term which they could reconcile with
their belief that in their own Eucharistic celebration their "priests" join
with the people in offering spiritual sacrifices to God. The "form" for the
Ordination of a Priest in the Anglican Series III Ordinal makes clear how
easily this could be done:
The Bishop and priests lay their
hands on the head of each candidate and the Bishop says:
Send down the Holy Spirit upon your servant N for the office and work of a
priest in your Church.
When the Bishop has laid hands on all of
them, he continues:
Almighty Father, give to these your servants grace and power to fulfill
their ministry among those committed to their charge; to watch over them and
care for them; to absolve and bless them in your name; and to proclaim the
gospel of your salvation. Set them among your people to offer with them
spiritual sacrifices acceptable in your sight and to minister the sacraments
of the New Covenant. As you have called them to your service, make them
worthy of their calling. Give them wisdom and discipline to work faithfully,
with all their fellow servants in Christ, that the world may come to know
your glory and your love. Accept our prayers, most merciful Father, through
your Son, Jesus Christ our Lord, to whom, with you and your Holy Spirit
belong glory and honour, worship and praise, now and for ever.
The people say: Amen.
These words provide a very salutary reminder of the need for
sacramental rites which are totally unambiguous, and which enshrine the
principle lex orandi, lex credendi.
Reading the Series III Anglican "form" it could easily be imagined that it
was intended to ordain a priest in the Catholic sense of the word, i.e. one
who differs not simply in degree but in essence from those who are not
ordained, but nothing could be further from the truth. In a commentary upon
the Series III Ordinal, the Reverend Michael Sansom, Tutor at Ridley Hall,
Cambridge, stresses the importance of the use of the term
"president" rather than "celebrant"
in the Series III Communion Service which has very close parallels with the
new Catholic Rite of Mass when it is celebrated with Eucharistic Prayer II:
It is more than a mere question of terminology, since the switch from
"celebrant" to "president" underlines the priest's function as one of the
whole celebrating congregation. Strictly speaking, it is the whole
congregation that concelebrates; the priest is a member of the congregation
performing a presidential function. [See
Special Note 2.]
5
This explanation makes it clear that Mr. Sansom would certainly welcome the
addition of the words una cum iis
(in union with them) to the paragraph beginning
Munere item in the Bishop's Charge
of the 1989 Catholic Ordinal (see above):
If the essence of the Catholic priesthood, as enshrined in the traditional
formula Accipe potestatem, has not
been manifested without ambiguity up to this point, the question of the
revised Prex now emerges. The CDWS
assures us that the revisions made to the 1968
Prex are in themselves sufficient to
make the 1989 Ordinal "a sufficiently eloquent presentation of the mystery
and identity of the priests who, through the ministry of the Bishop, Christ
the Lord makes participants in His priesthood through the power of the Holy
Spirit."
The Prex
In its commentary upon the revision of the
Prex, the CDWS explains that: "The
first line of revision in the Prex
needed to address the problem of the lack of explanation of the functions of
the priestly ministry." The complete text of the new
Prex will be examined to discover
how successfully this objective has been achieved, bearing in mind what has
already been stated, that the function of a priest could have been made
clear by replacing some (or all) of the prayers which were removed in 1968.
In the translations of the Prex for
the 1968 and 1989 rites the singular is used, i.e. it is presumed that only
one priest is being ordained.
|
1968 Rite |
1989 Rite |
Henri Fesquet, the liberal Catholic journalist, author, and commentator upon
Vatican II was, according to Michael Novak, the writer who "set the mark
against which other journalists of the world in reporting the Council
measured themselves."
6
Fesquet was jubilant at the result of the final vote of the Council Fathers
for Dignitatis humanae, the
Declaration on Religious Liberty. He concluded that the affirmative vote for
the Declaration represented the acceptance by the Council of the glorious
motto of the French Revolution: "Liberty, Equality, Fraternity".
7
Was Fesquet
exaggerating?
It is, of course, incompatible with the French Revolutionary ethos for any
person to possess honours and dignities not shared by all. Titles were
abolished and the common designation "citizen" shared by those of every
social class, although, as George Orwell has made clear in
Animal Farm, after any revolution
some citizens very quickly become more equal than others. Needless to say,
the Church did not adopt the Revolutionary motto as its watchword in any
official document, but a democratic ethos, in which honours, titles, and
special marks of respect are an embarrassment, is certainly part of the
all-pervasive "spirit of the Council"-----witness
the abandonment of the papal tiara and the
sedia gestatoria. There is no more
effective manner of embarrassing a bishop today than by kneeling to kiss his
ring. It is, therefore, not in accord with the "spirit of Vatican II"
to refer to the priesthood as an honour or a dignity. The priesthood is now seen as a service
performed by one equal member of the Christian community for other equal
members of the community.
In its commentary on the Prex,
the CDWS admits, without the least trace of embarrassment, that one object
of the revisions is to "place the ministry within its ecclesiological
context". It goes on to explain that: "The words
honor and
dignitas have been suppressed,
because they are not acceptable in this context, in spite of their
historical value." God is changed from the source (or author) of all
"honours" to the source of "human dignity"; and from the bestower of all
"dignities" to the bestower of all "graces" (or gifts) which, of course, He
is, and the reference given is 1 Cor. 12:4. But, as Dr. Clark has observed
with regard to Cranmer's ordination rite, "It was not what was expressed but
what was suppressed that gave significance to the whole . . ." (see Chapter
VIII). It is interesting to note that the CDWS actually used the word
"suppressed" to describe the removal of the terms "honour" and "dignity"
("Se han suprimido los palabras honor y
dignitas, que en la actualidad son dificilmente aceptadas en este
contexto, a pesar de su valor historico.") The dignity of the priesthood is,
in fact, referred to explicitly in the form for this sacrament later in the
Prex. We must be thankful that the
revisers stopped short of making changes here.
The suppression of "honours" to be replaced by "human dignity" constitutes
the mutilation of a venerable liturgical text, and is a change that almost
defies credibility. A footnote is provided in the official
Notitiae commentary confirming that
it is a direct quotation from Dignitatis
humanae, the Declaration on Religious Liberty of the Second Vatican
Council, and its most controversial document. The footnote cites the first
paragraph of the Declaration as the source for the innovation. One must
wonder what degree if any of a true sensus
catholicus is possessed by those who do not hesitate to mutilate an
ancient rite by inserting into it a new phrase with no relevance to the
ordination of a priest simply to impart credibility to a controversial
document by using it as a liturgical source.
|
per quem |
per quem |
The changes in the prayers from the per
quem to the Sic in filios
cannot be said to clarify the nature of the Catholic priesthood which the
CDWS accepted is absent from the text of the 1968 rite. The nearest that it
comes to doing so is the allusion to Hebrews 10:1 and Colossians 2:17-----quae
umbra erant futurorum bonorum ("a shadow of good things to come")
which could be interpreted as a reference to the Sacrifice of the Mass, but
not necessarily, and would be perfectly acceptable to Anglicans as it is
scriptural and, they would reason, must be in accord with their own
doctrines.
[See
Special Note 3.]
|
Hac providentia |
Novissime vero |
The prayer is entirely new, replacing the traditional
Haec providentia. The new material
in the Novissime vero is adapted
from the Liturgy Constitution of Vatican II (n. 6) but does not specify that
the essential function of a Catholic priest is to offer the propitiatory
sacrifice of the Mass as did, for example, the
Accipe potestatem. It refers to Our
Lord as Apostle and Priest, states that His Apostles participated in His
mission, and that God gave them companions for preaching and effecting the
work of salvation. This is all true and admirable, but there is not a word
here that is not perfectly compatible with Protestantism. Catholics, of
course, believe that participating in the mission of Christ, and effecting
this work of salvation, includes pre-eminently making the Sacrifice of
Calvary present daily upon the altars of the Church, but Protestants deny
this, believing that their ministers participate in the mission of Christ
and effect His work of salvation by dispensing faithfully His word and His
(two) holy Sacraments. The CDWS lays great stress on the fact that the
adaptation of the conciliar text "excludes any dichotomy between
evangelization and liturgical celebration, and on the other hand stresses
the intimate connection between the two aspects as part of a single mission
in which what is proclaimed through the word is communicated through the
sacrament." It is significant that the CDWS does not claim that the
adaptation of the text made clear that what is proclaimed through the word
is communicated through sacrifice and Sacrament. It could have done this
easily by quoting from the very text of Vatican II that it cites. No. 6 of
the Liturgy Constitution teaches with admirable clarity that:
Accordingly, just as Christ was sent by the Father so also He sent the
Apostles, filled with the Holy Spirit. This He did so that they might preach
the Gospel to every creature, and proclaim that the Son of God by His death
and resurrection had freed us from the power of Satan and from death, and
brought us into the Kingdom of His Father. But He also willed that the work
of salvation which they preached should be set in train through the
sacrifice and Sacraments, around
which the entire liturgical life revolves (my emphasis).
How sad that ecumenical considerations prompted those who composed the
prayer Novissime vera to censor even
a text of the Council rather than include an unambiguous reference to the
fact that the Eucharist is a sacrifice as well as a Sacrament.
|
Quapropter |
Nunc etiam |
The traditional Quapropter prayer
asks for the bishop to be given help to support his weakness, and the new
Nunc etiam asks for him to be given
helpers, which amounts to precisely the same request. The change does
nothing to clarify the nature of the Catholic priesthood.
|
Da, quaesumus |
Da, quaesumus |
The form of the Sacrament is identical to that in the 1968 rite.
|
Sint probi |
Sint probi |
All that the new material in the Sint probi
does is to emphasize the preaching function of the the priest, which could
hardly be more in accord with Anglican doctrine. In its commentary the CDWS
states that the amplification of this prayer "describes the collaboration of
the priestly ministry with that of the bishop in evangelization, the
celebration of the sacraments, and prayer for the people." Its explanation,
like the prayer itself, could hardly be in more perfect accord with Anglican
doctrine.
|
|
Sint nobiscum |
The new material in the Sint nobiscum
would not simply be acceptable to but welcomed enthusiastically by Anglicans
with its echoes of words from the "form" for ordaining a priest in Cranmer's
ordinals of 1550 and 1552: "Be thou a faithful dispenser of the word of God
and of his holy sacraments." Nor would the word "altar" cause problems for
Anglicans as it is included in the 1549 Communion Service.
|
|
Sint nobis |
There is not one word in the rest of these amended prayers that would not be
totally acceptable to Anglicans. The drastic changes made to the
Prex, the only substantial portion of the traditional rite retained
in the 1968 version, are both unnecessary and unjustified. The new
Prex does indeed refer to the
priesthood of Christ, a point which the CDWS stresses as of great importance
in its commentary, but no Anglican, Cranmer included, ever denied the
priesthood of Our Lord. How could any Protestant do so in view of the
unequivocal teaching of the Epistle to the Hebrews? What the new
Prex nowhere makes clear is that Our
Lord makes present the same sacrifice which He offered once and for all upon
Calvary each time a validly ordained priest offers the Sacrifice of the Mass
in His person (in persona Christi).
It is nothing less than scandalous that the
Prex from the Leonine Sacramentary has been sacrificed to compensate
for what the CDWS accepted was "the lack of explanation of the functions of
the priestly ministry" in the 1968 ordination rite, when there is not a word
in the revised Prex that either
clarifies this function or is not totally compatible with Protestantism.
Determination
ex adiunctis
In order not to overlook any possible evidence that can be
adduced in favour of the 1989 rite the full
ex adiunctis case will be presented here. These arguments all deal
with elements external to the rite and in no way concede the CDWS' claim
that the revised Prex constitutes a
sufficiently eloquent presentation of the nature of the priesthood. Dr.
Francis Clark listed the most important of these factors in his review of
the first edition of this book, which is cited at length in the
introduction.
There is not the slightest doubt that the supreme authority that
sanctioned the changes, the Holy See, was determined to maintain intact the
full Catholic doctrine of the Mass and the priesthood. The new forms,
liturgically impoverished though they are, are nevertheless still vested
with the sacred significance which the supreme authority of the Catholic
Church attaches to its Sacraments, ministry, and rites. The documents of the
Second Vatican Council and the teaching of Pope Paul VI are the contemporary
overall context which objectively supplies the due meaning which is no
longer explicit in the ritual forms.
While stressing Dr. Clark's agreement with me that the nature of the
priesthood "is no longer explicit in the ritual forms", I accept that the
ex adiunctis case that he puts here
cannot be contested. (It should be noted that his acceptance of the
inadequacy of the ritual forms is based only on the 1968 rite and not the
revised ordinal of 1989.) Other ex
adiunctis factors in favour of the New Ordinal are the fact that in
1968 it was celebrated within the context of the Tridentine Mass. There are
also prayers in the rite of Mass for ordinations found in the new Ordinal
that must be accepted as imparting a Catholic
ex adiunctis setting to the rite,
above all the presence of the Roman Canon. The modifications made to it in
the 1970 Missal do not detract from its explicitly sacrificial terminology.
Even if the Roman Canon is not used for an ordination Mass, that Mass will
be celebrated with an Ordinal which includes it.
The decisive factor where the validity of any sacramental rite is concerned
is the approval given to it by the Pope. As Appendix XI makes clear, no Pope
could impose or authorize for universal use any sacramental rite that was
either invalid or intrinsically harmful to the faith. In
Anglican Orders and Defect of Intention,
the most authoritative examination of Anglican Orders written since
Apostolicae Curae, Dr. Francis
Clark explains that:
The ultimate test of the validity of sacramental rites is not to be
found in scholarship and liturgical research alone. When the sufficiency or
insufficiency of a rite is in question, the
decisive norm is the acceptance or rejection of it by the Catholic Church.
So it can be argued that when the head of the Church officially rejects a
rite as incapable of mediating sacramental efficacy, as he did in the
constitution Apostolicae Curae, he
is not only judging authoritatively about a past dogmatic fact, but is also
exercising in the present what may be called "practical infallibility". Even
by itself, prescinding from anything that had gone before, this solemn act
of the Holy See was sufficient to disown the Anglican rite
as not a sacramental rite of the Catholic
Church. Thus there has been since 1896 an added source of certainty
about the invalidity of the Anglican rite-----a
certainty based on the "practical infallibility" of the Church's determining
decrees, which in the sacramental sphere effectively guarantee what they
decree (my emphasis).
8
Needless to say, the authority of the Church is as decisive in affirming the
validity of a sacramental rite as in affirming its invalidity. The papal
approbation given to the Latin Typical Editions of all the post-conciliar
sacramental rites places their validity beyond dispute.
The Latin Typical Edition of the 1989 Ordinal includes (page 216) a proper
preface for the ordination of a priest which, after the traditional opening
which states our duty of offering praise to the Father almighty, includes
the following:
Who, by the anointing of the Holy Spirit, appointed Thine only Son as
the High Priest of the new and everlasting covenant, and by a wonderful
design, saw fit to ordain that His one priesthood be preserved in the
Church.
For He not only adorns the people He has won with His Royal Priesthood, but
He has also out of fraternal kindness, chosen men to share in His sacred
ministry by the laying on of hands.
They are to renew, in His name, the sacrifice of man's redemption, by making
present the Paschal Feast for Thy children, and to lead Thy holy people in
charity, to nourish them with the Word, and refresh them with the
Sacraments.
Offering their lives for Thy sake and for the salvation of the brethren,
they are to endeavour to conform themselves to the image of Christ Himself,
and steadily manifest to Thee their faith and love.
This preface has been included as an ex
adiunctis factor testifying to the orthodoxy of the new ordinal as it
states that ordination gives men a share in Christ's ministry by the laying
on of hands, thus distinguishing the ministerial priesthood from the
universal priesthood of all the faithful. It also refers to the fact that
the ordained priest renews the sacrifice of man's redemption, which is good,
but then claims that this is done by making present the Last Supper (paschale
convivium), which is a depressing reminder of the extent to which the
spirit of Archbishop Bugnini permeates the Congregation created in 1975 when
Pope Paul VI suppressed the Congregation for Divine Worship of which he was
secretary.
9
The promulgation of the New Order of Mass in 1969, prefaced by the General
Instruction to the new Roman Missal (which was not published until the
following year), caused great scandal. The General Instruction was so
severely criticised for statements of dubious orthodoxy, and its entirely
unCatholic ethos, that extensive and important revisions needed to be made
to the version that prefaced the actual Missal in 1970. (A detailed
examination of the original Instruction and the subsequent amendments is
provided in Chapter XIII of my book Pope
Paul's New Mass.) One of the most serious deficiencies in the
original version was Article 48 which stated that it is the Last Supper that
is made present whenever Mass is celebrated. The 1970 version of Article 48
corrected this by stating that "the sacrifice of the Cross is continually
made present in the Church", whenever Mass is celebrated. It is, of course,
in the original German Instruction, and not in the conciliar Liturgy
Constitution, which it claimed to interpret, that the theological rationale
of the New Mass can be found. It is deplorable that the preface in the 1989
Ordinal, composed specifically for use in the ordination of priests,
conforms to the uncorrected Article 48 by claiming that it is the Last
Supper that is made present in the Mass where priests "renew, in His name,
the sacrifice of man's redemption, by making present the Paschal Feast (paschale
convivium) for Thy children."
The Postcommunion
The proper postcommunion for the Mass of priestly ordination, found
on page 207 of the Latin Ordinal, states with admirable clarity that the
Divine Victim is offered in the Mass, and employs the word
hostia for victim. The use of the
word sacerdotes for priests is also welcome:
|
Sacerdotes tuos, Domine, et omnes
famulos tuos vivificet divina, quam obtulimus et sumpsimus, hostia,
ut, perpetua tibi caritate coniuncti, digne famulari tuae mereantur
maiestati. |
O Lord, may the Divine Victim which we have offered and consumed, bring new life to Thy priests and all Thy servants that, united with Thee in unceasing charity, they may merit worthily to serve Thy Divine majesty. |
The Profession of Faith
A final ex adiunctis factor
is the Profession of Faith taken prior to ordination to the diaconate. The
ordinand places his hand upon the Book of the Gospels while making the
profession which begins with the recitation of the Creed, which is followed
by these words:
Furthermore, I embrace and uphold each and every doctrine concerning
faith and morals which the Church has taught and declared in solemn
definition or by ordinary teaching authority and in the sense in which the
Church has proposed such doctrine especially the teaching concerning the
mystery of the Holy Church of Christ, the Sacraments, the Sacrifice of the
Mass, and the primacy of the Roman Pontiff.
Deacons must logically presume that the rite used to ordain them to
the priesthood is intended to make them priests who will offer the Sacrifice
of the Mass in the sense defined by the Church.
In its commentary upon the 1989 revision of the
Prex, the CDWS accepts that: "The
first line of revision in the Prex
needed to address the problem of the lack of explanation of the functions of
the priestly ministry." It concludes the commentary by praising the 1989
Prex with words which have already
been quoted several times, as "an aid to the understanding of what this
Second Editio Typica offers in order
to make the actual celebration of the priestly ordinal a sufficiently
eloquent presentation of the mystery and identity of the priests who,
through the ministry of the Bishop, Christ the Lord makes participants in
His priesthood through the power of the Holy Spirit and for the service of
the holy people of God."
The reader must judge for himself whether or not the revised
Prex does constitute a sufficiently
eloquent presentation of the nature of the Catholic priesthood. The full
text in Latin and in English is available in this appendix for scrutiny.
However carefully one examines it, and with no matter how much good will,
the claim that it is a sufficiently eloquent presentation of the mystery and
identity of priests cannot be substantiated from the text itself. In order
to do this it is necessary to resort to ex
adiunctis factors. The nearest that the actual rite of ordination
comes to an explicit mandatory affirmation of the nature of the Catholic
priesthood is the question put to the ordinand and cited above, asking
whether he is resolved to celebrate the Eucharistic Sacrifice and the
Sacrament of Reconciliation faithfully and religiously according to the
tradition of the Church. Even with considerable good will, and a resolve to
interpret liturgical texts approved by the Pope according to the tradition
of the Church, it can hardly be considered a sufficiently eloquent
presentation of Catholic teaching when set beside the venerable and
explicitly sacrificial prayers expunged from the traditional rite by
Archbishop Bugnini in 1968 and, alas, not restored in 1989.
If Cardinal Martinez, who was Prefect of the Congregation for Divine Worship
and the Discipline of the Sacraments when the 1989 Ordinal was published,
insists that the actual celebration of the priestly ordinal now constitutes
a sufficiently eloquent presentation of the mystery and identity of the
priesthood, then perhaps he would be gracious enough to point out to us
precisely where and precisely how.
A sacramentary was a liturgical book used in the celebration of Mass
until the thirteenth century. It contained the Canon of the Mass and such
prayers as the Collects and Prefaces, but not the Epistles and Gospels or
such sung parts as the Gradual. It also contained ordination formularies,
blessings, and other prayers used by bishops and priests. In order to
simplify the celebration of the liturgy, Missals containing all the prayers
and readings necessary to celebrate Mass began to appear from the tenth
century, and all the ceremonies involving bishops began to be collected into
Pontificals, and these two books eventually replaced the sacramentary
completely. The sacramentary had been preceded by what were known as
Libelli Missarum. They were small
books containing the formularies for parts of the Mass for the Church in a
particular diocese or locality, but not the Canon which was fixed, the
readings, or the sung parts. They provided the intermediary between
extempore celebrations and the fixed formularies of the Sacramentary. No
actual examples are known to have survived, but the certainty of their
existence is known through literary references and above all through the
Leonine Sacramentary in Verona which consists of a collection of
libelli. The uninterrupted use up to
1968 of a Prex that had come down to
us virtually unchanged from a libellum
originating in the mists of Christian antiquity provided a priceless link
with our fathers in the faith which should have been preserved as a sacred
trust to be handed on unchanged to future generations.
I have shown in my book Pope Paul's
New Mass that the three new Eucharistic Prayers in the 1970 Missal
have all been drafted in a manner that allows precisely such an
interpretation, i.e. the priest is no more than a member of the
congregation, differing from them in degree but not in essence, who does no
more than preside at the Eucharist. Only the Roman Canon makes the necessary
distinction between celebrant and congregation. The presence of the Roman
Canon, now known as Eucharistic Prayer I, in the 1970 Missal, gives a
Catholic signification to the ambiguities of the three new prayers.
The actual reference to Hebrews given in the
Notitiae commentary (p. 118 [g]) is
8:5 which does not contain even the least allusion to
futurorum bonorum, but the phrase
does occur in 9:17 and 10:1; the latter is probably intended as it also
refers to a "shadow".
1. Via Media, vol. n (London,
1901), p. 316.
2. Enchiridion Euchologicum Fontium
Liturgicorum (CLV. Edizione Liturgiche 00192 Roma. Via Pompeo Magno,
21, 1979, Italy), pp. 633-4.
3. A. Bugnini, The Reform of the Liturgy
1948-1975 (Liturgical Press, Collegeville, Minnesota, 1990), p. 721.
4. Ibid., p. 70, n. 29.
5. M. Sansom, Liturgy for Ordinations: The
Series III Services (Grove Books, Bramcote, Notts, 1978), p. 10.
6. H. Fesquet, The Drama of Vatican II
(New York, 1967), p. xviii.
7. Ibid., pp. 814-15.
8. F. Clark, Anglican Orders and Defect of
Intention (London, 1956), p. 10.
9. The complete background to the suppression of the Congregation
and "the "exile" of Archbishop Bugnini, as he described it himself, can be
found in Chapter XXIV of my book Pope
Paul's New Mass.