In June 2017, I gave a lecture at St. Mary’s in Norwalk, Connecticut, on the intellectual and historical incoherence of the notion of “two (equal) forms” of the Roman Rite. Given the rapid progress that has been made in liturgical discussions over the past three years, with many more people now attending the traditional Latin Mass and seeing for themselves the truth of Mosebach’s words—“No one who has eyes and ears will be persuaded to ignore what his own senses tell him: these two forms are so different that their theoretical unity appears entirely unreal”—I have decided to make the transcript of the lecture available, and have chosen this date, September 14, for the symbolic reasons one might infer. The text below has been rewritten for its inclusion as a chapter in a forthcoming book with the tentative title: “Pass on Real Gold, Not Counterfeit”: The Immemorial Roman Mass and Fifty Years of Rupture, which I hope will appear from Arouca Press in 2020.
Two “Forms” of the Roman Rite: Liturgical Fact or Canonical Fiat?
Peter A. Kwasniewski
Every Catholic in the world—where he knows it or not—is indebted to Pope Benedict XVI for “liberating” the traditional Latin Mass with the motu proprio Summorum Pontificum. We may grumble about various things Pope Benedict did not do that we feel he ought to have done, but we must never fail to be grateful for the courageous steps he took, in matters in which nearly the entire hierarchy of the Church stood opposed to him. It was deeply against his nature to impose anything that would not be welcomed by at least a large number, and in this act he stood nearly alone. The motu proprio has caused innumerable flowers to flourish, countless fruits to be harvested. In this lecture, I come neither to praise nor to bury Pope Benedict, but rather, to examine an operative assumption in the motu proprio: that Paul VI’s Missale Romanum of 1969 (the “Novus Ordo”) is, or belongs to, the same rite as the Missale Romanum last codified in 1962, or, more plainly, that the Novus Ordo can be called “the Roman rite” of the Mass. This, I shall argue, cannot withstand critical scrutiny. Although I will be referring primarily to the Roman missal and the Mass, my argument would apply, mutatis mutandis, to the rites of the other sacraments, to blessings and rituals, and to the Divine Office and its substitute, the Liturgy of the Hours.
