Mass of Paul VI


The Mass of Paul VI, also known as the Ordinary Form or Novus Ordo, is the most commonly used liturgy in the Catholic Church. It was promulgated by Pope Paul VI in 1969 and its liturgical books were published in 1970; those books were then revised in 1975, they were revised again by Pope John Paul II in 2000, and a third revision was published in 2002.
It largely displaced the Tridentine Mass, the latest edition of which had been published in 1962 under the title Missale Romanum ex decreto SS. Concilii Tridentini restitutum. The editions of the Mass of Paul VI Roman Missal have as title Missale Romanum ex decreto Sacrosancti Oecumenici Concilii Vaticani II instauratum, followed in the case of the 2002 edition by auctoritate Pauli PP. VI promulgatum Ioannis Pauli PP. II cura recognitum. It is the most-used Mass within the Catholic Church today.

Names

In its official documents, the Catholic Church identifies the forms of the Roman Rite Mass by the editions of the Roman Missal used in celebrating them. Thus Pope Benedict XVI referred to this form of the Roman Rite Mass by linking it, in his motu proprio Summorum Pontificum of 7 July 2007, with "the Roman Missal promulgated by Pope Paul VI in 1970" or, in his accompanying letter of the same date to the bishops of the church, "the Missal published by Paul VI and then republished in two subsequent editions by John Paul II".
The now less frequently used names 'Mass of Paul VI' and 'Pauline Mass' refer to Pope Paul VI, who promulgated the first edition.
In his letter to bishops which accompanied his 2007 motu proprio Summorum Pontificum, Pope Benedict XVI wrote that "the Missal published by Paul VI and then republished in two subsequent editions by John Paul II, obviously is and continues to be the normal Form – the Forma ordinaria – of the Eucharistic Liturgy." Since then, the term Ordinary Form is used to distinguish this form of the Roman Rite of Mass from the 1962 edition of the Tridentine Mass, the Extraordinary Form, because in his motu proprio Pope Benedict declared the latter an "extraordinary form" of the Roman Rite. Pope Francis further emphasized the importance of the Ordinary Form in this capacity with his 2021 motu proprio Traditionis custodes, referring to it as "the unique expression of the lex orandi of the Roman Rite."

Text

The current official text in Latin is that in the third typical edition of the Roman Missal, published in 2002 and reprinted with corrections and updating in 2008. Translations into the vernacular languages have appeared; the current English translation was promulgated in 2010 and was introduced progressively from September 2011. Two earlier typical editions of the Missal were issued in 1970 and 1975. The liturgy contained in the 1570–1962 editions of the Roman Missal is frequently referred to as the Tridentine Mass: all these editions placed at the start the text of the papal bull Quo primum in which Pope Pius V linked the issuance of his edition of the Roman Missal to the Council of Trent. Only in the 1962 edition is this text preceded by a short decree, Novo rubricarum corpore, declaring that edition to be, from then on, the typical edition, to which other printings of the Missal were to conform.
The Roman Missal promulgated by John Paul II differs in many points from that promulgated by Paul VI. The changes include the addition of 13 new feasts of saints, a new preface of martyrs, several new Mass formulas, including five of the Blessed Virgin Mary, two votive Masses, and complete formulas for the ferial days of Advent and Eastertide. Prayers over the faithful are added to the Lenten Mass formulas and the Apostles' Creed is provided as an alternative to the Nicene Creed. The Mass of Paul VI thus became the Mass of Paul VI and John Paul II.

History

Background

Liturgical Movement

The Liturgical Movement of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, which arose from the work of Dom Prosper Guéranger, a former abbot of Solesmes Abbey, encouraged the laity to live the liturgy by attending services often, understanding what they meant, and following the priest in heart and mind.

Beginnings of the modern revision, 1948–1962

Liturgical reforms took place under Pius XII, specially in 1955, when the liturgy of Holy Week was reformed.

Vatican II, , and a revised liturgy

The liturgy was the first matter considered by the Second Vatican Council of 1962–1965. On 4 December 1963, the Council issued a Constitution on the Sacred Liturgy known as Sacrosanctum Concilium, section 50 of which read as follows:
Sacrosanctum Concilium further provided that a greater use of the Scriptures should be made at Mass, communion under both kinds for the laity, and that vernacular languages should be more widely employed, a declaration whose implementation made the Second Vatican Council "a milestone for Catholic, Protestants, the Orthodox".
In 1964, Pope Paul VI, who had succeeded John XXIII the previous year, established the Consilium ad exsequendam Constitutionem de Sacra Liturgia, the Council for Implementing the Constitution on the Sacred Liturgy. The instruction Inter oecumenici of 26 September 1964, issued by the Sacred Congregation of Rites while the Council was still in session, and coming into effect on 7 March 1965, made significant changes to the existing liturgy. The 1967 document Tres abhinc annos, the second instruction on the implementation of the Constitution, made only minimal changes to the text, but simplified the rubrics and the vestments. Concelebration and Communion under both kinds had meanwhile been permitted.
By October 1967, the Consilium had produced a complete draft revision of the Mass liturgy, known as the Normative Mass, and this revision was presented to the Synod of Bishops that met in Rome in that month. The bishops attended the first public celebration of the revised rite in the Sistine Chapel. When asked to vote on the new liturgy, 71 bishops voted placet, 43 voted non-placet, and 62 voted placet iuxta modum. In response to the bishops' concerns, some changes were made to the text. Pope Paul VI and the Consilium interpreted this as lack of approval for the Normative Mass, which was replaced by the text included in the book Novus Ordo Missae in 1969.
On 25 September 1969, two retired cardinals, 79-year-old Alfredo Ottaviani and 84-year-old Antonio Bacci, wrote a letter with which they sent Pope Paul VI the text of a "Short Critical Study on the New Order of Mass". The cardinals warned the New Order of the Mass "represented, both as a whole and in its details, a striking departure from the Catholic theology of the Mass as it was formulated in Session XXII of the Council of Trent". The study that they transmitted said that on many points the New Mass had much to gladden the heart of even the most modernist Protestant. Paul VI asked the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, the department of the Roman Curia that Ottaviani had earlier headed, to examine the Short Critical Study. It responded on 12 November 1969 that the document contained many affirmations that were "superficial, exaggerated, inexact, emotional, and false". However, some of its observations were taken into account in preparing the definitive version of the new Order of the Mass. In 1974, Annibale Bugnini announced that the Novus Ordo Missae was "a major conquest of the Roman Catholic Church". Ottaviani would later acknowledge his satisfaction with the new missal after reassurance by Paul VI in a letter dated February 17, 1970.

Paul VI's publication of the 1970 Missal

promulgated the revised rite of Mass with his apostolic constitution Missale Romanum of 3 April 1969, setting the first Sunday of Advent of that year as the date on which it would enter into force. However, because he was dissatisfied with the edition that was produced, the revised Missal itself was not published until the following year, and full vernacular translations appeared much later.
The revisions called for by Vatican II were guided by historical and Biblical studies that were not available at the Council of Trent when the rite was fixed to forestall any heretical accretions. Missale Romanum made particular mention of the following significant changes from the previous edition of the Roman Missal:
  • "Other elements that have suffered injury through accident of history" are restored "to the tradition of the Fathers", for example, the homily, the general intercessions or prayer of the faithful, and the penitential rite or act of reconciliation with God and the community at the beginning of the Mass.
  • The proportion of the Bible read at Mass was greatly increased, although some verses included in the older readings have been omitted in the new. Before the reforms of Pius XII, which reduced the proportions further, 1% of the Old Testament and 16.5% of the New Testament had been read at Mass. Since 1970, the equivalent proportions for Sundays and weekdays have been 13.5% of the Old Testament and 71.5% of the New Testament.

    Other changes

Vernacular language

In his 1962 apostolic constitution Veterum sapientia on the teaching of Latin, Pope John XXIII spoke of that language as the one the church uses: "The Catholic Church has a dignity far surpassing that of every merely human society, for it was founded by Christ the Lord. It is altogether fitting, therefore, that the language it uses should be noble, majestic, and non-vernacular." However, the only mention of the liturgy in that document was in relation to the study of Greek.
The Second Vatican Council stated in Sacrosanctum Concilium, 36:
At the same time, Sacrosanctum Concilium 54 makes clear that, though the vernacular is permitted, "steps should be taken so that the faithful may also be able to say or to sing together in Latin those parts of the Ordinary of the Mass which pertain to them."