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“A much greater source of anxiety to Us is the style of action of those who maintain that liturgical worship should shed its sacred character, who foolishly say we should substitute for sacred items & furnishings ordinary common things in daily use.” —Pope Saint Paul VI (14 Oct 1968)

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Views from the Choir Loft

Recovering the Greatness of the Roman Rite

Dr. Peter Kwasniewski · December 5, 2013

irish bishop UST YESTERDAY we recalled the 50th anniversary of the promulgation of Vatican II’s Constitution on the Sacred Liturgy, Sacrosanctum Concilium. That anniversary brought back to mind a little conversation that occurred 8 years ago.

One day, after attending Divine Liturgy, my son said to me (it was only a couple of months after his sixth birthday): “The Greeks are the ones who started the divine liturgy, right? I mean, they were the first to do it so beautifully, with all that singing and stuff?”

His question pierced me to the heart, because it showed that he experienced the Byzantine liturgy as primordially beautiful and the Latin rite as a second-best. In the forms he had seen most often, either the Novus Ordo or the Tridentine Low Mass, it had a minimum of beauty of chant and ritual. Ex ore infantium: surely we could take a cue from a child, and reinstate some of the beauty and solemnity that was once also ours?

At Stift Heiligenkreuz, a magnificent Cistercian monastery not far from Vienna, although the liturgy is the Novus Ordo (in Latin), still the massive resonance of the prayers in the huge Romanesque church, the soaring voices of the monks singing the Gregorian chant they never abandoned, and the overall ethos of the community are so evidently focused on the Lord that when members of Eastern Orthodox churches visit, they feel quite at home. They can see it’s the real thing, not a substitute.

Alas, the way in which the Ordinary Form is celebrated at Heiligenkreuz is rare indeed; one might find comparable examples in the chapels of the Canons Regular of St. John Cantius, the chapels of some of the Oratories (like Oxford and London), and the Monastero di San Benedetto in Norcia, and while the numbers of such places are slowly increasing, it is still something one has to look around extensively to find. That celebrations of the revised Roman Rite with fitting splendor and solemnity have been so rare for the past forty-odd years says much, far too much, about how Church authorities have seen fit, or not seen fit, to regulate the liturgy since the late sixties.

One Sunday years ago, I took a bunch of students with me to a Solemn High Mass in the usus antiquior. A Greek Catholic seminarian from Ukraine, who is now a priest in his own rite, reacted with open-eyed wonder at the beauty of this Mass (he had never seen anything like it in all his years of friendship with Roman Catholics), and said to me afterwards, incredulously: “Why did they have to change that liturgy?”

Once the Mass was changed—or as long as it seemed to people that the Mass had indeed been made over from head to toe and that it could suffer infinite permutation—the foundation of our faith was shaken, and in practice the faith has never recovered the lost ground. On the contrary, it lost far more ground than most people are close to realizing, let alone admitting. We are still officially in the phase of denial; witness the many Vatican documents that still, to this day, praise the reform as a great success whose “riches” only need to be further unfolded, while a few “shadows” have to be corrected. Those shadows were already pointed out in the seventies and eighties, yet most of them remain uncorrected in the majority of dioceses around the world.

Consider this passage from John Paul II’s Dominicae Cenae of 1990:

It is therefore very opportune and necessary to continue to actuate a new and intense education, in order to discover all the richness contained in the new liturgy. Indeed, the liturgical renewal that has taken place since the Second Vatican Council has given, so to speak, greater visibility to the Eucharistic Sacrifice. One factor contributing to this is that the words of the Eucharistic Prayer are said aloud by the celebrant, particularly the words of consecration, with the acclamation of the assembly immediately after the elevation.

As those who are familiar with it know, the ancient Roman rite gives far greater prominence and visibility to the Eucharistic sacrifice: it expresses the sacrificial character of the Mass with an unambiguous clarity of text and ritual. Not surprisingly, there was no crisis before the Council in regard to faith in the Real Presence of Jesus Christ in the Eucharist and faith in the Mass as a true and proper sacrifice. There were plenty of other problems, to be sure, but this did not seem to be at the top of the list. And yet, how often will we find Catholics today, brought up on the Novus Ordo, who have heard, let alone believe, that the Eucharist is the unbloody renewal of the Sacrifice of Calvary, and that it is, in reality, in truth, in substance, His very Body and Blood—to receive which we must be purified and properly disposed lest we commit an unspeakable offense? Would the liturgy, as these Catholics have experienced it, successfully convey those saving truths—or would the defined dogmas about the Mass and the Eucharist sound strange, perhaps even absurd to him?

“The Greeks are the ones who started the divine liturgy, right? I mean, they were the first to do it so beautifully, with all that singing and stuff?”

“No, son, our Roman Mass is actually, at its heart, the most ancient of all the liturgical rites in the world, more ancient even than the Byzantine liturgy we just attended. But the East kept their tradition alive while we, for a time, have put ours away in a closet. We are trying to bring it out into the light again, and I’m sure the East won’t mind if we take some inspiration from them.”

Opinions by blog authors do not necessarily represent the views of Corpus Christi Watershed.

Filed Under: Articles Last Updated: January 1, 2020

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About Dr. Peter Kwasniewski

A graduate of Thomas Aquinas College (B.A. in Liberal Arts) and The Catholic University of America (M.A. and Ph.D. in Philosophy), Dr. Peter Kwasniewski is currently Professor at Wyoming Catholic College. He is also a published and performed composer, especially of sacred music.

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Corpus Christi Watershed

President’s Corner

    15th Sunday in Ordinary Time (Year C)
    This coming Sunday—13 July 2025—is the 15th Sunday in Ordinary Time (Year C). All the chants have been conveniently assembled and posted at the feasts website. The OFFERTORY, Ad Te Levávi, is particularly beautiful.
    —Jeff Ostrowski
    Music Director Job • $80,000 per year
    Our readers will be interested in this job offering for Music Director at Saint Adalbert’s Basilica, located 40 minutes from where I live. My pastor was recently elevated to this basilica. He is offering $80,000 per year, plus benefits. I’m told Saint Adalbert’s Basilica is utterly gorgeous and contains one of America’s most magnificent pipe organs. It would be fantastic to have a colleague nearby!
    —Jeff Ostrowski
    Simplest “Agnus Dei” Ever Published
    Our choir is on break during the month of July. I needed a relatively simple “Agnus Dei,” so I composed this setting for organ & voice in honor of Saint René Goupil. It has been called the simplest setting ever composed. I love CARMEN GREGORIANUM (“Gregorian Chant”), especially the ALLELUIAS, INTROITS, and COMMUNION ANTIPHONS. That being said, some have pointed out that certain sections of the Kyriale aren’t as strong as the Graduale or Vesperale. There’s a reason for this—but it would be too complicated to explain at this moment.
    —Jeff Ostrowski

Quick Thoughts

    Pope Pius XII Hymnal?
    Have you ever heard of the Pope Pius XII Hymnal? It’s a real book, published in the United States in 1959. Here’s a sample page so you can verify with your own eyes it existed.
    —Corpus Christi Watershed
    “Hybrid” Chant Notation?
    Over the years, many have tried to ‘simplify’ plainsong notation. The O’Fallon Propers attempted to simplify the notation—but ended up making matters worse. Dr. Karl Weinmann tried to do the same in the time of Pope Saint Pius X by replacing each porrectus. You can examine a specimen from his edition and see whether you agree he complicated matters. In particular, look at what he did with éxsules fílii Hévae.
    —Corpus Christi Watershed
    Antiphons Don’t Match?
    A reader wants to know why the Entrance and Communion antiphons in certain publications deviate from what’s prescribed by the GRADUALE ROMANUM published after Vatican II. Click here to read our answer. The short answer is: the Adalbert Propers were never intended to be sung. They were intended for private Masses only (or Masses without music). The “Graduale Parvum,” published by the John Henry Newman Institute of Liturgical Music in 2023, mostly uses the Adalbert Propers—but sometimes uses the GRADUALE text: e.g. Solemnity of Saints Peter and Paul (29 June).
    —Corpus Christi Watershed

Random Quote

It would be contrary to the Constitution to decree or even to hint that sung celebrations, especially of the Mass, should be in Latin.

— Annibale Bugnini attacking “Sacrosanctum Concilium” (§36)

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