[Catholic Caucus] The Question of Continuity of the 1962 Missal and the 1970 Missal: The Sunday Gospels

Rorate Caeli ^ | October 13, 2021 | Father Richard Gennaro Cipolla

[ebb tide]

[Catholic Caucus] The Question of Continuity of the 1962 Missal and the 1970 Missal: The Sunday Gospels

The question of the continuity of the 1962 Roman Missal with the Missal promulgated by Pope St. Paul VI in 1970 is important to discuss for an understanding of the liturgical life of the Church today.  That St. Paul VI assumed such a continuity is clear in the Apostolic Constitution Missale Romanum that promulgated the Missale Romanum of 1970 as a “restoration of the Missale Romanum”. In that same document Paul VI refers several times to the Missale Romanum promulgated in 1570 by St. Pius V and makes a parallel between the “many and wonderful fruits” of the Roman Missal of 1570 and the fruits anticipated in the use of 1970 Roman Missal.

Paul VI claims as a basis for the new Lectionary for Mass, the 1989 Ordo Lectionum Missae,  the prescription of the Second Vatican Council in Sacrosanctum Concilium that “over the course of a prescribed number of years a more representative portion of Holy Scripture be read to the people”.  As to the new ordering of the Lectionary, the Pope continues: “All these things have been arranged in this way so as to arouse more and more among Christ’s faithful that hunger for the Word of God by which under the guidance of the Holy Spirit, the people of the New Covenant can be seen, as it were, to be impelled towards the perfect unity of the Church.”

[ebb tide]

That almost 60% of the Sunday Gospels in the 1962 Roman Missal do not appear in the 1989 Ordo Lectionum Missae as Sunday Gospels raises questions about the continuity of the Sunday Gospel readings of the 1962 Missal and the 1970 Missal of St. Paul VI and the following versions of that Missal.  It is obvious from this data that in the formation of the post-Vatican II three year cycle of Sunday Gospel readings, the Gospels of the Ordo that has been handed down from before the time of St. Gregory the Great were not treated as part of the liturgical Tradition and therefore were not given “pride of place” in the development of the post-Vatican II Ordo Lectionum Missae.

[ebb tide]

Ping