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Kosta,

You wrote: “Well if that is so than all he had to do is say the Roman Mass was obligatory and be done with it. No new Missal would have been needed.”

Actually a new missal was needed in the late 16th century for the following reasons:

1) To stamp out abuses of the traditional liturgy.

2) To bring more uniformity to liturgies in very different locations. This made sense at the time. The Church knew that uniformity was a good goal to shoot for in an age where the Church’s liturgy was under attack from the outside by Protestants (who a few years earlier were Catholics) and from within the Church by lazy priests who committed abuses with the liturgy. In hindsight, this may have been necessary, but was also unfortunate because it meant the sweeping away of some fine liturgical traditions in some areas in the interest of uniformity.

3) To codify the liturgy in order to deal with the mess brought about by the Protestant Revolution. We forget today just what a confusing mess the 16th century was. What liturgy were Catholics supposed to use in England AFTER the Protestant Revolution? Native trained priests usually used the Sarum Rite, but the Jesuit missionaries used the Pius V missal because was not only their training but it also showed attachment to Rome, to the Catholic Church. A new, and universal, Missal for the Roman Rite was most definitely needed.

Now, about the age of the TLM: Yes, the TLM was codified by Pius V. Its roots go much further back, with few substantial changes.

As Fr. Adrian Fortescue wrote, “From roughly the time of St. Gregory [d. 604] we have the text of the Mass, its order and arrangement, as a sacred tradition that no one has ventured to touch except in unimportant details.” Fortescue, THE MASS: A STUDY OF THE ROMAN LITURGY, 1912, page 173.

The canon of the Mass dates back, in books that is, to at least the 4th or 5th century as we know from the great sacramentaries of Pope St. Leo (440-461), Pope Gelasius (492-496) and Pope St. Gregory the Great (590-604).

Anyone interested in knowing all the ins and outs of the Roman Rite might want to buy a copy of Joseph A. Jungamnn’s The Mass of the Roman Rite, (2 vols.). It’s old, but a classic.

Actually a new missal was needed in the late 16th century for the following reasons:

Thank you, Vladimir. That was my impression. While it is true that most of Western Europe used Roman Latin-Rite Mass, there were medieval variants of it, even though the liturgical canon was settled by the 7th century (save maybe for inclusion of the Creed in the 11th).

But the same cannot be said of the earlier centuries, which were characterized by two aspects: lack of information about the Mass and canonical flux. I think it is safe to say that modern-day Catholics would recognize the Mass of the 7th century as their own.

Now, about the age of the TLM: Yes, the TLM was codified by Pius V. Its roots go much further back, with few substantial changes.

Yes, it seems that way.

“From roughly the time of St. Gregory [d. 604] we have the text of the Mass, its order and arrangement, as a sacred tradition that no one has ventured to touch except in unimportant details.”

Ciorrect.

Yes, but the two centuries (5th and 6th) were the period when the Mass was undergoing most radical changes especially in canon. It was +Gregory I who basically settled the liturgical canon.

But I stand corrected: the TLM antiquity has bene in use since the 7th century (not quote 1,600 years but close!)