In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:

  • In Dialogue with Fred McManus:Catholic Liturgy and the Christian East at Vatican II — Nostalgia for Orthodoxy**1
  • Robert F. Taft S.J., F.B.A. (bio)

I am deeply honored to be with you this afternoon to honor a dear old friend and mentor, the late Msgr. Frederick R. McManus (1923-2005) of blessed memory, one of the "greats" of the Catholic Liturgical Movement in the United States, whom I knew well and admired even more. Since we of the Christian religious heritage believe that the deceased are still with us, having passed to a better life in the bosom of God, permit me to welcome [End Page 466] Fred who is among us here too, and to dialogue with him on two issues of common interest to both Fred and me: Catholic liturgical renewal and the Christian East. So "Welcome, Fred," and please bear with me as I talk about matters so well-known to you that you do not really need to hear them again from me.

I. No Liturgical Reform in the Orthodox East?

During the period of the pre-Vatican II "Liturgical Movement" in the West, some thought that the very idea of "liturgical reform" was totally foreign to the mentality and history of the Eastern Christian Churches. Authoritative protagonists and historians of the Liturgical Movement like Dom Olivier Rousseau, erudite Benedictine of the Monastery of Amay-Chevetogne, wrote: "there can be no question of a 'liturgical movement' in the Orthodox Church," because "the Orthodox Church has preserved the liturgical spirit of the Early Church, and continues to live by this spirit, to drink from it as from its purest source . . . This Church has never departed in its piety and its offices from the liturgical spirit of the Early Church, to which it has always remained faithful."2

So we must ask ourselves if the very idea of liturgical reform is not an exclusively western phenomenon. That seems to be what those like Dom Rousseau would say, believing that the oriental liturgies go back to the time of the Apostles and have remained unchanged until today. That's the myth. Let us take a look at the reality.

II. The Dynamics of Liturgical Reform

In March 1997 the periodical Peiraïki Ekklesia, official organ of the Greek Orthodox Eparchy of Piraeus, published in vol. 70/177 a photograph of a [End Page 467] Greek Orthodox priest celebrating the Orthodox Eucharist versus populum at an altar placed on the floor of the nave in front of the traditional iconostasis of the enclosed Byzantine sanctuary.

More important than the news story is its argumentation: the blurb accompanying the photo says, "the liturgy was celebrated in the center of the church in the ancient way" (p. 74). A startling liturgical innovation, unheard of in any eastern rite, is justified by appeal to ancient tradition—just as was done in the western Catholic liturgical renewal to support the versus populum position. That the facts may not justify this appeal to the past is irrelevant, just as is totally irrelevant the appeal to the past among those in the Catholic West today who controvert the versus populum position by trying to show it was not in fact as traditional in antiquity as its promoters would claim. In either case, the facts are beside the point. The dynamics involved have nothing to do with conclusions from liturgical history. Rather, it is a question of seeking precedents in earlier or eastern tradition for what one has already decided to do. We are dealing, in short, with the strategies reformers employ to claim authority for their views.

III. Eastern Liturgy Through Western Eyes

The first thing to note in this context is that the Vatican II "preferential option" for the East was by no means something one could have automatically anticipated. A prime-mover of the nascent nineteenth-century Catholic Liturgical Movement, Abbot Dom Prosper Guéranger of Solesmes (1805-1875), treated eastern liturgy with derision and contempt. Chapter IX of his monumental Institutions liturgiques is full of outrageous statements like ". . . one must note in the Greek liturgy a particular quality which admirably denotes the degradation of the Church that employs it. This...

pdf

Share