A NOVELTY - NOT A RESTORATION

Dialogue mass is a novelty in the history of the Church. Even those who approve of it and feel that it is an improvement on what went before must, in all honesty, admit this for it does nothing for their case to pretend otherwise. It was quite unknown before the 20th century. St Pius X did not envisage Dialogue Mass but rather congregational singing when he advocated ”active participation” for although the Dialogue Mass simply did not exist in his day he could easily have introduced it. This is proved by his radical reform of the Roman Breviary which clearly demonstrates that he did not hesitate to implement liturgical change which he considered necessary. This successor Benedict XV is credited with having done so and of having personally celebrated Dialogue Mass ONCE in his priesthood which lasted 44 years. It seems that Pius XI celebrated it twice. This does not indicate that they considered it a high priority but it was enthusiastically adopted in latter years by bishops and clergy who were very progressive at the time, especially in France and Germany.

The Dialogue Mass is nothing more than a liturgical praxis. Although it may not be Modernist in terms of theology, it is undoubtedly MODERN and imbued with the spirit of the age which produced it as Joseph Jungman in his book Missarum Solmenia frankly admits ,“from the Dialogue Mass the Faithful gain a living knowledge of the actual course of the Mass and so they can follow the Low Mass as well as the Solemn Mass with an entirely new understanding. To have been deprived of such an understanding much longer would not have been tolerable even to the masses in this age of advanced education and enhanced self consciousness. But what is even more important, now that the Faithful answer the priest and concur in his prayers, sacrifice with him and communicate with him, they become properly conscious for the first time of their dignity as Christians.” ( sic!)

It is scarcely credible that a scholar of Jungmann’s repute should claim that it was only in the twentieth century of the Church’s history that the Faithful for the first time of their dignity as Christians – and that thanks to the introduction of Dialogue Mass!


Papal Mass in the 1950'S -a Liturgy not yet "restored"

Whereas it is indeed true that “there is nothing new under the sun” (Ecce 1.10), it is generally accepted in common parlance that anything which re-emerges after a lapse of centuries, or the best part of a millennium, is reckoned new. Vocal participation in Sung Masses has, of course, always been the norm and this has never been questioned, but the degree of such participation in Low Mass, over the centuries of its development, is far from certain. Certain liturgical authorities such as Father Ellard in his book The Mass of the Future are sometimes quoted as giving a number of examples to demonstrate vocal participation into the mediaeval period. However, it is noteworthy that, in spite of that, he writes: “Taking Christendom as a whole it is accurate to say that the countries not deeply affected by the Protestant revolt were carrying into the modern age the same self imposed secrecy touching the Canon of the Mass (and sometimes by extension other Mass prayers also) that had been common in the late Middle Ages”. In another place Father Ellard states: “That modern usage commonly styled the Dialogue Mass was something implicit in Pius X’s great Motu Proprio. This liturgical expert of modernist tendency takes it for granted that the practice IS modern and by claiming that Dialogue Mass is merely implicit in that document confirms that Pius X’s description of “mute spectators” refers to Sung Mass and not to Dialogue Low Mass. The Motu Proprio of 1903 was, of course, concerned with Sacred Music as Dialogue Mass had not yet been introduced into the Church.

Once the supposedly implicit in the Motu Proprio became explicit and Dialogue Mass was later permitted, care was taken to describe it as a restoration and therefore unquestionably justified. On this basis most of what Traditional Catholics term innovations in the post-Conciliar liturgy i.e. vernacular, communion in the hand, altars constructed as tables, tabernacles removed from altars, communion under two kinds etc , are all likewise restorations. Should this assertion be doubted, we invoke the authority of Mgr Bugnini whom many Traditional Catholics see as the creator of the New Mass. In another book The Mass in Transition (1956), Father Ellard states, “Father Bugnini said editorially in Osservatore Romano last year, changing the liturgy is not like laying out a new subdivision in the suburbs: ‘ For the liturgy is not an uninhabited and open field on which one can draw the outlines of a new city. Rather there is a question of ‘restoration’…” (p153)
The following photographs give a sample of the “Restored” Liturgical ideal of the 1950’s:



High Mass at Mount Saviour Elmira NY. incensation of the altar and chanting the gospel


grand fellow on the feast of the Exaltion of the Holy Cross