Mass of Paul VI - Beginnings of The Revision

Beginnings of The Revision

The Roman Missal was revised on a number of occasions after 1570: after only 34 years, Pope Clement VIII made a general revision, as did Pope Urban VIII 30 years later. Other Popes added new feasts or made other minor adjustments. It was not until the twentieth century, however, that work began on a more radical rewriting.

In response to a decree of the First Vatican Council (1870), Pope Pius X introduced in 1911 a new arrangement of the Psalter for use in the Breviary. In the bull Divino afflatu, he described this change as "a first step towards a correction of the Roman Breviary and Missal". A Society of St. Pius X site states that this revision of the Breviary "significantly unsettled" clerics and encountered criticism. The laity will only have noticed the accompanying change whereby on Sundays, the Mass liturgy ceased to be generally taken from the proper or common (liturgy of the saint whose feast fell on that day, and began instead to be that of the Sunday.

In 1955, Pope Pius XII made substantial changes to the liturgies for Palm Sunday, the Easter Triduum and the Vigil of Pentecost. The Palm Sunday blessing of palms was freed from elements, such as the recitation of the Sanctus, that were relics of an earlier celebration of a separate Mass for the blessing, and the procession was simplified. Among the changes for Holy Thursday were the moving of the Mass from morning to evening, thus making room for a morning Chrism Mass, and the introduction into the evening Mass of the rite of the washing of feet. Changes to the Good Friday liturgy included moving it from morning to afternoon, and allowing the congregation to receive Holy Communion, which had formerly been reserved to the priest; an end was also put to the custom whereby, at the communion, the priest drank some unconsecrated wine into which he had placed part of the consecrated host. There were more numerous changes to the Easter Vigil service:

• The service was to be celebrated on the night leading to Easter Sunday instead of Holy Saturday morning;
• The triple candlestick which had previously been lit at the start of the service was replaced with the Paschal candle and candles held by each member of the congregation;
• New ceremonies were introduced, such as the renewal of baptismal promises (in the vernacular) and the inscribing of the Arabic numerals of the year on the Paschal candle;
• The prayer for the Holy Roman Emperor in the Exultet was replaced with a newly composed prayer, since the Empire had been defunct since the early 19th century;
• Eight Old Testament readings were omitted, another was shortened, and the priest was no longer obliged to read the passages quietly while they were being read or chanted aloud;
• The "Last Gospel" (John 1:1–14) that had customarily ended Mass was omitted.

At the Vigil of Pentecost, the traditional blessing of baptismal water, accompanied by the Litany of the Saints and six Old Testament readings, was omitted completely. These were still printed in the Missal, which, except for the replacement of the Holy Week liturgies, remained unchanged and was not considered to constitute a new editio typica superseding that of Pope Pius X, which was published by Pope Benedict XV in 1920.

Pope Pius XII decried those who would go back to ancient liturgical rites and usages, discarding the new patterns introduced by disposition of divine Providence to meet the changes of circumstances and situation. Doing so, he said, "bids fair to revive the exaggerated and senseless antiquarianism to which the illegal Council of Pistoia gave rise". He indicated as examples of what was to be rejected: restoring the altar to its primitive table form, excluding black as a liturgical colour, forbidding the use in church of sacred images and statues, using crucifixes with no trace of suffering, rejecting polyphonic music that conforms with the Holy See's regulations.

Pope John XXIII, who succeeded Pius XII in 1958, added some new feasts and made some other changes to the liturgical calendar, as well as amending some of the rubrics. In his 1962 edition of the Missal, he also deleted the word "perfidis" (Latin: "faithless") from the Good Friday prayer for the Jews, and added the name of St. Joseph to the Canon of the Mass. The second change was particularly significant, as many had considered the text of the Canon to be practically untouchable.