The Order of Mass

A sequential exposition of the Roman Order of Mass as printed in the 2008 Latin editio typica tertia emendata and translated for the dioceses of the United States in 2011: what each movement prints, what the General Instruction requires of it, where it came from, and what it means.

The Shape of the Action

A rite is not a text. It is an ordered sequence of words, gestures, movements, silences, and distributed roles, and it is the sequence that carries the meaning. One may read the Roman Canon straight through and learn a great deal about Roman euchology; one will not thereby learn why it stands where it stands, why a people who have just heard a Gospel and prayed for the world are the ones who hear it, or why what follows it is a meal. This study therefore follows the Order of Mass in its own order, movement by movement, asking of each: what does the book actually print; what does the law actually require; where did it come from; and what is it for.

The book in question is exact. It is the Missale Romanum, third typical edition, in the emended reprint of 2008 — the reimpressio emendata that the Congregation for Divine Worship published that year with the Pope’s approval of certain changes, expressly not a new typical edition but the corrected state of the 2002 book.¹ The vernacular in view is equally exact: the English translation approved for the dioceses of the United States, confirmed by the Apostolic See on 26 March 2010 with the United States adaptations confirmed on 24 July 2010, and in use from the First Sunday of Advent 2011.² Where a statement in these pages is true of one and not the other, it says so.

That precision is not pedantry. “The Novus Ordo,” “the new Mass,” “the vernacular liturgy” are not books and have no rubrics. Claims about what the Mass says or requires can be checked only against an identified edition, and a surprising number of familiar claims do not survive the check. The 2008 Latin, for instance, still prints the Roman Canon first among the Eucharistic Prayers and still directs that the faithful be able to sing the Ordinary in Latin in a rite whose Latin text remains the typical one; the 2011 English says “for many” at the consecration of the chalice because a circular letter of 2006 required it of every future translation, not because ICEL preferred it.

The governing claim

The thesis this study defends, and against which its evidence should be read, is this. The postconciliar Order of Mass is a single act with two constitutive parts joined by a hinge and framed at both ends. The General Instruction says so in as many words: the Mass consists in some sense of two parts, the Liturgy of the Word and the Liturgy of the Eucharist, so closely connected that they form one single act of worship, and to these are added rites which open and conclude the celebration.³ Everything in the sequence can be read as serving that joint: the Introductory Rites constitute the assembly that is to hear and to offer; the Liturgy of the Word forms it by God’s own speech and turns it outward in petition; the Preparation of the Gifts moves it from hearing to offering by the plainest possible means; the Eucharistic Prayer is the act itself, in which the Church’s thanksgiving carries Christ’s own words and deed; the Communion Rite gives what has been made; the Concluding Rites send. Read this way, several long-running disputes about the reform become questions of proportion rather than of substance, and several genuinely substantive changes — the removal of mysterium fidei from the consecratory form, the composition of three new anaphoras, the reduction of the offertory — come into clearer focus precisely because they are not diffused across a general complaint.

A map of the received action

The following is a working guide to the 2008 Latin Order of Mass by its own numbering. Elements marked fixed occur at every celebration of this Order; conditional elements occur when the day, rank, or rubric prescribes; optional elements depend on a choice the Missal itself grants.

Two features of that table are worth noticing before the exposition begins. First, the numbering runs 1–30, then jumps to 31 for the Eucharistic Prayer dialogue, and then to 83 for the Roman Canon, because the prefaces occupy nn. 33–82 in between: the book is arranged for use at the altar, not for reading, and the Order of Mass literally has the prefaces bound into its middle. Second, the “fixed” column is thinner than the reputation of the older rite would suggest and thicker than the reputation of the newer one: the great majority of the sequence admits no choice at all, and where choice exists the Missal names the alternatives.

How the movements are read here

Each movement receives the treatment its own form requires rather than a uniform dossier. A procession is read through its agents, direction, and destination; a dialogue through its speakers and what the answer concedes; a psalm through its mode of use; an oration through its address, its silence, and its mediation; the Eucharistic Prayer through anaphoral grammar rather than a checklist. Where a movement’s history is secure it is given; where the record supports only a terminus or a family resemblance, that is said in place. Patristic witnesses are used to show what was already there, not to make a fourth-century preacher a commentator on a twentieth-century rubric.

The Introductory Rites

What the opening is for

The Missal gives the opening rites a single stated purpose, and it is worth having in front of one before examining the parts: the rites preceding the Liturgy of the Word — entrance, greeting, penitential act, Kyrie, Gloria, and Collect — have the character of a beginning, an introduction, and a preparation, and their purpose is that the faithful coming together should constitute a communion and dispose themselves rightly to hear God’s word and celebrate the Eucharist worthily.⁴ That is a functional definition, and it explains the shape of what follows: a movement inward (procession), a constitution of the body as addressed and answering (sign of the cross, greeting), an acknowledgement of unworthiness, a cry to the Lord, praise, and a gathering of all of it into one presidential petition.

Entrance, altar, and the sign of the cross (nn. 1–2)

The book’s first rubric is about bodies in motion: with the people gathered, the priest with the ministers goes to the altar while the entrance chant is carried out.⁵ The order of clauses matters. The people are already gathered when the rite begins; the ministers come to them and pass through them; and the destination of the procession is not the chair but the altar, which is reverenced with a bow and kissed before the priest goes to preside. The altar is thus greeted before the assembly is, and the first act of the celebrant’s body is an act of homage to a stone. Whatever else is true of this Order, its opening gesture is not anthropocentric.

The entrance chant has a stated function — to open the celebration, foster the unity of those gathered, introduce their minds to the mystery of the liturgical time or festivity, and accompany the procession — and in the United States it may be drawn from four sources: the antiphon in the Missal, or the antiphon with its psalm from the Graduale Romanum; the antiphon with psalm from the Graduale Simplex; a chant from another approved collection of psalms and antiphons; or another suitable liturgical chant approved by the Conference or the diocesan Bishop.⁶ That fourth option is the widest door in the Introductory Rites and the one through which most of what an American Catholic actually hears at the entrance has come; it is a territorial adaptation, not a provision of the typical edition, and it is worth naming as such rather than attributing the resulting repertoire to the Missal.

The sign of the cross is made by priest and people together, standing, while the priest, turned toward the people, says the trinitarian formula and the people answer Amen. This is a postconciliar arrangement in its present shape: in the older Order the priest signed himself at the foot of the altar during the prayers preparatory to Mass, and the assembly’s corporate signing at the outset is a restoration of visibility to what had become the celebrant’s private beginning.

The greeting and what the answer concedes (n. 2)

Three forms are printed — the Pauline trinitarian greeting from 2 Corinthians 13:13, the shorter Pauline greeting, and Dominus vobiscum; a bishop says Pax vobis in this first greeting instead.⁷ The people’s answer to all three is the same: Et cum spiritu tuo.

The English of that answer changed in 2011, and the reason is documented rather than conjectural. Liturgiam authenticam names this very response as an example of expressions belonging to the heritage of the whole or a great part of the ancient Church which are to be respected by a translation that is as literal as possible.⁸ The 1973 English had rendered the answer as a reciprocal greeting; the 2011 English gives “and with your spirit,” restoring both the noun and the ambiguity of the Latin. The ambiguity is the point of the debate. Patristic and modern readings differ over whether spiritus tuus means simply “you,” after a Semitic idiom, or refers to the grace of office conferred by ordination — the second reading being why the response is reserved to exchanges with an ordained minister. This study does not settle that question; it records that the Latin admits both, that the older English closed it, and that the instruction’s stated reason for reopening it was neither theory: it was the antiquity and universality of the formula.⁹

The Penitential Act (nn. 4–6)

Three forms are printed, all introduced by the same invitation, Fratres, agnoscamus peccata nostra, ut apti simus ad sacra mysteria celebranda, and all followed by a brief pause of silence. Form I is the Confiteor, said by all together, with the striking of the breast at mea culpa, mea culpa, mea maxima culpa. Form II is a versicle-and-response pair drawn from the psalms (Miserere nostri, Domine — Quia peccavimus tibi; Ostende nobis, Domine, misericordiam tuam — Et salutare tuum da nobis). Form III sets tropes before the Kyrie acclamations, of which the Missal prints one set and permits others; the tropes are addressed to Christ throughout, which is why in this form the Kyrie that follows is not repeated. All three end with the priest’s absolution formula, which the General Instruction says lacks the efficacy of the sacrament of Penance.¹⁰ A footnote on the same page provides that on Sundays, especially in Eastertide, the blessing and sprinkling of water in memory of baptism may replace the customary penitential act.

Two points of history are secure and worth separating. The Confiteor itself is medieval in its developed form and was, in the older Roman Order, part of the prayers at the foot of the altar — said by the priest and answered by the ministers, that is, a clerical dialogue. Making it the assembly’s act is a change of speaker, not an invention of a text. The penitential act as a distinct opening moment, by contrast, is presented by Paul VI’s constitution as a restoration: among the things restored “to the ancient norm of the holy Fathers” the constitution names the homily, the universal prayer, and “the penitential rite, or act of reconciliation with God and with the brethren, to be performed at the beginning of Mass,” to which its due importance has been restored.¹¹ The word restituuntur is a historical claim made by the promulgating authority, and a reader is entitled to weigh it: what the reform restored here was a penitential moment belonging to the whole assembly at the threshold of the rite, which is genuinely ancient in type; the particular texts used to fill it are not all ancient, and form II and form III are new compositions in their present arrangement.

The 2011 English of the Confiteor restored the triple mea culpa, which the 1973 English had reduced to a single admission. Liturgiam authenticam had named that very phrase, alongside Et cum spiritu tuo, as an expression to be translated as literally as possible. The English text itself is not reproduced here; what can be said exactly is that the triple form is in the Latin, that the instruction required it, and that the 2011 text has it.

Kyrie and Gloria (nn. 7–8)

The Kyrie is printed in Greek and in the sixfold form, two acclamations to each invocation, with the note that other melodies are found in the Graduale Romanum.¹² The retention of the Greek in a Latin book, and of a Latin-and-Greek acclamation in a vernacular translation, is the clearest single instance of the principle that some formulas are kept because of what their survival means rather than because of what they say. The sixfold rather than ninefold arrangement is a simplification of the older Roman practice and is presented in the General Instruction as an acclamation by which the faithful acclaim the Lord and implore his mercy, ordinarily done by all with a part for the choir or a cantor.

The Gloria is printed complete and is described as a very ancient and venerable hymn by which the Church, gathered in the Holy Spirit, glorifies and entreats God the Father and the Lamb.¹³ Its conditional status is worth naming precisely, because the calendar does most of the work: its absence in Advent and Lent is not a penitential improvisation but the reason the Sundays of those seasons sound different from the Sundays that surround them.

The Collect (n. 9)

The Collect is the first of the three presidential orations and the structural close of the opening. The rubric is unusually exact about what happens before the prayer: with hands joined the priest says Oremus, and all, together with the priest, pray in silence for some space of time; then, with hands extended, he says the Collect, at whose end the people acclaim Amen.¹⁴ The silence is prescribed, not permitted; Oremus is an invitation to the assembly to pray, and the oration that follows collects what has been prayed. This is the plainest sense of the traditional name, and the rubric preserves the mechanism that gives the name its meaning. Where the silence is omitted — a common shortcut — the priest’s oration ceases to collect anything, and the movement’s own logic is lost.

The oration itself is proper to the day and therefore outside the scope of this study, which treats the Order of Mass rather than the temporal and sanctoral cycles. Two of its formal features belong here. It is addressed, as the great majority of Roman orations are, to the Father; and it concludes through Christ, in the unity of the Holy Spirit, so that the assembly’s petition is offered through the one Mediator — a structure the General Instruction underlines when it says that the priest addresses the prayer to God in the name of the whole holy people and of all present, and that the people, joining themselves to the petition, make the prayer their own by the acclamation Amen.

The 2011 English of the orations is a study in itself and cannot be conducted here with quotation, because the approved English of the Collects is under copyright and this study does not reproduce it. What can be said exactly, and checked by any reader with both books, is structural: the 1973 English generally broke the long Latin period into short independent sentences and reduced the vocative and relative clauses; the 2011 English generally preserves the period, the subordination, and the distinct address, in obedience to an instruction that expressly required the Roman Rite’s concise and compact manner of expression to be maintained insofar as possible, and that varied Latin vocabulary should give rise to corresponding variety in the vernacular.¹⁵

The Liturgy of the Word

The claim the rite makes about reading

The Missal’s account of what happens when Scripture is read in the assembly is not a description of instruction. In the readings, which the homily expounds, God speaks to his people, opens the mystery of redemption and salvation, and offers spiritual nourishment; and Christ himself is present in the midst of the faithful through his word.¹⁶ The people make that divine word their own by silence and by chants, adhere to it by the profession of faith, and, nourished by it, pour out prayers for the whole Church and the world’s salvation in the universal prayer. That single paragraph gives the whole architecture of the movement: reading, response, exposition, adherence, intercession — and it grounds each of the four parts that follow the readings in the readings themselves.

The presence claimed here is real and is not the eucharistic presence. Sacrosanctum Concilium, which the Instruction cites, distinguishes the modes: Christ is present in the sacrifice of the Mass in the person of the minister and above all under the eucharistic species; he is present in the sacraments; he is present in his word, since it is he himself who speaks when the Scriptures are read in church; and he is present when the Church prays and sings.¹⁷ Flattening these into one is a persistent error in popular exposition and the constitution’s own wording forbids it.

Silence as a prescribed element (IGMR 56)

Before the parts, the Instruction places a requirement about tempo. The Liturgy of the Word is to be celebrated in such a way as to favour meditation, and therefore every form of haste that impedes recollection is plainly to be avoided; brief moments of silence, suited to the gathered assembly, belong in it, and may fittingly be kept before the Liturgy of the Word begins, after the first and second readings, and after the homily.¹⁸ This is one of the few places where the law legislates against a manner rather than for an act, and it is the single most frequently ignored provision of the Liturgy of the Word.

The readings and the ministry of reading (nn. 10–13)

The Order of Mass prescribes that the lector goes to the ambo and reads the first reading, which all listen to seated; at its end the lector acclaims Verbum Domini and all answer.¹⁹ A second reading follows on the days appointed. The Instruction rules that the office of proclaiming the readings is by tradition not presidential but ministerial, so that the readings are to be given by a lector and the Gospel announced by a deacon or, in his absence, another priest; the celebrant reads the Gospel only if neither is present, and the other readings only if no suitable lector is there either.²⁰ This is a genuine structural change from the older Roman Order, in which the celebrant read every text himself even when they were also sung by others, and it is a change of principle rather than of convenience: the distribution of ministries is presented as recovering a tradition, not as accommodating a shortage of clergy.

The Instruction adds two protections. The readings are always proclaimed from the ambo in a celebration with a congregation, and it is not lawful to substitute other, non-biblical texts for the readings and the responsorial psalm, which contain the word of God.²¹ The second is a rare instance of the Missal legislating a prohibition in the Liturgy of the Word, and it exists because the practice it forbids had arisen.

The great enlargement of the readings themselves is not a provision of the Order of Mass but of the Ordo lectionum Missae, and Paul VI’s constitution states the mandate and the result: following the Council’s prescription that within a set span of years a more representative portion of the sacred Scriptures be read to the people, the whole body of readings for Sundays was distributed over a three-year cycle, and on festive days a reading from the Old Testament, or in Eastertide from Acts, was set before the Epistle and Gospel.²² The Lectionary is a separate book with a separate history and separate copyright; this study neither reproduces its text nor analyses its selections.

The Responsorial Psalm (n. 11)

The psalm is called an integral part of the Liturgy of the Word and is said to carry great liturgical and pastoral weight, since it fosters meditation on the word of God; it should answer each reading and is ordinarily taken from the Lectionary. It is preferably sung, at least as to the people’s response; the psalmist gives the verses at the ambo while the whole congregation sits and listens, ordinarily participating by the response, unless the psalm is given directly, that is, without a response.²³ Two things follow from that grammar which are often lost in practice. The psalm is a reading in the form of a song, not an interlude between readings; and the congregation’s posture — sitting, listening — makes the psalmist a proclaimer, not a song leader.

The relation of psalm to reading is properly responsorial in the strict sense: the assembly answers God’s word with God’s word, so that the response is neither commentary nor emotional punctuation but the appointed form of assent. The gradual of the older Roman Mass is the direct ancestor of the position; the manner of use — verses proclaimed to a seated and answering assembly — is the restored element.

The Gospel acclamation and the Gospel (nn. 13–16)

The acclamation before the Gospel is described as constituting a rite or act standing by itself, by which the assembly of the faithful welcomes and greets the Lord who is about to speak to them in the Gospel and professes its faith by singing; it is sung by all standing. Outside Lent it is the Alleluia; in Lent the verse before the Gospel is used instead.²⁴ That the acclamation is a rite in itself has a practical consequence the Instruction draws: if it is not sung, it may be omitted. It exists to be sung; recited, it does not accomplish what it is for.

The Gospel reading is called the high point of the Liturgy of the Word, and the Instruction enumerates the signs by which the liturgy itself teaches that the greatest veneration is due to it: the minister deputed to announce it prepares himself by a blessing or prayer; the faithful acknowledge and profess Christ present and speaking to them by their acclamations and listen standing; and marks of veneration are given to the Book of the Gospels.²⁵ The clause about acclamations is the reason the Alleluia’s omission when unsung is not a loss of an ornament but of one of the three named signs.

The Homily (n. 17)

The Order of Mass simply directs that the homily follows, to be given by a priest or deacon, obligatory on Sundays and holydays of obligation and recommended on other days.²⁶ The Instruction is more exact: the homily is part of the Liturgy itself and is necessary for the nourishment of the Christian life; it should be an explanation either of some aspect of the Scripture readings or of another text from the Ordinary or Proper of the day’s Mass, with regard both to the mystery being celebrated and to the particular needs of the hearers. It is ordinarily given by the celebrant himself, or entrusted by him to a concelebrating priest or, on occasion, to a deacon, but never to a lay person; on Sundays and holydays it may not be omitted at Masses with a congregation except for a grave cause; and a brief space of silence is fittingly kept after it.²⁷

Two claims about the homily are frequently confused and should be separated. That the homily is part of the liturgy is a claim about its nature and is made by the Council; that it may expound a text of the Ordinary or Proper rather than a reading is a claim about its matter and is made by the Instruction. Neither makes the homily a lecture on a topic of the preacher’s choosing, and the Instruction’s second clause — “the particular needs of the hearers” — is a qualification of the exposition, not an alternative to it.

The reform’s own account of the homily is again one of restoration: Paul VI’s constitution lists it, with the universal prayer and the penitential act, among things which had fallen away through the injury of times and were restored to the ancient norm of the holy Fathers. The older Roman Order did not forbid preaching; it did not integrate it. The restoration is of place within the rite, not of the practice as such.

The Creed and the Universal Prayer

The profession of faith (nn. 18–19)

The Instruction gives the Creed a precise office within the sequence: the symbol or profession of faith is directed to this, that the whole gathered people should answer the word of God announced in the readings and expounded in the homily, and that by pronouncing the rule of faith in a formula approved for liturgical use it should recall and confess the great mysteries of the faith before their celebration in the Eucharist begins.²⁸ The Creed is thus placed twice over: it is the last of the responses to the word, and it is the threshold of the Eucharist. It is sung or said by the priest with the people on Sundays and solemnities, and may be used at particular more solemn celebrations.

The Missal prints two symbols. At n. 18 the Nicene-Constantinopolitan Creed appears in the first person singular, Credo in unum Deum, with the rubric that at the words which follow, as far as et homo factus est, all bow. At n. 19 the Missal permits, especially in Lent and Eastertide, the use in its place of the baptismal symbol of the Roman Church, the so-called Apostles’ Creed, with the same rubric of bowing extended to the words ex Maria Virgine.²⁹

Here the 2008 emended reprint made one of its six recorded changes in the Order of Mass, and it is a textual correction of exactly the kind the notice describes. In the 2002 printing the Apostles’ Creed at n. 19 opens Credo in unum Deum / Patrem omnipotentem, Creatorem caeli et terrae — importing unum from the Nicene text a page earlier. The 2008 variation list directs that at Missal p. 513, at n. 19, in place of Credo in unum Deum there should stand Credo in Deum.³⁰ The correction is small, entirely uncontroversial, and useful as a specimen: the 2008 book differs from the 2002 book in ways that can be enumerated, and the enumeration is published.

The 2011 English of the Creed is the locus of the change most often cited in the whole translation, the rendering of consubstantialem Patri. The 1973 English had “one in Being with the Father”; the 2011 English has “consubstantial with the Father.” Liturgiam authenticam had named consubstantialis in its own text as an example of a Latin term whose rich meaning is difficult to render in a modern language, for which various solutions may be used — a single word, several, a coined word, an adaptation or transcription of the term itself, or an existing word bearing various meanings.³¹ It is therefore accurate to say that the instruction authorised the solution adopted and inaccurate to say that it required it. What the instruction did require in this vicinity is the retention of the singular Credo: the Latin has “I believe,” and the 1973 English’s “We believe” was a departure from the Latin that the principle of integral rendering could not sustain.

The Universal Prayer (n. 20)

The Order of Mass says only Deinde fit oratio universalis, seu oratio fidelium — one line, no text. This is deliberate: the prayer is by design composed for each celebration, and the Missal supplies models in an appendix rather than a formulary in the Order.

The Instruction supplies the theology and the shape. In the universal prayer the people, having received the word of God in faith, in some manner respond to it, and, exercising the office of their baptismal priesthood, offer prayers to God for the salvation of all.³² The customary series of intentions is fourfold: for the needs of the Church; for those who govern public affairs and for the salvation of the whole world; for those weighed down by any difficulty; and for the local community. At a particular celebration — Confirmation, Marriage, a funeral — the order of intentions may more closely regard that occasion.³³

The distribution of roles is exact and is one of the clearest expressions of the reform’s theology of ministries. It belongs to the celebrant to direct the prayer from the chair: he introduces it with a brief admonition inviting the faithful to pray, and he concludes it with a prayer. The intentions themselves are announced from the ambo or another suitable place by a deacon, a cantor, a lector, or a lay member of the faithful. The people, standing, express their prayer either by a common invocation after each intention or by praying in silence.³⁴ The presidential frame is reserved to the priest; the petitions are not. That division is the Instruction’s own answer to the question of what the assembly’s priesthood does and does not authorise: it authorises the offering of prayer for the world, not the presidency of the rite.

The requirement that intentions be “sober …and express the prayer of the whole community” is a norm with teeth and a norm regularly broken. Intentions that instruct the congregation, that argue a case, or that pray for the personal intentions of the composer fail the test in the Instruction’s own terms. This study composes no intentions and reproduces none; the Missal’s appendix models are not liturgical formularies of obligation and are not reproduced here either.

The universal prayer is, with the homily and the penitential act, one of the three elements Paul VI’s constitution names as restored to the ancient norm of the Fathers. The historical claim is well founded in type: an intercessory prayer of the faithful after the readings and before the offering is attested in the second century. Justin, describing the Sunday assembly at Rome, says that after the reader has finished and the president has admonished and exhorted, “we all rise together and pray,” and that only then are bread and wine and water brought up.³⁵ What was restored in 1969 is a prayer in that place with that function. What was not restored, because it cannot be, is any particular ancient text: the Roman Rite’s own solemn intercessions survived only in the Good Friday liturgy, and the universal prayer of the reformed Order is a form to be filled, not an inherited formulary.

The Preparation of the Gifts

The hinge and its logic

The Instruction sets the whole Liturgy of the Eucharist under one governing correspondence. At the Last Supper Christ instituted the paschal sacrifice and banquet, by which the sacrifice of the cross is continually made present in the Church when the priest, representing Christ the Lord, carries out what the Lord himself did and handed on to his disciples to be done in memory of him. Christ took bread and a cup, gave thanks, broke, and gave to his disciples, saying: take, eat, drink; this is my Body; this is the chalice of my Blood; do this in memory of me. The Church accordingly arranged the whole celebration of the Liturgy of the Eucharist in parts corresponding to these words and acts: in the preparation of the gifts, bread and wine with water are brought to the altar — the very elements Christ took into his hands; in the Eucharistic Prayer, thanks are given for the whole work of salvation and the offerings become the Body and Blood of Christ; through the breaking of the bread and through Communion, the faithful, though many, receive the Body from one bread and the Blood from one chalice as the Apostles did from the hands of Christ himself.³⁶ That is the reason the movement now before us is short, plain, and named for what it does.

Altar, gifts, and procession (nn. 21–22)

The rubric is spare: with the universal prayer finished, the offertory chant begins, and meanwhile the ministers place the corporal, purificator, chalice, pall, and Missal on the altar. It is fitting that the faithful express their participation by an offering, bringing either the bread and wine for the celebration of the Eucharist or other gifts by which the needs of the Church and of the poor may be relieved.³⁷

The Instruction adds the historical qualification that keeps the gesture honest. Although the faithful no longer bring from their own possessions the bread and wine destined for the liturgy as was once the case, the rite of bringing them nevertheless keeps its force and spiritual significance; and money or other gifts for the poor or for the church, brought by the faithful or collected in the church, are also accepted, and are for that reason placed in a suitable place away from the eucharistic table.³⁸ That is an unusually candid rubrical note: the Instruction concedes that the procession is a sign of a practice no longer in force, and defends it as a sign rather than pretending it is the practice. The direction about where money is placed follows from the same distinction and is routinely ignored.

The offertory chant accompanies the procession and is prolonged at least until the gifts are placed on the altar; the norms for singing it are the same as for the entrance chant, and the chant may always accompany the rites at the offertory even when there is no procession with gifts.³⁹

The blessings over bread and wine (nn. 23–25)

The priest, standing at the altar, takes the paten with the bread, holds it slightly raised above the altar with both hands, and says in a low voice Benedictus es, Domine, Deus universi, quia de tua largitate accepimus panem, quem tibi offerimus, fructum terrae et operis manuum hominum: ex quo nobis fiet panis vitae; then he sets it down. If the offertory chant is not sung, he may say these words aloud, and at the end the people may acclaim Benedictus Deus in saecula. The parallel formula over the chalice speaks of wine, the fruit of the vine and work of human hands, from which will come our spiritual drink.⁴⁰

Three things about these prayers are secure. First, they are new compositions in the Roman Missal: they replaced the medieval offertory prayers Suscipe, sancte Pater and Offerimus tibi, Domine, which had spoken of the unconsecrated elements in sacrificial terms — “this spotless host,” “the chalice of salvation” — before the consecration. Second, the reform’s own stated reason for the replacement is on record: Paul VI’s constitution says that, the substance of the rites having been carefully preserved, they were made simpler, and that things were omitted which in the course of time had been duplicated or added with little utility, “especially concerning the rites of the offering of bread and wine and the rites of the breaking of the bread and of Communion.”⁴¹ Third, their form is a blessing of God over gifts received from him — the pattern of the Jewish table berakah — rather than an offering of the gifts as sacrifice, which the rite reserves to the Eucharistic Prayer.

The third point is the substantive one and deserves precision rather than partisanship. The criticism that the reformed preparation weakened the Mass’s sacrificial character rests on the removal of anticipatory sacrificial language from prayers said over bread and wine that are not yet the Body and Blood. The defence is that such anticipation was a medieval doubling of what the Canon says properly and at the right moment. Both observations are correct as far as they go, and the disagreement is about whether the doubling was a defect or a devotional enrichment. What is not open is the claim that the reformed rite lacks an offering: it retains Orate, fratres with its explicitly sacrificial language, retains the Prayer over the Offerings, and places the offering proper — offerimus, in every one of the four Eucharistic Prayers — where the Instruction says it belongs.

The accompanying rites (nn. 24, 26–28)

Four smaller acts fill out the movement, three of them said secretly.

The deacon or priest pours wine and a little water into the chalice, saying quietly Per huius aquae et vini mysterium eius efficiamur divinitatis consortes, qui humanitatis nostrae fieri dignatus est particeps.⁴² The prayer is a compact statement of the admirabile commercium, and the mingling it accompanies is an ancient Roman practice whose symbolic readings — water and blood from the pierced side, the people joined to Christ — are patristic reception, not documented origin.

Bowing profoundly, the priest says In spiritu humilitatis et in animo contrito suscipiamur a te, Domine — a prayer taken from the Song of the Three Young Men (Dan 3:39–40 in the Vulgate numbering), retained from the older Order.

The incensation of gifts, cross, and altar is optional; the Instruction explains it as signifying that the Church’s offering and prayer rise into God’s sight like incense, and adds that the priest, by reason of his sacred ministry, and the people, by reason of their baptismal dignity, may then be incensed.⁴³

The washing of hands is accompanied by Lava me, Domine, ab iniquitate mea, et a peccato meo munda me (Ps 50:4 Vulgate). The Instruction says the rite expresses the desire for interior purification. The 2002 Order prints this shortened form; the older Roman Order had the priest recite a longer portion of the psalm.

Orate, fratres and the Prayer over the Offerings (nn. 29–30)

Standing at the middle of the altar, facing the people, the priest says Orate, fratres: ut meum ac vestrum sacrificium acceptabile fiat apud Deum Patrem omnipotentem; the people rise and answer Suscipiat Dominus sacrificium de manibus tuis ad laudem et gloriam nominis sui, ad utilitatem quoque nostram totiusque Ecclesiae suae sanctae.⁴⁴

This exchange is the theological hinge of the movement, and it says three things the rest of the preparation leaves implicit. It calls what is about to happen a sacrifice. It distinguishes the priest’s sacrifice from the people’s — meum ac vestrum — without separating them. And in the people’s answer it names four ends: the praise and glory of God’s name, and the good of the respondents and of the whole holy Church. A rite that has just avoided sacrificial language over the unconsecrated elements here states the doctrine in the plainest terms available, spoken by the assembly. Any account of the reformed offertory that does not reckon with n. 29 is incomplete.

The Prayer over the Offerings concludes the preparation and prepares the Eucharistic Prayer. The Instruction notes the technical point that at Mass it is concluded with the shorter ending — Per Christum Dominum nostrum, or, if the Son is mentioned at its end, Qui vivit et regnat in saecula saeculorum — and that the people, joining themselves to the petition, make the prayer their own by the acclamation Amen.⁴⁵ Like the Collect, this oration is proper to the day, is not reproduced here in any language, and its approved English is under copyright.

The Eucharistic Prayer: Common Grammar

What the Instruction says the prayer is

Now begins the centre and high point of the whole celebration, namely the Eucharistic Prayer, that is, a prayer of thanksgiving and sanctification.⁴⁶ Three elements of that sentence carry weight. The prayer is the high point — not the institution narrative within it, and not the elevation. It is a prayer of two operations, thanksgiving and sanctification, which is why an account that reduces it to a consecratory formula misdescribes what the Church says she is doing. And it is one prayer: the Instruction speaks of it as a single whole from the dialogue to the Amen.

The Instruction then distinguishes eight principal elements of which the Eucharistic Prayer consists, and this enumeration is the analytical spine of everything that follows.⁴⁷

Element (f) is where the whole doctrine of the assembly’s participation is concentrated, and it should be read with care. The faithful truly offer the spotless victim — immaculatam hostiam offerant — and they are to learn to offer themselves as well. Neither clause makes the assembly a collective celebrant, and the Instruction elsewhere reserves the Eucharistic Prayer to the priest and requires the rest to listen in silence. The claim is that the offering of the Church is one offering, made by the priest acting in the person of Christ the Head and by the baptized in their own manner; the reformed rite states this more explicitly than its predecessor did, and it is a statement of received doctrine rather than a novelty.

The dialogue, the preface, and the Sanctus (nn. 31–32)

The prayer opens with the oldest continuously attested dialogue in the Latin liturgy: Dominus vobiscum — Et cum spiritu tuo; Sursum corda — Habemus ad Dominum; Gratias agamus Domino Deo nostro — Dignum et iustum est. The priest then continues the preface with hands extended, and at its end joins his hands and, together with the people, concludes it by singing or saying the Sanctus.⁴⁸ The 2011 English restored “It is right and just” for Dignum et iustum est and “Lord God of hosts” for Dominus Deus Sabaoth; both are instances of the same principle of closer rendering, and neither is disputed.

Number 32 carries two rubrics that govern the whole section. In all Masses the celebrating priest is permitted to sing the principal parts of the Eucharistic Prayer, with the music supplied later in the book; and in the first Eucharistic Prayer, the Roman Canon, the passages enclosed in parentheses may be omitted.⁴⁹ That second rubric is the single largest change to the Roman Canon’s manner of use and is treated in the next section.

The prefaces themselves — more than eighty in the third typical edition — lie between nn. 33 and 82 of the Order of Mass. Their multiplication is one of the reform’s stated aims: Paul VI’s constitution says the Eucharistic Prayer was enriched with an abundance of prefaces, taken either from the more ancient tradition of the Roman Church or newly composed, so that particular aspects of the mystery of salvation might be more clearly disclosed and richer motives of thanksgiving supplied.⁵⁰

The words of consecration and the removal of mysterium fidei

Paul VI’s constitution records a decision that shaped every one of the four prayers, and it is worth quoting because it is the most exact statement anywhere of what was done and why:⁵¹

…ut eidem Precationi tres novi Canones adderentur statuimus. Attamen sive ut pastoralibus, quas nominant, rationibus consuleretur, sive ut concelebratio expeditius procederet, iussimus verba dominica in qualibet Canonis formula una eademque esse. Itaque in quavis Precatione eucharistica illa sic proferri volumus: supra panem: Accipite et manducate ex hoc omnes: Hoc est enim Corpus meum, quod pro vobis tradetur; et supra calicem: Accipite et bibite ex eo omnes: Hic est enim calix Sanguinis mei novi et aeterni testamenti, qui pro vobis et pro multis effundetur in remissionem peccatorum. Hoc facite in meam commemorationem. Verba autem Mysterium fidei, de contextu verborum Christi Domini deducta, atque a sacerdote prolata, ad fidelium acclamationem veluti aditum aperiunt.

The comparison with the older Roman form is exact and checkable. The 1962 Missale Romanum prints, at the consecration of the chalice: Hic est enim Calix Sanguinis mei, novi et aeterni testamenti: mysterium fidei: qui pro vobis et pro multis effundetur in remissionem peccatorum, followed by Haec quotiescumque feceritis, in mei memoriam facietis.⁵² Three changes follow from the constitution’s decision. Mysterium fidei is removed from the consecratory form and becomes the priest’s cue for the people’s acclamation, placed after the elevation. The concluding command becomes Hoc facite in meam commemorationem, conforming the Latin to 1 Corinthians 11:24–25 and Luke 22:19. And quod pro vobis tradetur is added to the form over the bread, which the older Roman form lacked.

Each of these can be described neutrally. The removal of mysterium fidei from the form takes out of the Lord’s own words a phrase that is not in any Gospel account and restores it as what it functionally is — a statement about the mystery, spoken by the priest, to which the people answer. The changed command aligns the Latin with the Pauline and Lukan text. The added clause over the bread is likewise a conformation to the scriptural text. What is not neutral, and should not be pretended otherwise, is that these are changes to the words of consecration in the Roman Rite, made by papal act, on stated pastoral and practical grounds, and that they are the deepest textual changes in the whole Order of Mass. A reader who wants the strongest version of the traditionalist objection will find it here rather than in the offertory: the form of consecration in the Latin West had stood substantially unchanged for well over a millennium, and it was changed. The reply that carries weight is the one the constitution itself gives — that the dominical words are the same in all four prayers, taken from Scripture, and that the mystery-of-faith phrase was not lost but repositioned — and a reader must weigh the two.

The rubrical common shape (nn. 147–150)

The Instruction adds the ceremonial that the four prayers share. The priest begins with hands extended; he holds his hands extended over the offerings at the epiclesis; he pronounces the words of the Lord clearly and distinctly, as the nature of those words requires; he shows the consecrated Host and the chalice to the people and genuflects in adoration; and at the doxology he takes the paten with the Host and the chalice and raises both.⁵³ One of these rubrics was touched by the 2008 reprint: at Institutio generalis n. 149 the sequence of names in a bishop’s commemoration was reordered, so that when a bishop celebrates outside his own diocese he now adds his brother bishop of that place before naming himself, where the 2002 text had the order reversed.⁵⁴

Which prayer, and when (IGMR 365)

The Instruction gives norms for choosing among the four, and they are more directive than is often supposed.

• Prayer I, the Roman Canon, may always be used. It is more suitably said on days assigned a proper Communicantes, or at Masses enriched with a proper Hanc igitur, and in celebrations of the Apostles and of the Saints mentioned in it; likewise on Sundays, unless for pastoral reasons the third prayer is preferred.

• Prayer II, on account of its particular features, is more suitably used on weekdays or in particular circumstances. Though it has its own preface, it may be used with others, especially those that present the mystery of salvation in summary form.

• Prayer III may be said with any preface, and its use is to be preferred on Sundays and feasts.

• Prayer IV has an unchangeable preface and gives a fuller summary of salvation history. It may be used when a Mass has no proper preface, and on Sundays in Ordinary Time.⁵⁵

Two consequences follow that bear on ordinary parish practice. Prayer II is the shortest and is, by the Instruction’s own norm, the weekday prayer; its use as the standard Sunday prayer is contrary to a stated norm, not merely to taste. And Prayer IV cannot be used when the day has a proper preface, which excludes it from most solemnities and from the strong seasons; its apparent rarity is largely a consequence of the calendar rather than of neglect.

Eucharistic Prayer I: The Roman Canon

The prayer the Missal prints first

The first Eucharistic Prayer of the 2008 Missal is headed Prex eucharistica I seu Canon romanus and runs from n. 83 to n. 98. It is the only one of the four not composed or assembled in the twentieth century; it is the prayer that the Roman Church used, with small variations, from late antiquity until 1969, and, with the parenthesising rubric of n. 32 and the changes to the dominical words already described, it is the prayer the Roman Church still uses. Its retention was not a foregone conclusion, and the fact that it stands first in the book is a decision with a meaning.

Its sections, by their traditional Latin incipits, are: Te igitur (the offering for the Church, the Pope, the local bishop, and all who hold the catholic and apostolic faith); Memento, Domine (the commemoration of the living); Communicantes (the communion with the saints, with the Blessed Virgin named first, then Joseph, the Apostles and the martyrs of the Roman list); Hanc igitur (the acceptance of this offering); Quam oblationem (the petition that the offering be blessed, approved, ratified, reasonable, and acceptable, that it may become the Body and Blood); Qui pridie (the institution narrative); Unde et memores (the anamnesis with the offering of the pure, holy, spotless victim); Supra quae (the prayer that God look with favour, as he did on the gifts of Abel, of Abraham, and of Melchizedek); Supplices te rogamus (the petition that the offering be borne by the hands of the holy Angel to the altar on high); Memento etiam (the commemoration of the dead); Nobis quoque peccatoribus (the petition for a share with the Apostles and martyrs of the second list); Per quem haec omnia; and the doxology Per ipsum.⁵⁶

A reader who has followed the Instruction’s eight elements will notice at once that the Roman Canon does not present them in the Instruction’s order. Its intercessions come before the institution narrative as well as after; its epicletic material is split, with Quam oblationem before the narrative asking that the gifts become the Body and Blood, and Supplices after it asking that those who partake be filled with every heavenly blessing; its anamnesis and oblation are fused in Unde et memores. This is not a defect in the Canon or an inaccuracy in the Instruction. The Instruction says the elements “can be distinguished in this way” — it offers an analysis, not an order of composition — and the Roman Canon is the standing proof that the Roman tradition did not order them as the Antiochene family does.

What is verifiably old

The Canon’s antiquity is often asserted and less often demonstrated. It can be demonstrated, within limits, and the limits matter.

The oldest Latin witness to the substance of several of its sections is Ambrose of Milan (or whoever preached the catechetical sermons transmitted as De sacramentis), toward the end of the fourth century. In book IV he quotes what “the priest says” at Milan, and the reader who knows the Roman Canon will recognise it.⁵⁷

De sacramentis IV, 5, 21 — the prayer over the offering

Vis scire quia verbis coelestibus consecratur? Accipe quae sunt verba. Dicit sacerdos: Fac nobis, inquit, hanc oblationem ascriptam, ratam, rationabilem, acceptabilem: quod figura est corporis et sanguinis Domini nostri Iesu Christi. Compare the 2008 Missal at n. 88: Quam oblationem tu, Deus, in omnibus, quaesumus, benedictam, adscriptam, ratam, rationabilem, acceptabilemque facere digneris: ut nobis Corpus et Sanguis fiat dilectissimi Filii tui, Domini nostri Iesu Christi.

De sacramentis IV, 6, 27 — the anamnesis, oblation, and *Supplices*

Et sacerdos dicit: Ergo memores gloriosissimae eius passionis, et ab inferis resurrectionis, et in coelum ascensionis, offerimus tibi hanc immaculatam hostiam, rationabilem hostiam, incruentam hostiam, hunc panem sanctum, et calicem vitae aeternae: et petimus et precamur, ut hanc oblationem suscipias in sublimi altari tuo per manus angelorum tuorum, sicut suscipere dignatus es munera pueri tui iusti Abel, et sacrificium patriarchae nostri Abrahae, et quod tibi obtulit summus sacerdos Melchisedech. Compare the 2008 Missal at nn. 92–94: Unde et memores … tam beatae passionis, necnon et ab inferis resurrectionis, sed et in caelos gloriosae ascensionis: offerimus … hostiam puram, hostiam sanctam, hostiam immaculatam, Panem sanctum vitae aeternae et Calicem salutis perpetuae. Supra quae … sicuti accepta habere dignatus es munera pueri tui iusti Abel, et sacrificium Patriarchae nostri Abrahae, et quod tibi obtulit summus sacerdos tuus Melchisedech … Supplices te rogamus, omnipotens Deus: iube haec perferri per manus sancti Angeli tui in sublime altare tuum …

Three cautions follow, and this study observes them. First, the Milanese prayer is not the Roman Canon, and no claim is made that Ambrose is quoting Rome. Second, the correspondence proves the antiquity of the material, not the antiquity of the arrangement: the Canon’s present order, including the position of the intercessions, is a later Roman achievement whose stages cannot be reconstructed from these witnesses. Third, the individual sections of the Canon reach us in sacramentaries considerably later than the material they transmit, so that manuscript date, composition date, and Roman adoption are three different questions; this study does not attempt to date the sections severally and does not repeat conjectural datings as fact.

What changed in 1969, and what did not

Set against the 1962 Missal, the Canon’s text is remarkably stable and its manner of use is not. The following comparison rests on the 1962 typical edition and the 2002/2008 typical edition, both read directly.⁵⁸

The single most consequential item in that table is the last one that concerns manner rather than matter: the Canon is now audible. A prayer that for centuries the faithful did not hear is now heard in its entirety, and the change alters what the prayer does in the assembly’s experience far more than any of the textual alterations. That is a real change and it is not neutral: it makes the intercessory sections, the saints’ lists, and the sacrificial vocabulary public property, and it exposes them to the erosion that public texts undergo. It also removes the silence that was itself a form of reverence. Both consequences are real, and the Missal chose one over the other deliberately.

The permission to abbreviate

The parenthesising rubric deserves separate notice because it is the one place where the reformed Canon is genuinely shorter than its predecessor. Omitting both halves of the saints’ lists and the sectional Per Christum Dominum nostrum conclusions removes roughly a quarter of the prayer’s length, and the omission is at the celebrant’s discretion. Two observations follow. The saints who may be omitted — Linus, Cletus, Clement, Sixtus, Cornelius, Cyprian, Lawrence, Chrysogonus, John and Paul, Cosmas and Damian; Ignatius, Alexander, Marcellinus, Peter, Felicity, Perpetua, Agatha, Lucy, Agnes, Cecilia, Anastasia — are precisely the Roman martyrs, the local specificity that ties the Canon to the city whose prayer it is. And the Instruction’s own norm for choosing this prayer (n. 365 a) recommends it for celebrations of the Apostles and of the saints mentioned in it, which is incoherent if the lists are habitually omitted. The permission is real; using it as the default empties the recommendation that accompanies it.

The Canon and the doctrine of the Mass as sacrifice

The Roman Canon carries the Church’s sacrificial doctrine in a vocabulary that the newer prayers state more briefly. Haec dona, haec munera, haec sancta sacrificia illibata; hostiam puram, hostiam sanctam, hostiam immaculatam; the three Old Testament sacrifices of Supra quae; the sacrificium laudis offered by those present — this is the densest sacrificial language in any of the four prayers, and it is the language against which the Council of Trent’s canons on the sacrifice of the Mass were framed. That the Canon was retained unaltered in substance is therefore doctrinally significant in a way that the composition of new prayers cannot be: whatever else the reform did, it did not remove the Church’s own oldest and fullest statement of the Mass as a propitiatory sacrifice offered for the living and the dead. A reader who wishes to test any claim about the reformed Mass and sacrifice should begin with nn. 84, 88, 92, 93, and 95 of the Order of Mass and ask what has been taken away.

Eucharistic Prayers II, III, and IV

Paul VI’s constitution states the fact and the authority in one clause: “we decreed that three new Canons should be added to the same Prayer.”⁵⁹ The three are not of one kind. One is an adaptation of an ancient text; one is a new composition on an old plan; one is a new composition on a plan foreign to Rome. Getting this right matters, because loose talk about “the new canons” obscures three quite different operations.

Eucharistic Prayer II and the Verona anaphora

Prayer II (nn. 99–106) is the shortest, has its own preface, and is by the Instruction’s norm the weekday prayer. Its relation to a specific ancient text is not a matter of general resemblance; it can be shown at the level of clauses.

The oldest Latin text of the eucharistic prayer in the church order conventionally called the Traditio apostolica survives in the Verona palimpsest, printed by Hauler in 1900. Set side by side with Prayer II, the dependence is unmistakable.⁶⁰

Three things must be said with equal firmness. The dependence is real and demonstrable, and anyone who denies it has not compared the texts. The attribution of the underlying church order to Hippolytus of Rome, and its dating to about 215, are not established; authorship, date, place, and the very unity of the work are disputed, and the prayer may be a composite of material of different dates and provenances. And Prayer II is not that anaphora: it is an adaptation. What was added is as important as what was kept.

• A Sanctus was added. The Verona anaphora has none, and its preface runs straight from thanksgiving to the institution narrative. Prayer II’s preface is fitted with the conclusion Et ideo cum Angelis et omnibus Sanctis gloriam tuam praedicamus, una voce dicentes so that the Roman Sanctus can follow.

• A consecratory epiclesis was added before the narrative — Haec ergo dona, quaesumus, Spiritus tui rore sanctifica … ut nobis Corpus et Sanguis fiant Domini nostri Iesu Christi (n. 101) — giving the prayer the split epiclesis characteristic of the Roman family, where the Verona text has only the single post-anamnetic petition for the Spirit.

• Intercessions were added. The Verona anaphora has none; Prayer II acquires a commemoration of the Church with the Pope and the local bishop, an optional commemoration of a named dead person, a commemoration of the dead generally, and a petition for a share with the Mother of God, the Apostles, and all the saints (n. 105).

• The dominical words were replaced by the common form imposed on all four prayers, so that Prayer II does not print the Verona narrative at all.

• The permission at n. 99 that this prayer may be used with other prefaces makes its preface detachable in a way the ancient text’s was not.

The honest summary is therefore this: Prayer II is a Roman prayer built on a very early non-Roman armature, with the Roman elements the armature lacked supplied from the Roman tradition. It is neither “the prayer of Hippolytus” nor a free composition, and both descriptions are common.

The 2008 emended reprint touched this prayer at exactly one point, and it is the only textual emendation the 2008 list records in any of the four Eucharistic Prayers: at Missal p. 581, in n. 103, iterum tibi gratias agens becomes iterum gratias agens.⁶¹ That single word is worth pausing over, because it is a precise answer to the question “what did the 2008 book actually change?” In the Eucharistic Prayers: one pronoun.

Eucharistic Prayer III

Prayer III (nn. 107–115) has no preface of its own and may be used with any; the Instruction prefers it for Sundays and feasts. It is a new composition, and its plan is Roman-Gallican rather than borrowed from a single ancient anaphora: its post-Sanctus opens Vere Sanctus es, Domine, et merito te laudat omnis a te condita creatura and moves directly to the theme that gives the prayer its character.

That theme is the pure offering of Malachi. The post-Sanctus says that God does not cease to gather a people to himself, so that from the rising of the sun to its setting a pure offering may be made to his name — ut a solis ortu usque ad occasum oblatio munda offeratur nomini tuo — which is Malachi 1:11, the text on which the patristic and Tridentine doctrine of the eucharistic sacrifice principally rested.⁶² A prayer that begins from that verse is not a minimising prayer, and Prayer III’s subsequent vocabulary bears this out: it names the offering hoc sacrificium vivum et sanctum, asks God to look upon the oblation of his Church and, recognising the Victim by whose immolation he willed to be reconciled, to grant that those refreshed by the Body and Blood may be found one body and one spirit in Christ, and calls the sacrifice Haec Hostia nostrae reconciliationis.

Its structure follows the Instruction’s order exactly: post-Sanctus thanksgiving, consecratory epiclesis (n. 109), narrative (nn. 110–111), acclamation, anamnesis with offering (n. 113), communion epiclesis, intercessions for the Church, the pope and bishop, the clergy, the people, the scattered, and the dead, and doxology. Where the Roman Canon distributes its intercessions on both sides of the narrative, Prayer III gathers them after it in the Antiochene manner while keeping the Roman double epiclesis. It also carries a proper insertion for Masses for the dead (n. 115).

Prayer III’s authorship is a matter about which this study makes no claim. The composition of the new anaphoras was the work of a study group of the Consilium, and individual responsibility for particular texts is known chiefly from participants’ later accounts rather than from official acts. That a named scholar drafted a text and that the Church promulgated it are different facts with different evidential standing, and only the second is established here.

Eucharistic Prayer IV

Prayer IV (nn. 116–123) is the most distinctive of the four and the most constrained. Its first rubric explains why: the preface of this Eucharistic Prayer may not be changed by reason of the structure of the prayer itself, which offers a summary of the history of salvation.⁶³ This is the mark of the Antiochene or West Syrian anaphoral type, of which the anaphora of St Basil is the best-known representative: a single continuous narration running from creation through the fall, the covenants, and the prophets to the Incarnation, the paschal mystery, and the sending of the Spirit, with the Sanctus embedded in the narration rather than closing a variable preface.

The correspondence with the Antiochene family is structural and thematic and is stated here as such. This study did not examine the Greek text of the Byzantine or Alexandrian anaphoras of Basil and therefore makes no claim about verbal dependence at any point; what can be verified from the Missal alone is that Prayer IV has the shape that family has and that no other Roman prayer has.⁶⁴

Three features follow from that shape and are worth naming.

Its opening is not Vere dignum et iustum est … gratias agere in the ordinary Roman form but Vere dignum est tibi gratias agere, vere iustum est te glorificare, Pater sancte, quia unus es Deus vivus et verus, qui es ante saecula et permanes in aeternum, inaccessibilem lucem inhabitans — a theological exordium rather than a seasonal motive.

Its narration includes matter no other Roman prayer contains: the making of man in God’s image and the entrusting of the world to his care; the loss of God’s friendship through disobedience; the covenants offered many times and the prophets’ instruction; the Incarnation and a characterisation of Christ’s ministry drawn from Isaiah and Luke — salutem evangelizavit pauperibus, redemptionem captivis, maestis corde laetitiam; and the sending of the Spirit as primitias credentibus.⁶⁵

Its intercessions are correspondingly universal: it prays for the pope, the bishop and the whole order of bishops, the clergy, those who offer, those present, and all God’s people, and then omnium, qui te quaerunt corde sincero — all who seek God with a sincere heart — and for the dead quorum fidem tu solus cognovisti, whose faith God alone has known. Those two clauses are the prayer’s most widely noticed and most widely misread feature. They are not a statement that all religions are equivalent; they are intercession for those outside the visible communion of the Church, in language whose reticence (tu solus cognovisti) is precisely a refusal to pronounce.

The other Eucharistic Prayers and the 2008 book

Beyond the four principal prayers, the Missal’s Appendix to the Order of Mass carries the two Eucharistic Prayers for Reconciliation and the Eucharistic Prayer for Various Needs with its four forms. The 2008 variation list records five corrections in that appendix — at pp. 674, 680, 685, 686, and 690–691 — of the same character as those elsewhere: a corrected reference range, a corrected heading, Populus acclamat for Populus prosequitur, an added alternative, and the deletion of a passage from n. 7.⁶⁶ More consequentially, the same reprint deleted from the Latin Missal the Eucharistic Prayers for Masses with Children, which had stood at pp. 1270–1288 as Appendix VI, and inserted a Supplementum in their place.⁶⁷ That deletion is the largest single difference between the 2002 and 2008 books and the reason their pagination diverges at the end.

The Communion Rite

What the rite is preparing for

Since the eucharistic celebration is the paschal banquet, it is right that, according to the Lord’s command, his Body and Blood should be received as spiritual food by the faithful who are properly disposed; the fraction and the other preparatory rites are directed to this, and by them the faithful are led immediately to Communion.⁶⁸ The whole movement — Our Father, embolism and doxology, prayer for peace, sign of peace, fraction and commingling, Agnus Dei, private preparation, invitation, Communion, purification, silence, and Prayer after Communion — is therefore ordered to a single act, and its length is a measure of the reverence the rite attaches to that act rather than of ceremonial elaboration for its own sake.

The Lord’s Prayer, the embolism, and the doxology (nn. 124–125)

The priest introduces the prayer with Praeceptis salutaribus moniti, et divina institutione formati, audemus dicere; all say the Pater noster with him. He alone then continues with the embolism Libera nos, quaesumus, Domine, ab omnibus malis, and the people conclude it with the doxology Quia tuum est regnum, et potestas, et gloria in saecula.⁶⁹ The Instruction explains the position: in the Lord’s Prayer daily bread is asked for, which for Christians principally suggests the eucharistic bread, and purification from sins is implored, so that holy things may truly be given to the holy; the embolism, developing the last petition of the Lord’s Prayer itself, asks deliverance from the power of evil for the whole community of the faithful.⁷⁰

Two features are postconciliar. The people now say the Our Father with the priest, where in the older Roman Order the priest said it and the ministers answered the last petition. And the doxology Quia tuum est regnum, ancient in the Greek East and in the Didache but never part of the Roman Mass, was added as the people’s response to the embolism. That addition is a genuine importation and is sometimes described as an ecumenical gesture toward the Protestant use of the doxology; this study records the fact of the addition and does not assert a motive it has not documented.

The prayer for peace and the sign of peace (nn. 126–128)

The priest prays aloud Domine Iesu Christe, qui dixisti Apostolis tuis: Pacem relinquo vobis, pacem meam do vobis: ne respicias peccata nostra, sed fidem Ecclesiae tuae; eamque secundum voluntatem tuam pacificare et coadunare digneris; he greets the people with Pax Domini sit semper vobiscum; and then, if it is opportune, the deacon or priest says Offerte vobis pacem, and all, according to local custom, signify to one another peace, communion, and charity.⁷¹ The Instruction says the rite is one by which the Church implores peace and unity for herself and for the whole human family, and the faithful express to one another ecclesial communion and mutual charity before communicating in the Sacrament; the manner of the sign is to be established by the conferences of bishops according to the character and customs of peoples; and it is fitting that each should soberly signify peace only to those nearest.⁷²

Two points of proportion. The rite’s placement before Communion, rather than before the offertory as in some other traditions, is the ancient Roman position and follows the logic of Matthew 5:23–24 read through the Roman practice of reconciling before receiving. And the Instruction’s “soberly …only to those nearest” is a norm about the sign’s scale, not a grudging tolerance of it; a sign that becomes a general circulation displaces the fraction that is meant to be occurring at the same time.

The fraction, the commingling, and the Agnus Dei (nn. 129–130)

The priest breaks the eucharistic bread, helped if the case requires by the deacon or a concelebrant. The Instruction gives the gesture its full weight: the gesture of breaking carried out by Christ at the Last Supper, which in the apostolic age gave its name to the whole eucharistic action, signifies that the many faithful are made one body in Communion from the one bread of life which is Christ, who died and rose for the world’s salvation (1 Cor 10:17). It begins after the peace has been given, is carried out with due reverence, yet should not be unnecessarily prolonged or regarded as of immoderate importance, and the rite is reserved to the priest and deacon.⁷³

The priest places a particle of the Host into the chalice, saying quietly Haec commixtio Corporis et Sanguinis Domini nostri Iesu Christi fiat accipientibus nobis in vitam aeternam. The Instruction explains the commingling as signifying the unity of the Body and Blood of the Lord in the work of salvation, namely of the Body of Christ Jesus living and glorious. That is a notably restrained explanation: the medieval commentators offered several symbolic readings of the commingling, and the Instruction adopts one and does not multiply them.

The Agnus Dei accompanies the fraction, is customarily sung by choir or cantor with the people answering, and may be repeated as often as necessary until the rite is completed, the last time concluding dona nobis pacem. The Order of Mass prints the threefold form and adds the same permission.⁷⁴

Invitation and the priest’s preparation (nn. 131–132)

The priest prepares himself by one of two quiet prayers — Domine Iesu Christe, Fili Dei vivi or Perceptio Corporis et Sanguinis tui — both retained from the older Roman Order, where all three of the pre-Communion prayers were said. He then genuflects, takes the Host, holds it slightly raised over the paten or chalice, and, facing the people, says Ecce Agnus Dei, ecce qui tollit peccata mundi. Beati qui ad cenam Agni vocati sunt; and together with the people he says once Domine, non sum dignus, ut intres sub tectum meum, sed tantum dic verbo, et sanabitur anima mea.⁷⁵

The Instruction summarises: the priest prepares himself by a private prayer to receive the Body and Blood of Christ fruitfully, and the faithful do the same by praying in silence; then he shows them the eucharistic bread and invites them to the banquet of Christ, and together with them makes an act of humility using the prescribed words of the Gospel.⁷⁶

Here the 2011 English restored the biblical image the 1973 English had replaced. The Latin ut intres sub tectum meum is the centurion’s word in Matthew 8:8; the 1973 English had rendered the whole sentence with a general expression of unworthiness to receive, and the 2011 English restored “under my roof.” The change is a plain case of Liturgiam authenticam’s rule about concrete biblical imagery, which requires that modes of speech depicting heavenly realities in human or concrete form — the instruction’s own examples are terms such as ambulare, brachium, digitus, manus, vultus — keep their full force by being translated somewhat literally rather than replaced by more abstract or general expressions.⁷⁷ The gain is that the assembly now speaks the centurion’s words, and the Instruction’s own description of the response as “the prescribed words of the Gospel” is again true in English.

Communion (nn. 133–137)

The priest communicates first, saying quietly Corpus Christi custodiat me in vitam aeternam and then Sanguis Christi custodiat me in vitam aeternam. He then takes the paten or ciborium, approaches those to be communicated, shows each the Host slightly raised, and says Corpus Christi; the communicant answers Amen and is communicated.⁷⁸ The dialogue is short and is the only place in the whole rite where the minister addresses an individual and receives an individual answer. That is not a small matter: the Amen is a personal profession of faith in what is being received, made immediately before receiving it, and the Instruction’s requirement that the faithful be “properly disposed” has its liturgical expression precisely here.

The Instruction states a strong preference about the elements: it is much to be desired that the faithful, as the priest himself is bound to do, receive the Lord’s Body from hosts consecrated at the same Mass and, in the cases provided, share in the chalice, so that even by the signs Communion may better appear as a participation in the sacrifice actually being celebrated.⁷⁹ The Communion chant begins as the priest receives; its office is to express the communicants’ spiritual union through unity of voices, to show gladness of heart, and to bring out more clearly the “communitarian” character of the procession to receive the Eucharist, and it continues while the Sacrament is administered. In the dioceses of the United States the same four options apply as for the entrance chant.⁸⁰

The postures and manner of reception in the United States are governed by the General Instruction’s territorial adaptations, principally at n. 160, which belongs to a chapter this study was unable to obtain from the official source. Rather than repeat a familiar summary without a source, this study states the gap: the norms for standing, for the bow before receiving, and for reception on the tongue or in the hand in the dioceses of the United States are not set out here, and a reader who needs them should consult the General Instruction directly.

The purification follows, with the priest saying quietly Quod ore sumpsimus, Domine, pura mente capiamus, et de munere temporali fiat nobis remedium sempiternum — a post-Communion prayer of great antiquity, retained.

Silence and the Prayer after Communion (nn. 138–139)

The priest may then return to the chair. As opportunity allows, sacred silence may be kept for some space of time, or a psalm or other canticle of praise or a hymn may be offered.⁸¹ This is the only place in the Order of Mass where a substantial silence and a hymn are offered as alternatives to each other, and the ordering of the Latin — silence first — reflects the Instruction’s judgement about which is the more suitable.

The rite closes with Oremus, a further silence unless one has already preceded, and the Prayer after Communion, in which, as the Instruction says, the priest prays for the fruits of the mystery celebrated; the people make it their own by Amen.⁸²

The Concluding Rites

Four elements, briefly

The Instruction lists what belongs to the Concluding Rites: brief announcements, if they are necessary; the greeting and blessing of the priest, which on certain days and occasions is enriched and expressed by a prayer over the people or another more solemn formula; the dismissal of the people by the deacon or the priest, so that each may return to his own good works, praising and blessing God; and the kissing of the altar by priest and deacon, and then the profound bow toward the altar by priest, deacon, and the other ministers.⁸³ The Order of Mass at nn. 140–146 supplies the texts and the rubrics, including the pontifical form of the blessing with its versicles Sit nomen Domini benedictum and Adiutorium nostrum in nomine Domini, and the provision that if another liturgical action follows immediately the rites of dismissal are omitted.

Of these, the announcements are conditional and the Instruction’s “if they are necessary” is a restriction that the ordinary practice of Sunday parishes tests severely. The blessing is invariable in its simple form; the solemn blessings and prayers over the people that follow the Order of Mass in the book are a substantial restored corpus, and the 2008 reprint corrected the rubric that introduces them, replacing dicit invitatorium: Inclinate vos ad benedictionem vel aliis verbis expressum with dicit invitationem: Inclinate vos ad benedictionem.⁸⁴ That is a small tightening with a visible effect: after 2008 the invitation to bow for a solemn blessing is a fixed text.

The dismissal and its 2008 enlargement

The 2002 Missal printed one dismissal: Ite, missa est, answered Deo gratias. The 2008 reprint added three alternatives at n. 144, printed in the Supplementum under the heading Ad n. 144 Ordinis Missae:⁸⁵

Ite, ad Evangelium Domini annuntiandum. Vel: Ite in pace, glorificando vita vestra Dominum. Vel: Ite in pace.

This is the most substantive addition the 2008 reprint made to the Order of Mass, and it is a deliberate act of interpretation. Ite, missa est is famously opaque: the noun missa in late Latin means a dismissal, and the formula’s literal sense is closer to “go, it is the dismissal” than to anything theological; the word later gave the whole rite its name. The three added formulas do not translate it. They say what the dismissal is for, in the terms the Instruction had already used at n. 90 c: going to announce the Gospel of the Lord, going in peace glorifying the Lord by one’s life. In other words, the 2008 book supplies, as options beside the ancient formula, explicit missionary readings of an act whose ancient formula does not carry them.

Whether that is a gain is a fair question and this study will not pretend it has no cost. The gain is that the connection the Instruction asserts — dismissal as sending to good works and the praise of God — is now audible in the rite itself, and that the exposure of missa est to a missionary rereading is not an invention of preachers but a provision of the book. The cost is that an opaque formula whose opacity was itself instructive, and which named the whole rite, now competes with three transparent ones; and transparency is not always the liturgical virtue. The book keeps Ite, missa est first among the four, which suggests the same judgement.

The 2011 English of the four dismissals is not reproduced here. The English of Ite, missa est in particular is a translator’s problem with no clean solution, since the formula is untranslatable in the strict sense; the approved English is under copyright and this study does not print it or paraphrase it closely.

The last gesture

The rite ends as it began: the priest venerates the altar with a kiss as at the beginning, and, after a profound bow with the ministers, withdraws.⁸⁶ The symmetry is exact and it is the Order’s own last statement about what has happened. The altar that was kissed before the assembly was greeted is kissed again before the assembly is left. Between those two kisses the Church has heard the word, offered the sacrifice, and been fed; the frame closes on the stone, not on the people, and the last movement of the celebrant’s body is the same act of homage as the first.

The English of 2011

The regime under which the translation was made

The English Order of Mass in use in the dioceses of the United States since Advent 2011 was made under a stated and published rule, and the first task of an honest account is to state the rule rather than to infer it from the result.

That rule is the instruction Liturgiam authenticam, the fifth instruction for the right implementation of the Constitution on the Sacred Liturgy, dated 28 March 2001 and published on 7 May 2001. It replaced the whole preceding body of translation norms: “the norms set forth in this Instruction are to be substituted for all norms previously published on the matter,” with one named exception; approvals already granted remain in effect even where they followed different principles, but a new period begins for revising translations already made.⁸⁷

Its governing principle is stated at n. 20 and is worth having exactly:⁸⁸

The translation of the liturgical texts of the Roman Liturgy is not so much a work of creative innovation as it is of rendering the original texts faithfully and accurately into the vernacular language. While it is permissible to arrange the wording, the syntax and the style in such a way as to prepare a flowing vernacular text suitable to the rhythm of popular prayer, the original text, insofar as possible, must be translated integrally and in the most exact manner, without omissions or additions in terms of their content, and without paraphrases or glosses.

Four further norms shape the English Order of Mass specifically. The translation should be easily understandable yet preserve the texts’ dignity, beauty, and doctrinal precision (n. 25). The liturgical texts are the voice of the Church at prayer rather than of particular congregations, should be free of an overly servile adherence to prevailing modes of expression, and may properly employ words that differ somewhat from everyday speech, since it is often by this very fact that they become memorable and capable of expressing heavenly realities; the instruction expects the gradual development of a recognisably sacred vernacular style (n. 27). Varied Latin vocabulary should give rise to corresponding variety in the vernacular (n. 51). And the Roman Rite’s straightforward, concise, and compact manner of expression is to be maintained insofar as possible (n. 57).⁸⁹

Two provisions look directly at the cost of changing texts the people know. Without real necessity, successive revisions should not notably change previously approved vernacular texts of the Eucharistic Prayers which the faithful will have gradually committed to memory (n. 64); and parts to be committed to memory, especially if sung, are to be changed only for a just and considerable reason — but where more significant changes are necessary to bring a text into conformity with the instruction, it is preferable to make them at one time rather than prolonging them over several editions, and a suitable period of catechesis should accompany the publication (n. 74).⁹⁰ Whatever one thinks of the 2011 English, the manner of its introduction — everything at once, with preparation — was the manner the governing instrument prescribed.

What actually changed, and on what authority

The following are the changes in the people’s parts of the Order of Mass that carry the most weight, each with the instrument that accounts for it. The English wording is given only where the argument turns on it, and never at a length that would reproduce the text.

Pro multis: the one change with its own instrument

The rendering of pro multis is the only change in the 2011 English of the Order of Mass that has a dedicated act of the Holy See behind it, and the act is worth setting out in full because it is regularly misdescribed in both directions.

On 9 July 2005 the Congregation for Divine Worship, in agreement with the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, wrote to all presidents of episcopal conferences asking their opinion on the translation of pro multis. The replies were studied by both dicasteries and a report was presented to Benedict XVI. On his directives, the Congregation wrote again on 17 October 2006, under the same protocol number, to all the presidents. The letter’s Italian is the original by its own preamble, and its substance is this.⁹¹

1. A text corresponding to pro multis has been the formula in use in the Latin Roman Rite since the first centuries. Over the preceding thirty years some approved vernacular texts adopted the interpretative translation for all, per tutti, or the like.

2. There is no doubt about the validity of Masses celebrated with a duly approved formula containing an expression equivalent to for all, as the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith had already declared in 1974; that formula would correspond to a correct interpretation of the Lord’s intention expressed in the text, and it is a dogma of faith that Christ died on the cross for all men and women.

3. There are nevertheless many arguments in favour of a more precise translation. The synoptic Gospels refer specifically to “the many”; it would have been entirely possible to have “for all” in the redaction of the Gospel texts, and the formula given for the institution narrative is “for many,” faithfully so translated in most modern biblical versions. The Latin Roman Rite has always said pro multis and never pro omnibus in the consecration of the chalice. The anaphoras of the various Eastern Rites contain the equivalent formula in their own languages. “For many” is a faithful translation of pro multis, while “for all” is rather an explanation belonging properly to catechesis. “For many,” while remaining open to including every single human person, also reflects that this salvation is not accomplished in a quasi-mechanical way without one’s own willing or participation. And in conformity with Liturgiam authenticam one should strive to remain more faithful to the Latin texts of the typical editions.

4. Conferences in countries where for all or its equivalent was then in use were asked to undertake the necessary catechesis of the faithful over the next one or two years, so as to prepare them for the introduction of a precise vernacular translation of pro multis in the next translation of the Roman Missal that the bishops and the Holy See would approve.

Three misdescriptions are thereby excluded. It is not the case that the change was ICEL’s preference or an English-speaking peculiarity: it was required of every conference then using an equivalent of “for all,” by an instrument of the Holy See acting on papal directives. It is not the case that the change implies that Masses said with “for all” were invalid or that Christ did not die for all: the letter denies both in terms, and the second is affirmed as a dogma of faith in the same paragraph. And it is not the case that the change was made without reasons: six are given, and they are of different weights — the scriptural and the Latin-textual arguments are strong, the argument from the Eastern anaphoras is corroborative, and the argument at (e) about the manner of salvation is theological rather than philological and is the one on which a reader may most reasonably differ.

Assessing the translation

Three judgements can be made from the evidence assembled here, and they should be kept apart.

On conformity. The 2011 English of the Order of Mass conforms to the instrument under which it was made. The specific changes most complained of — “and with your spirit,” “consubstantial,” “for many,” “under my roof,” the triple mea culpa — are each either named in the governing instruction or required by a dedicated act. Whatever else may be said, the translation did what it was told to do, and the complaint that it was arbitrary does not survive contact with Liturgiam authenticam 43, 53, and 56.

On the rule itself. Whether the rule was the right rule is a separate question, and it is not settled by the translation’s conformity to it. The strongest case against Liturgiam authenticam is not that literal rendering is wrong but that the instruction’s own n. 25 — easily understandable language preserving dignity, beauty, and doctrinal precision — sets a standard that a literal rendering of complex Latin periods can fail, and that a rule which produces sentences the hearer cannot parse at speaking pace has defeated the Council’s own priority of intelligible participation. That is a real tension inside the instruction, not merely a complaint from outside it.

On the execution. Conformity to a rule and quality of execution are different again. This study is not in a position to assess the 2011 English sentence by sentence, because doing so responsibly would require quoting the text at length, which the rights position forbids, and because a judgement of that kind properly belongs to reviewers competent in English prose and in Latin, several of whom disagree. What can be said is that the two levels of criticism are regularly conflated: an objection to a particular English sentence is not an objection to the principle of close translation, and an objection to the principle is not answered by defending a sentence.

A note on what this study could not do

The reader will have noticed that no English of the Order of Mass has been printed in these pages. That is deliberate and it has a cost, which is best stated plainly rather than hidden. The approved English of the people’s parts, the orations, and the Eucharistic Prayers is under copyright, and this study neither reproduces it nor paraphrases it closely enough to reconstruct. In consequence, three things that a fuller study would do are missing here: a side-by-side comparison of the 1973 and 2011 English of any complete text; an assessment of the 2011 English of the Roman Canon, which is the longest and most contested single stretch of the translation; and any judgement about the singability of the sung parts. Where an argument turned on a short English phrase, that phrase has been given. Where it would have required the text, the argument has been left undeveloped and said so.

The Whole Action

Reading the sequence as one thing

Set end to end, the Order of Mass has a shape that no single movement discloses. It opens by constituting a body: a procession that passes through the people to reach the altar, a corporate signing, a greeting that requires an answer, an admission of sin made by all, a cry for mercy, a hymn of praise, and a silence gathered into one petition. It then submits that body to speech it did not compose: readings it did not choose, a psalm that answers them, a Gospel it stands for, an exposition, a creed that is not an opinion, and a prayer that turns the body outward toward the world. Only then does it move to the altar, and it does so by the plainest possible means: bread, wine, water, a blessing of God for what he has given, a washing of hands, and a request for prayer. The Eucharistic Prayer is the act; everything before it has been preparation and everything after it is consequence. Then the body is fed, individually, each person addressed and each answering. Then it is sent.

Three structural judgements follow from having read the whole in order.

The rite’s centre of gravity is the Eucharistic Prayer, and the rite says so. The Instruction calls it the centre and high point of the whole celebration and says of no other movement anything comparable. Accounts of the reformed Mass that treat the Liturgy of the Word as its true innovation, or the Communion Rite as its emotional centre, describe a celebration the book does not legislate.

The distribution of ministries is the reform’s most pervasive structural change, more pervasive than any textual one. Lector, psalmist, deacon, cantor, the assembly announcing intentions, the assembly answering the greeting, saying the Confiteor, praying the Pater noster, answering Amen at Communion — almost every movement now has speakers it did not have. This is what Sacrosanctum Concilium 14 asked for and it is the change a person notices first. It is also the change with the least textual footprint: most of these parts existed and were spoken by someone else.

The reform’s own self-description is neither “restoration” nor “creation” but both, and the distinction is traceable. Paul VI’s constitution names three restorations (homily, universal prayer, penitential act), one enlargement from tradition and new composition (prefaces), one addition by decree (three new Canons), one simplification (offertory, fraction, Communion), and one reorganisation (the Lectionary). This study has followed those categories because they are the promulgating authority’s own and because they can be checked. A reader who wants to argue that the reform went further than it claimed, or less far, has in that list the right place to start.

Continuity and change, counted

It is worth stating the balance in the only way that can be checked — by counting what the 2008 Order of Mass shares with the 1962 Order and what it does not.

Retained with little or no change of wording: the sign of the cross; Dominus vobiscum and its answer; the Confiteor in substance; the Kyrie in Greek; the Gloria; the Nicene Creed; the mingling formula in substance; In spiritu humilitatis; Orate, fratres and Suscipiat; the whole preface dialogue; the Sanctus; the Roman Canon from Te igitur to Per ipsum apart from the dominical words; the Pater noster with its introduction and the embolism; Pax Domini; the commingling formula; the Agnus Dei; the priest’s two preparation prayers; Domine, non sum dignus; Quod ore sumpsimus; Ite, missa est and Deo gratias.

Substantially changed or newly composed: the offertory prayers; the words of consecration (three specific alterations); the acclamation after the consecration, which is wholly new; the doxology after the embolism, which is imported; the invitation Ecce Agnus Dei in its present form; three of the four Eucharistic Prayers; and, in 2008, three dismissal formulas.

Changed in manner rather than matter: the Canon is audible; the readings are proclaimed by others; the people say what the ministers used to say; the Latin remains typical but the vernacular is normal; and the whole rite is celebrated in a single continuous flow rather than in parallel streams of said and sung text.

That count is not a verdict. It is the material on which a verdict has to be based, and it is the reason both of the usual summaries — “a new rite” and “the same Mass” — are too coarse to be useful.

Project synthesis

Project synthesis — the judgement this study reaches

The judgement. The postconciliar Order of Mass, in the state printed in the 2008 Latin editio typica tertia emendata, is best described as a substantially reordered celebration of a substantially retained rite, in which the deepest textual change is not the new anaphoras or the reduced offertory but the alteration of the dominical words themselves, and in which the deepest practical change is not textual at all but the redistribution of speech among the ministries and the audibility of the Canon. The 2011 English is a faithful execution of a published translation rule whose internal tension — between integral rendering and easy intelligibility — it inherited rather than created.

The reasons.

• Retention is demonstrable, not asserted. The list above of texts carried over from the 1962 Missal with little or no change covers the great majority of the fixed texts of the rite, and it includes the Roman Canon in substance. Both books were read directly for this comparison.

• Reordering is equally demonstrable. The Instruction’s own account of the two parts and their hinge, the transfer of the readings to lectors and deacons, the assembly’s assumption of the Confiteor, the Pater noster, and the Communion Amen, and the audibility of the Canon are all provisions of the book, not effects of custom.

• The consecratory words were changed, and this is the strongest fact on the critical side. Mysterium fidei was removed from the form of the chalice, Haec quotiescumque feceritis was replaced by Hoc facite in meam commemorationem, and quod pro vobis tradetur was added over the bread — by papal decree, on stated pastoral and practical grounds, to a form that had stood substantially unchanged in the Latin West for more than a millennium. Any account of the reform that does not name this is not serious.

• The new prayers are not of one kind and cannot be assessed as a bloc. Prayer II depends demonstrably, clause by clause, on the Verona Latin anaphora, but supplies from the Roman tradition a Sanctus, a consecratory epiclesis, and intercessions that the ancient text lacks. Prayer III is a new composition built on Malachi 1:11 with dense sacrificial vocabulary. Prayer IV is a new composition on the Antiochene plan, structurally alien to Rome and constrained by its own rubric because of it.

• The 2011 English did what its instrument required. Every principal disputed change is traceable to Liturgiam authenticam 43, 53, or 56, or to the circular letter of 17 October 2006, and the manner of introduction — all at once, with catechesis — is what n. 74 prescribes.

The strongest counterargument, at full strength. The judgement above measures continuity by counting texts, and counting texts is the wrong measure of a rite. A liturgy is not a corpus but a form of action, and forms of action can be transformed while every sentence survives. On this view, the decisive facts are precisely the ones this study classes as “manner rather than matter,” and they are not lesser: a Canon prayed silently by a priest facing east, with the faithful in interior adherence, is a different act from the same words declaimed audibly across a table to a congregation, however identical the letters on the page; an offertory whose prayers name the host and the chalice of salvation forms a different expectation than one that blesses God for bread; a rite in which the celebrant reads everything himself asserts something about sacerdotal mediation that a rite of distributed ministries does not. Add the alteration of the words of consecration — which this study concedes — and the enormous permissiveness of the options (four dismissals, three penitential forms, four Eucharistic Prayers, four chant options in the United States at three points), and the conclusion follows that the received rite was not so much retained as quarried: its stones are in the new building, and the building is new. On this account the study’s own Retained list is evidence for the counterargument, since a rite that has to be shown to be continuous by inventory is one whose continuity is no longer self-evident in the celebrating.

Why the judgement is nevertheless retained. Because the counterargument, at its strongest, is an argument about celebration and not about the Order of Mass, and it proves less about the book than it claims. The Missal does not require the postures, orientations, or performance styles on which the argument’s contrasts depend: it does not prescribe celebration facing the people, it does not forbid singing the Canon, it recommends silence at four points, and it prints the Roman Canon first. The argument’s real target is a widespread manner of celebrating the reformed rite, and that manner is defensible or not on its own terms. The book’s own centre of gravity, stated in its own Instruction and reflected in its own arrangement, is where the older book’s was.

What would change the judgement. A single finding would do it: documentary evidence, from the acts of the Consilium or from the promulgating authority, that the changes to the dominical words were made in order to alter or attenuate what the Church intends by them — as distinct from the pastoral and practical grounds Paul VI’s constitution states. That would move the consecratory alteration from the category of textual conformation to the category of doctrinal revision, and the judgement of substantial retention could not survive it. Short of that, a demonstration that the reformed Order requires (rather than permits) a manner of celebration incompatible with the older rite’s theology of sacrifice would have the same effect; this study found no such requirement in the 2008 book, but its reading of the rubrics is not exhaustive and the General Instruction’s chapters III–VIII were not read in full.

Status. This is a source-grounded editorial synthesis by an AI contributor. It is not magisterial teaching, a canonical opinion, or a specialist consensus, and it has not received independent liturgical, historical, or theological review.

What this study does not decide

It does not decide whether the reform should have been undertaken, whether its execution honoured Sacrosanctum Concilium 23’s requirement of organic growth, or what the present discipline governing the older Missal is. It does not adjudicate among the patristic readings of Et cum spiritu tuo, does not assign authorship to any of the new prayers, and does not date the sections of the Roman Canon severally. It offers no assessment of the 2011 English of the Roman Canon, of the orations, or of the Eucharistic Prayers, because assessing them would require reproducing them. And it makes no judgement about the celebration a reader actually attends: the distance between the book and the parish is a real and important subject, and it is a different one.

Scope, Edition, and Qualifications

The object

This study treats the Order of Mass — the Ordo Missae, nn. 1–146 — of the Roman Rite, together with the General Instruction that governs it and the Appendix to the Order of Mass so far as the 2008 emendations touch it. “Order of Mass” here means the whole ordered sequence of the Mass with a congregation, not the sung Ordinary (Kyrie, Gloria, Credo, Sanctus, Agnus Dei) and not the complete Missal. Stable does not mean invariant: the study distinguishes throughout between elements that occur at every celebration, elements conditioned by day or rank, elements the Missal offers as alternatives, and elements determined by territorial adaptation.

Excluded: the temporal and sanctoral Propers; the Lectionary and its text; the Eucharistic Prayers for Reconciliation and for Various Needs beyond the 2008 corrections that touch them; the Eucharistic Prayers for Masses with Children beyond the fact of their removal from the 2008 Latin Missal; concelebration, Masses without a congregation, Masses with the Bishop, ritual and votive Masses; the Order of Mass of the 1962 Missal except as a comparand at named points; and every question of the present canonical discipline governing the older Missal.

The editions

• Controlling Latin rite: Missale Romanum, editio typica tertia, reimpressio emendata (Vatican City, 2008). No exact artifact of the 2008 altar book was obtained or is registered. The study therefore works from two controls in combination: the registered secondary digital reproduction of the 2002 third typical edition, and the official published list of the 2008 variations. Every statement about the 2008 state is either supported by the variation list or is a statement that the variation list records no change at that place; the latter is bounded negative evidence, since the 2008 notice states that further corrections of accent, punctuation, colour, and typography were made without being listed.

• Latin General Instruction: the Institutio Generalis Missalis Romani as printed in the same 2002 reproduction, with the one 2008 emendation at n. 149 noted in place.

• English: The Roman Missal, Third Edition, for use in the Dioceses of the United States of America (2011), and the General Instruction in the United States English state emended through 2021. Chapter II (nn. 27–90) of that state was obtained and read. Chapters III and IV were not obtainable: the host returned an interstitial challenge page rather than the chapter. Nothing in this study rests on nn. 160 or 281–287, and the study says so where the gap affects a movement.

• Comparand: Missale Romanum, editio typica (Vatican City, 1962), in the registered facsimile, used at the Canon and at named points of comparison only.

Territory and date

All statements about territorial adaptation are for the dioceses of the United States of America and are stated as of 25 July 2026. The 2011 English is the state in use since the First Sunday of Advent 2011; the General Instruction state is that carrying the 2021 emendations. This study did not inspect the confirmation decrees themselves and cites their dates from the registered official record of the United States General Instruction.

Rights and the treatment of texts

The Latin editio typica is quoted where the argument requires it, and the Latin quotations in this study are evidence, not texts offered for recitation. The approved English translation of the Order of Mass — the people’s parts, the orations, and the Eucharistic Prayers — is under copyright and is not reproduced here in any form. Where the argument turns on a short English phrase whose exact wording is the point at issue (“and with your spirit,” “consubstantial with the Father,” “for many,” “under my roof”), that phrase is quoted and no more. Nowhere is the approved English paraphrased closely enough to reconstruct it.

That constraint has consequences, and they are stated where they bite rather than in a blanket disclaimer: the Collect and the Prayer over the Offerings are analysed structurally without English, and this is said at each; the Prayer after Communion likewise; the four dismissal formulas are given in Latin only; the 2011 English of the Roman Canon and of the Eucharistic Prayers is not assessed at all, and section 11 explains what that leaves undone. The Lectionary text is under copyright and is never reproduced. Public-domain English for Scripture, where needed, would be the Douay–Rheims version held in this repository; in the event, no scriptural passage required quotation in English, and the biblical loci are cited rather than quoted.

Patristic and historical Latin quoted in this study — Ambrose’s De sacramentis from Patrologia Latina XVI (1880), and the Verona palimpsest text from Hauler’s Teubner edition of 1900 — is public domain in the United States by age of publication; the page images consulted are faithful photographic reproductions adding no original authorship.

Evidence classes and their limits

Claims in this study fall into four classes and are distinguishable in the notes.

Verified source text — wording read in an identified witness. This covers the Latin Order of Mass and General Instruction (read in the registered 2002 reproduction), the 2008 variation list and notice (read at the official Dicastery PDF, hash-matched to the registered artifact), the 2006 circular letter on pro multis (read at the official Dicastery PDF), Liturgiam authenticam (read at the Holy See portal), the United States General Instruction Chapter II (read at the official USCCB presentation), Paul VI’s constitution Missale Romanum in Latin, the 1962 Canon (read at rendered page images of the registered facsimile), Ambrose De sacramentis IV (read at page images), and the Verona anaphora (read at page images).

Checked citation — a claim checked at an exact locus, such as the dates of the 2010 confirmations, taken from the registered official record rather than from the decrees.

Source-grounded synthesis — the comparative tables, the structural readings of the movements, and the whole-action account. These are editorial conclusions drawn from the checked evidence and are labelled as such where they could be mistaken for the sources’ own statements.

Editorial proposal — the Project synthesis block and its counterargument. These are this study’s own judgements, marked in place.

Specific limitations that a reader should carry away:

• The controlling Latin artifact is a secondary digitally typeset reproduction, not a page facsimile of the printed altar book. Its typesetting carries visible defects. Wording claims are made only where the reading is unambiguous, and anyone needing an exact reading should consult a printed altar book.

• No exact 2008 altar-book artifact was obtained. Every 2008 claim is mediated by the published variation list.

• General Instruction chapters III–VIII were not read in full; the study’s negative claims about what the Missal does and does not require are bounded accordingly, and this bound is restated inside the Project synthesis where it matters.

• Prayer IV’s relation to the Antiochene anaphoral family is asserted at the level of form, from the Missal’s own text and rubric. No edition of the anaphora of St Basil was examined and no verbal dependence is claimed.

• The authorship, date, place, and redactional unity of the church order conventionally called the Traditio apostolica are disputed. This study uses the Verona Latin as a witness to a text and makes no attribution to Hippolytus.

• The drafting history of the new Eucharistic Prayers is not established here. Promulgation by papal act is documented; individual authorship is not claimed.

• Reception history, celebration practice, music, architecture, and the sociology of the reform are outside the study’s scope entirely.

Review state

This study has received internal source and production review only. It has not received independent review by a liturgical historian, a patristics specialist, a Latinist, or a sacramental theologian; it carries no imprimatur, nihil obstat, or ecclesiastical approval; and it is not an altar book, a ritual text, a critical edition, or a substitute for the liturgical books themselves.

Development and Edition Timeline

The following orientation table bounds the study’s historical range. It records only events for which this study consulted a source, and it says which. It is navigational apparatus, not an argument; the substantive history is in the movements.

Two absences from this table are deliberate. The working history of the Consilium is not tabulated, because this study consulted no source for it beyond the promulgating acts themselves, and a chronology assembled from secondary summaries would misrepresent the evidence actually in hand. And the discipline governing the 1962 Missal from 1984 onward is omitted entirely: it is a distinct canonical question, it changes, and nothing in this study depends on it.

References

Liturgical books

• Missale Romanum, editio typica tertia (Civitas Vaticana: Typis Vaticanis, 2002), consulted in the registered secondary digital reproduction (restricted; SHA-256 0b458944…; 828 pages). Re-acquired publication-locally on 2026-07-25 and found byte-identical to the registered artifact. Pages inspected for this study: the front matter carrying the Latin constitution Missale Romanum and the decrees; the Institutio Generalis entire; and the Ordo Missae nn. 1–146 with the following solemn blessings. Not the printed altar book; claims are bounded to the inspected pages and to unambiguous readings.

• Missale Romanum, editio typica tertia, reimpressio emendata (Civitas Vaticana, 2008). No exact artifact obtained; the 2008 state is controlled by the two Notitiae records below.

• Missale Romanum, editio typica (Civitas Vaticana: Typis Polyglottis Vaticanis, 1962), consulted in the registered facsimile (remote; SHA-256 648fdb8f…). Canon pages read at rendered page images on 2026-07-25; the chalice narrative and consecratory form at printed p. 307 (marginal nn. 1103–1105) newly registered as a verified passage.

• Institutio Generalis Missalis Romani, Latin text of the third typical edition, in the same reproduction.

• General Instruction of the Roman Missal, United States English state emended through 2021, Chapter II (nn. 27–90), usccb.org, read 2026-07-25 (new source record). Chapters III and IV were not obtainable from the same host during this review; no claim rests on them.

• The Roman Missal, Third Edition, for use in the Dioceses of the United States of America (2011). Under copyright; not reproduced. Cited by locus and described only.

• Ordo lectionum Missae, editio typica altera (1981). Identified as the Missal’s own authority at IGMR 56, 57, and 61; not examined for this study, and its text is nowhere reproduced.

Acts governing the rite and its translation

• Second Vatican Council, Sacrosanctum Concilium (4 December 1963), official English web text, vatican.va, re-fetched 2026-07-25 byte-identical to the registered artifact; arts. 7, 14, 47, 50–53 consulted. The promulgated Latin (AAS 56 [1964] 97–138) is authoritative and was not collated.

• Paul VI, apostolic constitution Missale Romanum (3 April 1969), Latin as reprinted at the head of the third typical edition, read 2026-07-25 in the registered reproduction (registered passage).

• Congregation for Divine Worship and the Discipline of the Sacraments, instruction Liturgiam authenticam (28 March 2001, published 7 May 2001), official English web text, vatican.va, read 2026-07-25 (new source record); nn. 8, 20, 25, 27, 43, 51, 53, 56, 57, 64, 74, 131, 133 consulted. The promulgated Latin is in AAS 93 (2001) 685–726 and was not consulted.

• Congregation for Divine Worship and the Discipline of the Sacraments, circular letter Prot. N. 467/05/L (17 October 2006) on the vernacular rendering of pro multis, Notitiae 42 (2006) 441–443, official Dicastery PDF (restricted; SHA-256 942aacc0…; 126 pages), read at artifact pages 57–59 on 2026-07-25 (new source records: edition, artifact, work, segment, passage).

• Congregation for Divine Worship and the Discipline of the Sacraments, notice Reimpressio emendata “Missalis Romani” and Variationes et additiones in reimpressione emendata “Missalis Romani”, editionis typicae tertiae, Notitiae 44 (2008) 367–387, official Dicastery PDF (restricted; SHA-256 74c8d174…), read publication-locally 2026-07-25 at artifact pages 49–69; the Ordo Missae and Appendix subsections and the Supplementum dismissals newly registered as a verified passage.

• Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, declaration on the sense to be attributed to the approval of vernacular versions of sacramental formulas (25 January 1974), AAS 66 (1974) 661. Cited only as the 2006 circular letter cites it; not independently examined.

• Decree N. 652/08/L (8 June 2008) approving the three changes for the emended reprint. Cited as recited in the 2008 Notitiae notice; the decree itself, published in the previous issue at pp. 175–176, was not examined.

Ancient and patristic witnesses

• Justin Martyr, First Apology 65–67, in The Ante-Nicene Fathers, vol. 1 (Buffalo: Christian Literature Publishing, 1887), Dods–Reith translation; registered edition with facsimile and OCR witnesses. Chapter 67 used for the second-century Roman sequence.

• The church order conventionally called Traditio apostolica, Latin of the Verona palimpsest, in Edmund Hauler, Didascaliae apostolorum fragmenta Veronensia Latina (Leipzig: Teubner, 1900), pp. 106–107; page images read 2026-07-25 (new source records: work, edition, two artifacts, two verified passages). Authorship, date, place, and redactional unity of the underlying work are disputed; no attribution to Hippolytus is made here.

• Ambrose of Milan (or the author of De sacramentis), De sacramentis IV, 5, 21–23 and IV, 6, 26–27, in Patrologiae cursus completus, series Latina, tomus XVI (Parisiis: apud Garnier Fratres et J.-P. Migne successores, 1880), coll. 462–464; page images read 2026-07-25 (new source records: work, edition, two artifacts, two verified passages). The Maurist apparatus on those columns records the variant readings noted in this study.

Cited but not examined

• John Paul II, Vicesimus quintus annus (4 December 1988) n. 13, AAS 81 (1989) 910; cited only as IGMR 57 cites it.

• Sacred Congregation of Rites, instruction Inter Oecumenici (26 September 1964) and instruction Eucharisticum mysterium (25 May 1967); Sacred Congregation for the Sacraments, instruction Immensae caritatis (29 January 1973); Sacred Congregation for the Sacraments and Divine Worship, instruction Inaestimabile donum (3 April 1980). All cited only as the General Instruction’s own authorities at the numbers quoted.

• Anaphora of St Basil, in any recension. Named as the best-known representative of the Antiochene type; no edition was examined and no verbal claim is made.

Last revised (UTC): 2026-07-26T03:14:06Z

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