The History of the Mass Explained

The History of the Mass Explained - Fr Charles Dilke, Published by CTS

I should start this review by revealing a few predispositions, or even prejudices.  Fr Dilke is a priest of the Brompton Oratory, and I have long felt that the Oratories are the best places to experience the Ordinary Form of the Mass.  So to that extent I approached this booklet hoping to be impressed.  I am also clearly one of the target-group for the booklet. In his preface, Fr Dilkes explains that the text stared life as a series of talks to members of the Catholic Evidence Guild on the subject of misgivings aroused by modern changes in the Roman Mass.  Whilst I am not a member of the Guild, I do have misgivings about the modern changes to the Roman Mass.

I should perhaps make it clear that I do not question the validity of the Ordinary Form, nor the right of the Holy See to legislate about the Mass.  I attend the Ordinary Form at least three times as often as the Extraordinary Form, but I prefer the EF.

Having said all that I found this a disappointing booklet.  In his introduction Fr Dilkes says he aims to 'give essential information and allow you to make your own assessment and appreciation.'  However, to me the book read more like a case for the defence, and a poor case at that.

In fairness, Fr Dilkes also says that he is not a liturgical scholar, only a student of history.  Nonetheless, and whilst recognising that the booklet originated as a series of talks, the fact that there are no references or footnotes to give one any clue of the origins of the many disputable claims Fr Dilkes makes in this text is a real weakness.

The booklet aims to chart the Growth of the Roman Rite, the Reform of the Roman rite (by which he means the Tridentine reform) and the modern changes.

The first section seems to me to be trying to prove that change has been the only constant in the Mass.  He states, for example, that for more than the first 300 years, Mass was celebrated without the Roman Canon, which 'was probably composed in more or less its present form in about 350 AD.'

Due to the lack of references it is hard to know on what he bases this assertion, but my instinctive response is to wonder whether he doesn't under-estimate the strength of Oral Tradition.  I think it at least arguable that priests learned and taught the Canon and that the codification c.350 recorded what was commonly done.

One could of course (if one were making the case for the prosecution) argue that a Canon that had either been handed on faithfully for 350 years, or had taken 350 years for the Church to develop and then served the Church virtually unchanged for 1600 years or so, should not be de facto replaced by several texts composed by committees in a few tumultuous years in the 1960s.  But that is not an avenue Fr Dilkes wants to explore.

Much of the historical detail that Fr Dilkes records is interesting indeed, but it all has that flavour: a gloss designed to legitimise the liturgical revolution of the 1960s.

That whole approach is one of the major flaws in the booklet, in my view.  There were others that really irritated me, as well...

Consider this 'We can see that the question of which way the priest faces could only be important when, as happened in the Renaissance period, all curtains, screens and whatever around the altar disappeared.  So this is, really, a new issue for the Church...'

This assumes that the priest's orientation is only relevant when the laity see it.  It betrays a narrowness of perspective that I find appalling, and is then used to assert that the whole issue of the priest's orientation is a new issue.  Ludicrous!

Another irritant is the omission in his survey of the changes, of the changes to the Offertory.  To me these are some of the most lamentable, but they don't even merit a mention.  Are they indefensible?

A further, and major, problem is the lack of any consideration or assessment of the impact of the changes.  Fr Dilkes presents the reasons for many of the changes (and the logic is impeccable, though I found myself reflecting that the logic of a madman often is too, as Chesterton pointed out...).  But he does not talk at all about whether those intentions were actualised in reality - again, is it because the case would crumble?

Finally, Fr Dilkes spends a lot of his energy on lamenting the clericalisation of the liturgy, and celebrating the greater involvement of the laity in the revised forms.  But this booklet felt to me like clericalism of the worst type;  'There, there, laity, don't worry: Father says it's ok, so it must be ok.'