Missale Romanum at Fifty… plus one

A good friend pointed out to me that my post yesterday on the fiftieth anniversary of the promulgation of the Novus Ordo Missae was a little darker than perhaps I intended. This is a fair comment.

I may have been in a slightly grumpy mood yesterday. Even five years ago, the idea of a “new liturgical movement” to restore the dignity and solemnity and majesty of the Mass to the modern celebration of the Ordinary Form was supported in many places. In the past few years, I’ve seen that support wane as those favouring a more casual and people-centric celebration have dug in their heels.

If the face of this, many people I know who have supported the movement has decided that the fight is too exhausting, or too frustrating, or too damaging to their spiritual health, and they’ve simply embraced the Extraordinary Form. It doesn’t help, I suppose, that some folks I know have been literally told to go there by their pastors because they “have what you’re looking for”.

There’s nothing wrong with embracing the Extraordinary Form, of course. But surely beauty and tradition are not the sole preserve of the Extraordinary Form? Surely there is a place in the Church for those who meet the Lord Jesus in the Ordinary Form, celebrated with the full beauty of our Catholic traditions?

And yet, liturgical minimalism – in defiance of the rubrics and a stream of documents from Rome – seems to be retrenching. And this, this is the source of my frustration.

This liturgical minimalism – this idea that somehow the least we can do is not only good enough, but it’s actually the goal we should shoot for – that the minimum is the norm – just breaks my heart. You wouldn’t treat a parent or a spouse or anyone you love this way, just giving them the legal minimum of your effort and attention. So why, oh why would you treat Jesus this way, who is All Love?