“The latest direction of liturgical action, never expressed to such an extent in the outer forms, is the same for the priest and for the people: towards the Lord”. The introduction of the dean of the Sacred College to the book of Uwe Michael Lang
by cardinal Joseph Ratzinger
To the ordinary churchgoer, the two most obvious effects of the
liturgical reform of the Second Vatican Council seem to be the
The Incipit of the Canon taken from the Ambrosian Missal (end XI-beginning XII century), Ambrosian Library, Milan
To the ordinary churchgoer, the two most obvious effects of the
liturgical reform of the Second Vatican Council seem to be the disappearance of
Latin and the turning of the altars towards the people. Those who read the
relevant texts will be astonished to learn that neither is in fact found in the
decrees of the Council. The use of the vernacular is certainly permitted,
especially for the Liturgy of the Word; but the preceding general rule of the
Council text says, ‘Particular law remaining in force, the use of the Latin
language is to be preserved in the Latin rites’ (Sacrosanctum Concilium, 36.1). There is nothing in the Council
text about turning altars towards the people; that point is raised only in
post-conciliar instructions. The most important directive is found in paragraph
262 of the Institutio Generalis Missalis Romani, the General Instruction of the new Roman Missal,
issued in 1969. That says, ‘It is better for the main altar to be constructed
away from the wall so that one can easily walk around the altar and celebrate
facing the people (versus populum).’ The General Instruction of the Missal issued in
2002 retained this text unaltered except for the addition of the subordinate
clause, ‘which is desirable wherever possible’. This was taken in many quarters
as hardening the 1969 text to mean that there was now a general obligation to
set up altars facing the people ‘wherever possible’. This interpretation,
however, was rejected by the Congregation for Divine Worship on 25 September
2000, when it declared that the word ‘expedit’ (‘is desirable’) did not imply an obligation but
only made a suggestion. The physical orientation, the Congregation says, must
be distinguished from the spiritual. Even if a priest celebrates versus
populum, he should always
be oriented versus Deum per Iesum Christum (towards God through Jesus Christ). Rites, signs,
symbols and words can never exhaust the inner reality of the mystery of
salvation. For this reason the Congregation warns against one-sided and rigid
positions in this debate. This is an important clarification. It
sheds light on what is relative in the external symbolic forms of the liturgy
and resists the fanaticisms that, unfortunately, have not been uncommon in the
controversies of the last forty years. At the same time it highlights the
internal direction of liturgical action, which can never be expressed in its
totality by external forms. This internal direction is the same for priest and
people, towards the Lord – towards the Father through Christ in the Holy Spirit.
The Congregation’s response should thus make for a new, more relaxed
discussion, in which we can search for the best ways of putting into practice
the mystery of salvation. The quest is to be achieved not by condemning one
another, but by carefully listening to each other and, even more importantly,
listening to the internal guidance of the liturgy itself. The labelling of
positions as ‘preconciliar’, ‘reactionary’ and ‘conservative’ or as
‘progressive’ and ‘alien to the faith’ achieves nothing; what is needed is a
new mutual openness in the search for the best realisation of the memorial of
Christ.
Gradual of the Chapter of Santa Maria Maggiore, XVI century, Basilica of Santa Maria Maggiore, Rome
This small book by Uwe Michael Lang, a
member of the London Oratory, studies the direction of liturgical prayer from a
historical, theological and pastoral point of view. At a propitious moment, as
it seems to me, this book resumes a debate that, despite appearances to the
contrary, has never really gone away, not even after the Second Vatican
Council. The Innsbruck liturgist Josef Andreas Jungmann, one of the architects
of the Council’s Constitution on the Sacred Liturgy, was from the very
beginning resolutely opposed to the polemical catchphrase that previously the
priest celebrated ‘with his back to the people’; he emphasised that what was at
issue was not the priest turning away from the people, but, on the contrary,
his facing the same direction as the people. The Liturgy of the Word has the
character of proclamation and dialogue, to which address and response can
rightly belong. But in the Liturgy of the Eucharist the priest leads the people
in prayer and is turned, together with the people, towards the Lord. For this
reason, Jungmann argued, the common direction of priest and people is
intrinsically fitting and proper to the liturgical action. Louis Bouyer (like
Jungmann, one of the Council’s leading liturgists) and Klaus Gamber have each
in his own way taken up the same question. Despite their great reputation, they
were unable to make their voices heard at first, so strong was the tendency to
stress the communality of the liturgical celebration and to regard therefore
the face-to-face position of priest and people as absolutely necessary. More recently the atmosphere has become
more relaxed so that it is possible to raise the kind of questions asked by Jungmann,
Bouyer and Gamber without at once being suspected of anti-conciliar sentiments.
Historical research has made the controversy less partisan, and among the
faithful there is an increasing sense of the problems inherent in an
arrangement that hardly shows the liturgy to be open to the things that are
above and to the world to come. In this situation, Uwe Michael Lang’s
delightfully objective and wholly unpolemical book is a valuable guide. Without
claiming to offer major new insights, he carefully presents the results of
recent research and provides the material necessary for making an informed
judgment. The book is especially valuable in showing the contribution made by
the Church of England to this question and in giving, also, due consideration to
the part played by the Oxford Movement in the nineteenth century (in which the
conversion of John Henry Newman matured). It is from such historical evidence
that the author elicits the theological answers that he proposes, and I hope
that the book, the work of a young scholar, will help the struggle – necessary
in every generation – for the right understanding and worthy celebration of the
sacred liturgy. I wish the book a wide and attentive readership. The text of Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger printed in
these pages, unpublished in Italy, is the preface which the prefect of the
Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faithwrote for Uwe Michael Lang’s book Conversi ad Dominum. Zu
Gechichte und Theologie der christlichen Gebetsrichtung, published last year in Switzerland by
Johannes Verlag in Einsiedeln. The English version of the book(Turning towards the Lord:
Orientation in Liturgical Prayer) is coming out with the Ignatius Press publishing house of San
Francisco (USA), which holds the copyright of the book. Uwe Michael Lang is a member of the
Oratory of Saint Filippo Neri in London, studied theology in Vienna and Oxford,
and has published numerous texts on patristic subjects.
