Is the 1962/3 Office 'traditional'? Part I - Terms of the debate

Over the next few weeks I want to share some important new insights from recent research, as well as some of my own work, that I think throws new light on some contested issues around the history of the Office.  

In this, I want to particularly draw on the evidence of the oldest antiphoner for the Benedictine Office, which dates from the ninth century, and which has only very recently become accessible to researchers.

Are the 1962 books 'traditional?!

Before I do that though, prompted by what seems like round 500 of an ongoing debate in other places, I've decided to put out now some material I've been pondering for a while over, that perhaps serves to help translate some findings that have thus far largely been discussed in a purely academic context, into debates on the current practices of the Divine Office.

In what follows, I'm going to focus primarily on the Benedictine Office, but I'll try and draw out the implications for the Roman books as well.

Before we move back a millennia and more though, I want to take brief look at the increasingly loud campaign that claims that the 1962/3 Office books and Mass are not actually traditional, and are irredeemably bad news.

Instead, the 'restore the 54' crowd would have us ditch the currently approved Office books, such as the 1963 Benedictine breviary, altogether, in favour of those for the 1950s, or depending on which particular sub-group you subscribe to, some earlier date.

Some of the claims made around this topic seem to be causing considerable confusion amongst many well-intentioned people, and so I think, are worth scrutinising.

Shadow-boxing

Some of the recent agitation, I think, has been incited by Traditiones Custodes, and the  understandable fear that its supporters will ultimately win the day altogether, and succeed in officially banning the older forms of the liturgy altogether.  Unsurprisingly then, many are looking for ways to legitimately narrow the scope of papal authority in this area, and using the 1962 books as a test platform for this.

In other cases the overreach involved in the arguments made in support of the reforms made after Vatican II seem to have provoked an overreaction in the opposite direction: instead of everything in the liturgy being 'adapted to the times', as some spirit of Vatican IIists would like, some are now arguing that nothing at all can ever be changed, for example.

In some cases, I suspect, what we are seeing is just human nature playing out. Some, for example, seem to suffer from 'complexity bias', the belief that the more complex you make something, the better it is.

Others seem to have fallen victim to that syndrome whereby when a resistance or reform group's patience is tried sorely for long enough, the temptation is to forget about the real war, and turn on each other instead, claiming that only the pure can bring about victory.  

Legitimate debate vs liturgical abuse

Regardless of the root causes of this push though, I think it is important to note that the Church has long made distinctions between legitimate debate, which is what I hope we can have here; legitimate resistance to institutional overreach (a good example of which is the longstanding push to force Benedictine monasteries abandon the provisions of the Rule relating to the Office); special, usually emergency situations that sometimes justify disobedience; and outright rejection of the Church's law and authority.

The Code of Canon Law makes it clear for example that it is perfectly legitimate for laypeople to debate questions such as whether there are flaws in the 1962 books, and whether they should therefore be amended, or even replaced by something else altogether; or to debate questions of what the limits of papal authority in relation to the liturgy might be. provided one has sufficient expertise to do so.

And though anyone who says the Office may be able to follow many of these debates, contributing to some of them often requires some degree of genuine expertise and training, as they involve complex questions of canon law, theology, history, musicology and/or liturgy. 

I'm not a great believer in credentialism as such (never forget those liturgists who disparaged Pope Benedict XVIs credentials in this area!), preferring to judge things on their merits.  But at least one recent book in my view, seems to me to fail even the most basic requirements in this regard.

The book, (whose name I will withhold for the moment), is written by an anonymous married layperson who claims no theological or canon law qualifications whatsoever; presents a set of convoluted arguments he has dreamed up that are directly at odds with the clear consensus of canonists who are prepared to go on record as well as by dubia responses; and on the basis of this, urges individual priests to set about implementing what amounts to outright liturgical abuse. 

I do plan on coming back to some of the arguments included in the book by various author as well as the main text itself, but in the meantime I would direct those advocating for it to the following posts by actual canonists:

• When does a custom have the force of law?
• What does it mean to abrogate or derogate from a law?
• Does a priest have obligation to say the Office under pain of mortal sin (1)?
• Does a priest have an obligation to say the Office under pain of mortal sin (2)

I would also recommend the clear treatment of the requirement to use the currently approved books in Beale's standard commentary on the Code. 

Obedience is a virtue

More fundamentally, what is not within the scope of legitimate debate, in my view, is to then act unilaterally to implement our personal theories.

It needs to be kept in mind, I think, that liturgy is ultimately something we receive, not decide on for ourselves: there is surely something to the old adage of 'say the black do the red' for example.

It is one thing, for example, to select an option from those officially approved; quite another to reject the officially approved books altogether without very strong reasons indeed. 

Priests and religious have more serious obligations in this regard, but even for laypeople who can arguably do whatever provided they choose to stick to purely devotional prayer, the Catholic, and particularly the Benedictine mindset, I think, should surely be to stive for obedience wherever possible, not look for ways to avoid it.

There are, of course, times when resistance or outright rejection of laws and particular liturgies is indeed warranted.

And there are also nuances in what constitutes legitimate variation, and who has the authority to authorise particular things.

But if an older book has been outright suppressed, as all of the Office books prior to the 1963 breviary have been; and if the traditional institutes and monasteries have long used the 1962 books, it is hard for me at least to see how refusing to accept them can be justified as an 'emergency'.  

Nor is it an argument in my view that 'everyone else is doing it' when it comes to liturgical 'innovation': we are all called, after all, to be saints, not join the throng going the other way!

Yet every day, it seems, a new book or blog post drops claiming that the forms of the Mass and Office accepted after due consideration by the original leaders of the traditionalist movement and their successors, and used now for many years should be rejected, or that this or that particular element of the Office and Mass cannot be changed by mere papal legislation (despite a very long history indeed of Popes doing just that).

Singing the Office in 525 and 2025…

Let me conclude this opening post by seeking to put the debate over the 1962 books in a longer perspective.

Part of the problem, I think, is that the debate has largely focused on the Roman books, whose place in tradition is rather harder to pin down than the Benedictine.

In these weeks after the Epiphany, for example, using the 1963 breviary (or the other books used for it, such as the Antiphonale of 1934, and the Monastic Diurnal) we are saying the same hours, with the same components that make up them, in the same order, as St Benedict laid out in his Rule dating from circa 510-30 AD. 

The contents of the Roman Office, it is true, were not documented until much later, and are ordered somewhat differently.  Some, such as hymns were added even later still. But it is clear the core elements of the Roman office too have ancient roots.

In the 1963 Office we are also saying exactly the same psalms and ferial canticles that St Benedict specified should be said at each hour of each day.  

When it comes to the psalms, it should be noted, the 1962 Roman Office, which has always had a somewhat different psalm ordering to the Benedictine, is in a slightly different situation - its ancient psalm cursus, which almost certainly dates back to at least the late sixth century, was suppressed in 1911.  Even so, it still follows the same basic principle of saying all of the psalms each week.

In the Benedictine Office too, we are singing ancient hymns that mostly date from the fourth to seventh centuries in their original form, with later additions for some feasts and saints.  And we have been spared the neo-classicised versions imposed on the Roman Office by Pope Urban VIII in 1632 that left barely a single line of these ancient gems intact. 

At Matins, we are reading the same books of the Bible that are laid out in an early to mid-eighth century reform of the ferial Matins reading cycle, with many of the same responsories that are recorded as being in use some 1100 years or more ago. 

So how can all this be ‘untraditional’? 

There seem to be two main camps (with some overlap between them) in this argument.

The first camp defends its position largely on the basis of changes to the 1962 books that unwind some high to late medieval practices, drawing primarily (and somewhat ironically in my view), on the liturgical scholarship of the twentieth century.  That scholarship, just as for the Mass, sought to find the elusive holy grail of the original, pure Roman Office, and claimed to find it in a set of manuscripts that mostly date from the twelfth century onwards. Recent scholarship though, has severely challenged or outright overturned many of those conclusions.

The second camp is rather more focused on recent history, and aimed at 'restoring the 54' in particular because, it seems, inter alia, they reject the views of the assorted popes (and/or those associated with them) who promulgated assorted liturgical 'reforms' from the late 1950s onwards.  But we should judge reforms on their merits in my view, and not on such arbitrary criteria.

But more on all this anon.