Pre-'55 vs. '62 vs. '69: A Holy Week Comparison

[00:00:17] The 20th century saw a lot of changes to the catholic liturgy, none more so than during Holy Week. What changes were made? Why were they made, and did they help Catholics enter more deeply into Holy Week? That's what we're going to talk about today on Cris Point. Hello, I'm Eric. Sam is your host, nanner in chief of Crisis magazine. Before we get started, as always, want to encourage you to smash that like, button. Subscribe to the channel. Don't bother hitting the notify button, the notify bell, because you don't want your phone telling you what to do, but subscribe. That way, when you do log in on your own volition, you will know that we have a new video up. I appreciate when you do that. Also, you can follow us on social media at Crisis mag. You can subscribe to our email newsletter. Just go crisismagazine.com. Put in your email address. It's like around the middle of the page or so, and you'll get an email from us once a day in the morning with our two articles for the day. Okay, so it's Holy Week right now. I'm recording this live on March 26, 2024. It's a Tuesday of Holy Week. And of course, Holy Week is by far the greatest week of the year for the church. I mean, there's no week that even comes close in importance in solemnity, because this is the week we celebrate when our lord saved us the events that led up to Palm Sunday, Holy Thursday, Good Friday, Holy Saturday, the Easter. I mean, this is it. This is what we live for. This is what we die for. As St. Paul said, if Christ did not rise from the dead, our faith is in vain. And likewise, if he did not die for us, we'd be mired in our sins this day. So Holy Week is this great liturgical week. It actually is called great week. I think it's still called that in the east. They call it the great fast. But St. John Chrysostom in the early church called it great week because it was so important. [00:02:13] But what's interesting is if you were a Roman Latin right Catholic 100 years ago, how you celebrated Holy week would be very different from how most latin right Catholics celebrate today. [00:02:28] And that's an interesting point. Now, of course, a lot of us know. I mean, I think we're all aware that there were major changes made to the liturgy after Vatican two, and that culminated in the Novus Ordo missile that was promulgated in 1969. But what a lot of people don't know is that actually changes were made to the liturgy. Somewhat significant even before Vatican II, particularly in the 1950s under Pope Pius XI. [00:02:56] And this was all part of what was called the liturgical movement in the church. This was a massive movement in the 20th century in the Catholic Church. It also spanned other churches, other denomination churches as well. But in the catholic church in the west, there was a liturgical movement that really took off. I mean, it predated us a little bit, but like 1930s, 1940s, what's interesting about it, at least in my studies of liturgical movement, is that it was mostly at first confined to academics. It's not like there was a deep wellspring of desire to reform the liturgy among the laity, or even among most bishops and priest. I think if you polled most Catholics, bishops, priest laity in, like 1930, for example, in America, in Europe, I don't think you'd find very many who were, like, thinking, oh, we need to change the liturgy. We need to change how the masses celebrate in any significant way. But this was something that was happening among academics, among theologians, that there was this desire to make change, and the general thrust of it was, and this is going to be very simplistic. I can't really go into all the details, but the general thrust of these changes were to simplify the liturgy, to remove a lot of the accretions that they felt were added on over the centuries, and to return the liturgy to what they believed was more in tune with and more like the early church liturgies. [00:04:33] And there was also an eastern flavor to this, like this idea in the west that the way the east does liturgy is a little bit superior in some ways. Although what's interesting is that they wanted to imitate the east in some ways, but completely went against the whole ethos of the east in other ways. Like, the idea of simplification is not part of the eastern liturgy. I mean, go to a divine liturgy, St. John Chrysostom, something, you get repetitious prayers, you get a lot of overindulgence in so many ways, which I think is beautiful. But there was this kind of. These were the ideas of the liturgy. Now, I think a lot of study has been done on this, and there was a lot of flawed assumptions. I think in a lot of the liturgical reformers dating before Vatican II, some of the presupposition suppositions, they had that somehow if something was added in the Middle Ages, it needed to be removed. [00:05:29] But of course, we don't do that with theology. I mean, there's a lot of ways in which we developed and deepened our theology in the Middle Ages, we don't just remove it because it came later than the early church. Also, I think there was this anequarianism, which is similar to what I was just saying, that there was this idea that, okay, if something happened in the early church, we want to transport that from the early church to today. [00:05:51] But that's a flawed presupposition as well, because the liturgy does develop organically over time, and it fits the times in which people live, not in a committee style way, but in an organic way. So I think that is another issue that happened there. But ultimately, though, I would argue some might disagree with this, I would argue that the liturgical reformers on a whole, in the Catholic Church, had good intentions. They felt that modern man, the liturgy, was not speaking to modern man. [00:06:25] Now, why they thought that, it's hard to say. I mean, a lot of it was some of a movement against St. Thomas Aquinas and scholasticism, and they saw the liturgy as part of that. So, like I said, I'm not going to litigate that right now. But this was the general sense among many theologians and academics that the church needed to revise and reform her liturgies. And so by the 1950s, this had become a significant movement that got a lot of support at the highest levels of the church, all the way up to Pius XI, Pope Pius XI. [00:07:06] And so what we see is there was actually. Okay, let me take a step back and try to explain the layout here of these changes. Most people today, most Catholics, actually, most Catholics probably aren't even aware that the liturgy was changed in 1969. But I think most informed Catholics know that the liturgy had massive changes made to it. 1969, the Novus Ordo mass, and that. So they kind of think of two different masses, the TLM, which is like the 1962 missile, and then the Novus Ordo, the 1969 missile. But of course, it's more complicated than that, because what happened was there were major changes made, of course, in 1969, but there were also significant changes in 1955 made under Pius XI. And a lot of things happened in 1955 beyond just the Holy Week. Holy Week. Liturgies were changed a lot in 1955, but also there were changes. For example, before 1955, there were a billion and one octaves throughout the liturgical year. And that's approximately right, a billion and one, maybe a little bit less. There were a lot of octaves. There were different types of octaves. Well, one example is Christmas, of course, was an octave, but also St. Stephen the next day was an octave. St. John the evangelist the next day was an octave. So you literally had three octaves overlapping each other. And the church never thought anything of this, didn't think that was a problem. Just like, okay, they have different priorities and the way you pray them in the office and that the liturgy affect things. But the point is, you just had all these octaves. Well, most of those octaves were dropped in 1955, and then more of the octaves were dropped in 1969. [00:08:45] There were also a lot of little changes that happened to the liturgy. Here's just one example. I think people who have attended the traditional latin mass know about the last gospel and how it's always the prologue of St. John, the first passage of St. John, well before 1955. That was the case most of the time. However, if you had a situation in which you had some feast day trumping another feast day, like, for example, St. Joseph, which happened last week, was during Lent. And so what would happen is that St. Joseph, of course, would get the priority. It would be the mass, the gospels for the main gospels for the feast of St. Joseph. But then, however, the last gospel would actually be the gospel for that day's Linton Faria, the gospel for the day. It wouldn't be the gospel of St. John, the prologue to the Gospel of St. John. But then what they did was they made it. So it was always the prologue of St. John, no matter what, after 55. And then, of course, in 1969, they just dropped the last gospel completely. [00:09:59] But throughout the 50s, there was actually little minor changes here and there. But like I said, 1955, there were this massive one, the Holy Week, to the octaves and other aspects of the liturgy. I'm not going to get into all the details. I'm actually linked to an article in the show, notes from one Peter, five from last year. That kind of goes into a lot of the changes. At least the Holy Week changes. What I want to do is I want to talk about, though, the Holy Week changes in particular, and I want to compare the three before 1955, the 1962 missile and the 1969 missile. Now, I call it the 1962 missile, but of course, it really went into effect in 1955. There were a few changes made. I call it 1962 because that's what people who attend the traditional mass are mostly familiar with. For example, the Society of St. Pius X uses 1962 missile. The fraternity of St. Peter uses a 1962 missile. The Institute of Christ the King uses a 1962 missile. That was kind of when the changes that happened in 1955 and a few other afterwards were kind of formalized into this missile. And then, of course, that was thrown out in 1969. So we have three major groupings again, there's little details. I'm not going to get into how it goes beyond this, but there's the pre 55, the 1962 missile, which incorporates the changes of 55, and then the 1969 missile, which is what most catholic parishes use today, the novus ordo. Okay, so first of all, let me give some. I'm going to specifically talk about Holy Week. What were the changes made? And at the end, I'm going to talk about kind of my view on this. Like, were they good changes, were they bad changes? What do I think of all this? [00:11:37] First of all, just some general principles of how the changes were made. Almost without exception, the changes went from more ceremonies to less ceremonies, more elaborate to less elaborate. So you see, before 1955 was the most ceremonial, the most elaborate. 1962 was less so than pre 55, and in 1969 was even less so than 1962. You see this definitely a change. You also see the prayers. Now, in general, the prayers from pre 55 to 62 did not change, but a number of them were dropped in the Holy Week ceremonies. And that's what I'm talking about from now on, just the Holy Week ceremonies. A lot of the prayers that you find in the pre 55 Holy Week ceremonies are dropped in 62. And then, of course, they're radically changed in the 1969 myth. I'll give an example from Palm Sunday here in a minute. And I think we know, maybe you don't know, I've talked about it before, how the prayers were changed pretty significantly from 1962 to 1969 throughout the year, but also in Holy Week. If you want more details on that, I would just suggest watching mass of the ages, episode two. It goes into that. There's obviously websites that talk about, too, but that's kind of where that documentary goes into it a lot. [00:12:57] These were kind of the changes made. Now, I want to make something clear. [00:13:02] The church people made these changes because they believed, church officials, church leaders believed that it made the celebration of the mass superior to how it was celebrated before. [00:13:18] They believe, at least for modern man, at least for today, they believe this would be better. This was superior to the old way. That's always why liturgical changes are made. I say that because sometimes people get upset if somebody says, oh, I think the traditional mass is superior to novus ordo or vice versa. [00:13:35] But that's okay to have that opinion. It's okay to think that one right of the church, the novice ordo, is superior to the trinus mass or vice versa, or pre 55 is superior. Nine, six, two. It's okay to have that opinion. [00:13:50] You're not saying anything against the church. You're not saying anything against the Holy Spirit or anything like that. Because while we believe the Holy Spirit does lead the church, we also believe that man has free will. And so these prudential decisions on how exactly the mass will be celebrated are prudential decisions that could be better or worse. [00:14:14] And so it's not saying when we say one is better than the other, it's our opinion. We're not saying we don't believe in the power of the Holy Spirit. We don't believe the Holy Spirit is leading the church, because ultimately I do believe the Holy Spirit would not lead the church to promulgate universally an invalid mass. One of the reasons I don't believe the novus order is invalid. I mean, there's a lot of reasons. I think that, but that's one. I don't think the Holy Spirit would lead that. I think if you believe the novice ordo, for example, is invalid, you have rejected the Holy Spirit leading the Catholic Church. That being said, you can think that, oh, it was a bad decision. You can think the 1955, the pre 55 is better than 1962. All these things are valid to believe as Catholics. [00:14:58] So I kind of wanted to mention that this does not touch validity. So what I first want to do is let me go through some of the major changes made in the three different time periods to the different liturgies of Holy Week. First is Palm Sunday. Okay, so Palm Sunday, this one. [00:15:20] The ceremonies before mass were radically changed, radically reduced, radically simplified from pre 55 to 1962. [00:15:34] For example, in the blessing of the palms, that happened before Mass in both 55 and 62. In the pre 55, there were six solemn prayers said to bless and consecrate, basically the palms. In 1962, one prayer. [00:15:56] 1969, again, one prayer. But that prayer was further simplified from the 1962 prayer. So, for example, the 1962 prayer says, excuse me. Bless, we beseech thee, O Lord, these branches of palm or olive or other trees, and grant that what thy people today bodily perform for thy honor, they may perfect spiritually with the utmost devotion by gaining the victory over the enemy and ardently loving every work of mercy. That's a pretty powerful prayer, talking about gaining victory over the enemy, ardently loving every work of mercy. [00:16:33] And this was one of the prayers in 1955, and it was the only one maintained for 1962, but then it was changed again in 1969. Now the prayer is almighty, ever living God. Sanctify these branches with your blessing, that we who follow Jesus, who follow Christ the king in exaltation, may reach eternal Jerusalem through him who lives and reigns forever and ever. [00:16:59] So that prayer is a lot more simplified and really reduced in meaning from the 1962 prayer. And the 1962 prayer is just one of the six that were said pre 55. So what we see there, immediately, right out of the gates of Holy Week, we see them a massive change to what happens in the liturgy. [00:17:21] And really, the whole ceremony before Mass, before Palm Sunday mass that was in the pre 55 liturgy, was almost a mass unto itself. It was almost like a dry mass, the way it was structured. There's even the Santos Santos in it. [00:17:37] And then there's a procession, a pretty elaborate procession in the pre 55, and it involves part of some of the members procession going outside of church. They close the door, and there's actually a sung responses between the people inside and the people outside. And then when that's over, the person holding the cross, the subdeacon, I think, is what would be in a solemn mass. They actually take the staff of that and they hit and they knock on the door to be let in. There's all this symbolism I encourage you to look into. I'm not going to go into it in detail here, but there's all this symbolism in all these meanings. Well, that was dropped in 62, and of course, it doesn't exist in 69 either. [00:18:23] Now, the mass itself in Palm Sunday isn't that much change between pre 55 and 62. And really, isn't that radically changed, other than just the normal changes that were made in the mass? [00:18:37] Okay, when I talk about the changes made between 62 and 69, we know there's major changes, but I'm just saying, like, specifically for Holy Week, that goes kind of, that's different in that aspect. Another thing that's interesting is that in the pre 55, you wear purple. The vestments. The vestments are purple, but in the 62 and 69, they're red. And that's very interesting because, and I think in the, if I remember correctly, oh, I'm forgetting this one. I didn't write it down. I should have. [00:19:10] In the pre 55, you keep the crucifix that's held in procession, you keep it covered. You know how in passion tide you cover all the statues, crucifixes, things like that? You keep it covered. I know in 69 you do not cover it. And I think in 62, you don't cover it either. [00:19:28] So there's different reasons for this, why these things were done and then they were dropped or they were changed. So we see already in Palm Sunday, there were some significant changes, mostly to before the mass itself started. The blessing of the palms and the procession were much more elaborate, much more ceremonial, a lot more powerful prayers, too. We talk about how the prayers changed, and frankly, they got weakened between 62 and 69. But we also see that here between pre 55 and 62, we see a simplification. That's the word they use. But in a lot of ways, it was an elimination, a diminishment of the prayers, which I think there's. Because there's debate on. When you say something is simplified, what you're saying is you're taking out things that aren't necessary and only keeping what's necessary. [00:20:20] But is that true? I think that's a debatable point, that the liturgical movement, which said it was for simplification or to focus on what's essential and not have these extras that distract us from what's essential. But is that what actually happened? [00:20:38] Are we less distracted, more focused on Christ now and on the paschal mystery because of the changes? Did that actually happen? I think that's open for a massive debate. [00:20:49] Okay, so moving on from Palm Sunday, the Monday liturgy isn't really changed at all between pre 55 and 62. Obviously, the changes we all know about between 62 and 69, Tuesday and Wednesday, though there was one major difference, and that is the Tuesday and Wednesday liturgies, masses. In both pre 55 and 62, the passion was read. Now here comes in kind of the changes to the readings that happened. [00:21:19] I think we all know in the novus ordo, you have a cycle for Sunday readings. You have a cycle of three years. And so what happened was on Palm Sunday, when the passion is read, one year you read for now what happens? You read one year from Matthew, the next year for Mark, next year for Luke, and you rotate that over three years. In the 62 and priest 55, you always read from Matthew's passion on Palm Sunday, always Matthew, because there's only a one year cycle on Tuesday and Wednesday. Then on Tuesday, you read in everything 62. And before you read from Mark's gospel. I just heard that today when I went to mass this morning, the passion from Mark's gospel. And then on Wednesday, you read from Luke's passion. And then, of course, Good Friday, you have John's. But in the 1969 in Nova Sordo, you read the rotation, one a year over a three year cycle in Palm Sunday. And then you don't read the passion on Tuesday and Wednesday. So there are some. Every year you only read from two different passions. You read from either Matthew, Mark or Luke on Sunday, and then John on Friday. In the old, both 62 and pre 55, you read all four passions at mass every single year on Sunday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Friday. So that, I think was a significant change in the case of after the 1969 missile, the novice Ordo mass. But like I said, that's not changed between 62 and pre 55. I think. Here's an example of. Is that really simplification just to eliminate the reading of the passion on two of the days of the week? How is that really a simplification? How is that getting more focused, more deepening our appreciation of the mysteries? It's just hard to really justify that as a simplification that is deepening our appreciation of what's happening this week, to just drop them, because really what it comes across as, and a lot of the changes, frankly, come across like this is just, let's make it easier. Let's just make it easier for the priests to celebrate, make it easier for the laypeople to sit through. [00:23:32] A pre 55 palm Sunday can last two and a half hours. [00:23:36] A 1962 Palm Sunday liturgy can last hour and a half to up to 2 hours. Maybe a 1969 Nova torto Palm Sunday, probably an hour and a half at most. [00:23:48] So, I mean, is it that we believe that modern man can't sit through these longer liturgies? That's what it kind of comes across like. [00:23:58] But again, Holy Week is the grayest week of the year. This is when we should go all out in our ceremonies. So if we can't spend a little extra time during Holy Week, when can we? I'm already getting into my opinion of these things. I know I was going to say I was going to leave that at the end, but I just couldn't help but the idea of dropping the passion accounts from the Tuesday and Wednesday like they did in the Nova Sordo. I have a hard time wondering how it really is a simplification that helps people. [00:24:29] Okay, so now let's move on to Thursday. Monday, Thursday, Holy Thursday. There are no major changes between the pre 55 and 62, other than the fact that before 1955, the washing of feet was a separate ceremony. It was not part of the mass. You did not do it after the homily like you do in both 62 and 55 and 69. It was said outside of the mass, and it was done outside of the sanctuary. Then in the 1955 reforms that were in place in 1962, it would come after the homily and could be in the sanctuary. Now. It was optional. You could still have it outside the ceremony and outside the sanctuary, but you were allowed to, and it was, I think, encouraged to have it during mass between the homily right after the homily in the sanctuary. And of course, we know in the novus Ordo that's when it is. You wouldn't have it if you didn't have it right after the homily. It's not really an option to have it outside of the mass. So that's the only real change, again, major change between the two. And honestly, I remember when I first became Catholic, it did strike me as OD, doing the washing the feet during the liturgy, during the mass. I thought this was OD, that you would just, like, trope up twelve men. Of course, then it became twelve lady men and women, and they take their shoes off and their socks off, and the priests would wash their feet up at the sanctuary. [00:26:00] But I don't have a strong opinion about putting it into the liturgy. It just seems to be one of those things where it's like, people thought this was cool to do, but didn't really serve a great purpose. [00:26:12] I don't see it really serving the purpose of what they kind of intend to be, which is, okay, let's see about holy Thursday and the Washington feet, how important that is. That is an important act of our Lord. Every act our Lord took was important, but I'm not really going to argue about that one. Okay. [00:26:31] And the last thing that was done, another thing about the holy Thursday was the stripping of the altars was a much more liturgical act that was kind of done right after mass in pre 55 and 62, whereas now often what will happen is it'll be done outside of, like, after everybody's left. And it's not really done liturgically. It's just more of a practical matter. Okay. We need to strip the altar for Good Friday, and it just is done at some point afterwards. I think some churches, even though sort of churches do in a more liturgical manner, but it wasn't necessary to do that. Whereas beforehand it was, and I forgot. Okay, I need to bring up something now. We're at Monday Thursday on Holy Thursday, the time of day in which the mass is said. That was a major change from pre 55 to 62, and then really 69 kept the same time as 62. So what happened was, okay, first of all, we have to remember, before 55, there was what's called the midnight fast. You could not eat anything if you want to receive communion that day. You could not eat anything after midnight that day until you received communion. So if mass was at 07:00 in the morning, you didn't have to fast very long. If mass was at noon, you had to wait until after the noon mass before you ate for the first time that day. [00:27:52] So because of this, and for a lot of other reasons, the liturgy were always in the morning. There was no such thing as an evening mass. The only mass that was said not in the morning was the midnight mass of Christmas. So what would happen is you had masses. The holy Thursday, Good Friday, and Holy Saturday Easter vigil were all said in the morning, or at least early. So I want to give an example here. I found, this is in this article I found at one Peter five from last year. This is an example from 1943 at a mass at a church, I'm sorry, at parish in St. Louis. St. Louis in Missouri. [00:28:38] The Palm Sunday high Mass was at 06:30 a.m. [00:28:42] The Holy Thursday distribution of communion was at 06:15 a.m. And the high Mass was at 08:30 a.m. So Holy Thursday Mass was at 08:30 a.m. The Good Friday mass of the presanctified was at 08:00 a.m. [00:28:59] And the Holy Saturday Services Easter vigil was at 07:00 a.m. [00:29:05] And so what we see here is, and this wasn't like the only place that did this, you had these masses early. Some of it was practical, because if you have a midnight fast and you have a mass at 10:00 p.m., like the Easter vigil starts at 10:00 p.m. You're not out of that until, let's say, 01:00 a.m. You haven't eaten since Friday evening, and you're supposed to fast on Friday, too. [00:29:28] And so really it was just a practical matter. Have that mass early on, on holy Saturday and you can eat afterwards. Now, that's not the only reason. This actually goes back pretty far, that you started a lot of times, masses were mass, times were being bumped up earlier and earlier over the centuries until we see this, where you have literally the holy Saturday masses at 07:00 a.m. The Easter vigils at 07:00 a.m. On Saturday. [00:29:54] And so what we see is that this was all changed from pre 55 to 1962. [00:30:03] And part of it was the fact that now there was a three hour fast before mass before we see in communion. And of course that was dropped later to 1 hour. But if there's a three hour fast, well, if you have a 10:00 p.m. [00:30:17] Easter vigil, just stop being by 07:00 p.m. That's not a big deal. [00:30:23] Same with you. Have a good Friday service at 03:00 p.m. It's okay. You can just eat at noon and you're still okay. [00:30:30] And same with, of course, the holy Thursday. If it's at 06:30 p.m. For example, it's not a big deal to eat at 3 hours before that, or even like it is today, an hour before that. So the times a day were changed, and some of it was practically because of fast. Some was just because historically they had gotten earlier and earlier for various reasons. Now, when it comes to the time of day, that one's okay. I'm just going to be honest. I like it the way it is now. I like it being in the evening on holy Thursday, in the afternoon on Good Friday, and evening for the Easter vigil. I think it reflects more truly what happened, because obviously the holy Thursday, the last Supper happened in the evening on Thursday, Good Friday. The death of our Lord happened in the afternoon on Good Friday. [00:31:21] And the resurrection, celebrating resurrection happened after dark on Saturday evening, Sunday morning. So having the masses at those liturgical services during those times, I think, reflects better, and I do think that helps us more deeply into those mysteries. So I do think that was a good change, in my opinion. [00:31:44] I'm not a big fan of change for change sake, but I do understand those changes made. And of course, though it does mean the midnight fast also was dropped. And so I'm not as much a fan of that, I'll be honest. It's kind of a conflicting views of my own. I admit that. On one hand, I think that it's good to have these masses in the evening. On the other hand, I don't think we should. [00:32:06] I think a midnight fast is probably a good idea, but I think you could do something where you have a midnight fast throughout the year. But on, like holy Thursday and on Holy Saturday, you have a three hour fast or something like that. There's no reason why you couldn't do that. Okay, now let's move on to Good Friday, though. So, Good Friday, most of the major changes that were made to the Holy Week services in 1955 happened to the Good Friday liturgy, and also then to the 1969, the time of day. Of course, we already mentioned it was before noon or earlier before 55, usually around 03:00 p.m. [00:32:44] In 1962, and then 03:00 p.m. As well in 1969. Another thing was in pre 55, you had black vestments throughout the liturgy. We don't even use black vestments anymore in most Nova Zoro parishes, but you had black vestments for the whole liturgy in 1962, it's this confusing mix where you start off with some black stole, some black vestments, then you go to purple later. It's actually a little bit confusing. And then it's red vestments in 1969. [00:33:11] And I do think the red vestments are a mistake, because I know red vestments represent blood and the martyrs, but really, our Lord, he's not really a martyr. I mean, he died for us. [00:33:24] Martyrs die for him. And so I think the purple and the black are actually more fitting. Particularly the black, frankly, because it's a day of mourning. It's a day our Lord died. And so having those black vestments to represent that death, I think, is very powerful. [00:33:40] The other thing that occurs is that the passion account is the same. That's the same. [00:33:48] Now, the solemn prayers that happen after the gospel, where you have the prayers that are said for the church, for the pope, for the world, for the Jews, for the pagans, for all that, those prayers, those intercessions are said at the good Friday, that was changed, of course, significantly. First of all, what's interesting is that the prayers from 52 to, I'm sorry, 55 to 62 didn't really change that much. I'm going to get into the prayers for the Jews in a second, because that's a different category. They basically stayed the same. But in 1969, they radically changed them. [00:34:34] I said all the prayers, all the colocs have been changed, but they really did change them greatly in the Good Friday service, the liturgy in 1969. And most of it was just toning it down. Like, for example, in the old prayers, you'd pray for schismatics, for heretics, for pagans. Those words were dropped as being politically incorrect. I guess you no longer prayed for those specific. Those words you say, pray for those outside the church or those who don't believe in God or something like that. Instead of using the words pagans and heretics, schismatics. I mean, I personally think that I like the old terms because they remind us that these people need to be evangelized. When you soften that language and say things like those who don't believe in God or those who are outside of church, it doesn't have that power of, okay, these are people that we need to pray. We really need to pray for. We need to actively work towards their conversion to Catholicism. When you call somebody a heretic or schismatic or something like that, when you're praying for that, it just has more power, more pop. Now, the big change, of course, was the prayer for the Jews. And this one has, frankly a somewhat confusing history. I'm going to pull it up on the screen. I don't know if you can see it, but I have four different prayers. I think there's even more than this. You have the pre 55 prayer for the Jews. You have the prayer for the Jews from 55 to 1959 when it was changed again, and then from 59 to 1970, 1969 changes, and then the present. I think it was even changed again in 2008. The point is that this prayer changed a lot. And the main thing that happened was, first pre 55 would say, let's pray for the faithless Jews, that almighty God may remove the veil from their hearts. And then it keeps that after 55 to faithless Jews. And then though in 1959, Pope John the 23rd did drop the word faithless, I'm doing English, not the Latin here obviously says, let us also pray for the Jews, that almighty God may remove the veil from the heart. So they dropped the word faithless from the prayer. So that was one change that happened. [00:36:45] But then, of course, in 1969, the prayer was changed completely. It said, let us pray for the jewish people and the first to hear the word of God, that they may continue to grow in the love of his name and faithfulness to his covenant. This is a radical departure from what was prayed before. Before it was clear that the prayer was for their conversion, that the Jews would convert and acknowledge Jesus Christ as Lord. This was what it was for. Now it does not actually explicitly pray for their conversion to Catholicism. In fact, it's not even clear. It's praying for them to change. It says for them to continue to grow in love with his name and faithfulness to his covenant. Now you could argue, okay, well, faithfulness to his covenant would mean accepting the new covenant. I get that, but it's not in the prayer itself. So we see here a major change in how it was prayed. And I think this is a okay, so there's two changes that happen. One is we dropped the word faithless. We kind of dropped that strong language, but we still prayed for them to convert. And then we dropped the prayer for them to convert. [00:37:51] Personally, I think the first change I'm okay with, because I do think anti semitism has existed in the past. So I don't have a big problem with removing the term faithless before the Jews. I don't have a problem with that because I don't know if it serves a real purpose to have it there. But I do think the prayer changing it where we're not explicitly praying for their conversion to Christ, to the catholic faith. I think that was a major mistake. I think that was a major mistake because it really changed how we mean, Lex Credende. It changed what we believe that so many Catholics believe now that jewish people don't need to convert Catholicism, and likewise with non Jews that aren't catholic too. Muslims, Buddhists, Protestants, doesn't matter. We don't think they need to convert either. [00:38:41] And I think that comes in part from the prayers said mass, that they were changed and they really were weakened. This wasn't simplification here. This was weakening what the prayer was, it was making it from. Yes, we want these people, we love them, so we want them to become Catholic to, well, they're doing okay how they are. Let's give them a pat on the back. I mean, that's really how the change happened. [00:39:04] Okay. Also Good Friday. I know I'm going long here, but I think these are important topics. Also Good Friday. [00:39:11] That how the liturgy was looked upon. It was called a mass that pre sanctified before 1955. It really was looked upon as kind of a dry mass, had the structure of a mass, but it did not consecrate the bread and wine into the body and blood of our Lord Jesus Christ. And that was kind of reduced in 1962 to being kind of a communion service. And then, of course, that's what it is in 1969. [00:39:38] But another major change that I think people would notice the most is in pre 55, only the priest receives communion. The people did not receive communion. [00:39:49] Only the priest did. And in 1962, everybody received communion. And of course, in 1969, everybody receives communion. I think that's a major change, too. I think it's significant. There's a lot of symbolism to that because not being able to receive communion on Good Friday has a real power for it. I've been to a pre 55 Good Friday liturgy, by the way, so I have experienced this myself. It has a real power to it because all of a sudden our Lord, who is taken away from us, think about the disciples, John the evangelist, even the apostles who fled. Our Lord is taken away from them. They don't have the opportunity to be with him. Well, that's kind of what's happening here at Good Friday. If you don't receive communion, if you can't receive communion, even if you want to, our Lord is taken away. I think there's a powerful symbolism to that. There was a big movement, of course, Pius X was a big proponent of this, of frequent reception of communion. [00:40:47] And so this idea of taking it away that you couldn't receive if you want to at Good Friday? I think there's a power to that. I think it was a power that we need to bring back because receiving communion has become so casual today, so much like that's the only reason you go to reason you go to mass. And of course, there's no association with going to confession beforehand, things of that nature anymore. I think making it so nobody received communion at Good Friday would be a powerful reminder of what's happening, what we are celebrating, what we are remembering on Good Friday. Okay, so now let's move on to the Easter vigil again. The time Easter vigil pre 55 was in the morning for 1960, 219 69 is in the evening again. That's one I think is a good change. Personally, there were far more prayers in the pre 55 than there are in the 62. And of course, in 1969, the readings that were interesting, in pre 55, there were twelve prophecies, Old Testament readings, then an epistle and the Gospel. [00:41:50] In the 1962, there was only four Old Testament readings, then, epistle and the Gospel. So in the pre 55, there's 14 total. In 1962, there's six total. But then I will say in 1969, those sort of actually bumped up the readings again. It did make a lot of them optional. So in a lot of places it doesn't happen. But there are nine readings total. There are seven Old Testament and then an epistle and a gospel, and you can cut out some of the Old Testament readings. So that's just a difference that I think is interesting. I like the idea of a lot of readings that is a very ancient practice, because what's beautiful about the readings at the Easter vigil is it's going through salvation history. You see this in the mass today, in the Novus ordo liturgy. I think it does a very good job of this. You also see it in pre 55, and they're called prophecies because what's saying is the Old Testament is prophesying. It's telling us our Lord is coming. This is what he's going to be like. We missed it. We didn't understand it completely, but now we can now, in the light of faith, in the light of his resurrection, we now see it. And so you really go through this salvation history during the Easter liturgy, which I think is the Easter vigil liturgy, which I think is very important. So I think that's very good. [00:43:10] So that being said, there's other changes. Of course, I'm getting going long here, so I'm going to kind of cut off the changes that were made at this point. But I hope you can tell that the changes between before 1955, before 62 and 1969 were significant in Holy Week. Very significant. [00:43:33] What are my thoughts about this? [00:43:36] I'd been attending the traditional at mass for quite some time when I first heard about the 55, the pre 55. And I kind of thought, guys, come on, let's just stick with 62. What's the point of going to pre 55? Because people are saying, oh, we got to go back to pre 55. That was even better. Yeah, I'm just fighting to do 62. I mean, I'm not going to go back to that. In fact, the society of St. Pius X takes that as kind of their view as well. These changes were legitimately done in a sense that, and they don't harm the faith or there are no problems with them, really. So we're just going to do 62. [00:44:08] But there's been a movement among traditionalists to kind of reinstate the pre 55. And as somebody who's actually participated in the pre 55, I understand that point. I think what the real issue is, it's not that the changes that were made in 1955 are terrible or just awful. [00:44:29] I think what it is more, it reflected some bad presuppositions, and that is a tinkering with the liturgy. Like I said at the beginning, the liturgy is meant to be changed organically over time. [00:44:46] If you look at Pierre Kwazineski has explained this in one of his books, he's got so many, I can't keep track of them anymore. Very well, that you see that changes in the liturgy were pretty significant for the first 600 years of the church's history, until Gregory the Great. They tapered off, leading into 600, but then they basically became solidified. And it's like, okay, now we understand what we want to do here with the liturgy, with the mass, and we're not going to make very many changes. And so from 600 until the middle of the 20th century, you see very few changes. You do see changes. Not saying there aren't any, but they're very organic and very slow. [00:45:29] Then all of a sudden in 1950s, it started accelerating, and there was this idea that, oh, we think we can do it better. We think we need to make these changes. [00:45:40] Like I said, I'm not saying all the changes were bad. [00:45:43] I'm just saying that the idea that this is how the liturgy should be changed, I think, is the problem. And part of this, I do think, is the spirit of Vatican one, that the pope can change anything and should change. We just have to go along with it no matter what. I think that was part and parcel of this, that, hey, we want to change this. Let's just convince the pope and we can change it. And that's exactly what happened. So I think that the concern among many is that it set a bad precedent. It set a precedent that you can make these changes to the liturgy, you can tinker with it. And then once that was established, it's like the government. [00:46:20] A lot of times I'll oppose something that the government wants to do, not because the change itself is that bad, but I know what it will lead to. I know it will lead to worse changes. Because once the government establishes a precedent, they can do this. This is why. Okay, this is going to put you off topic. I'm going to probably distract people. Why I'm opposed to the government banning TikTok, because I think it's not that TikTok isn't evil. It is. It's that if the government bans TikTok, that is then their foot in the door to say, okay, now we can control even more. So what Facebook does, what Twitter does and things like that. It's the same principle here. Okay. Yes, the changes made in 1955, they might not have been that bad. Some of them might even say were good, but it put the foot in the door so that in the 1960s, nobody could argue against changes being made from a top down type of way, a committee type of way, because it had already been done. So this is a case where let's not blame Vatican two people trans. Who want to blame Vatican two for everything. You don't have a leg to stand on this. This isn't a Vatican II issue. This happened before Vatican II and the city of acostas who say that Pope Pius XI was the last valid pope. Well, it was under Pius XI this happened. [00:47:35] And so I think what happened was we see a mistake in the way in which the changes happened, the kind of presuppositions. And that is what led to changes that I think were far more drastic and far more imprudent and really hurt our participation in these sacred mysteries. [00:47:55] Okay. So I think I'm going to kind of cut it off there. I think it's very clear what I think on this, but I think it's a good lesson for us who aren't necessarily familiar with all these changes to kind of see how this happened. Again. I'm going to have a link in the show notes to a one Peter five article from last year that talks specifically about the differences between the pre 55 and the 62 Holy Week liturgies. I think that's good. I think for the changes between 62 and 69, like I said, watch Mass of the ages, episode two. Really for that, for the changes overall. But I think, really, my prayer is that the church would recognize kind of what the liturgy is and how we are to treat it. It's not something to be tinkered with. It's not something to be changed by committees. It's really something to be passed on from generation to generation with almost no changes whatsoever. And that really is what we should get back to is that attitude about it. Okay, well, that's it for now. Until next time, everybody. God, love.