Picking up on the Church’s guidance of the liturgy, Pope Pius XII stresses that a proper understanding of the liturgy factors in both the objective, external reality and the internal, subjective reception of that reality. The Sacraments give grace. That is an objective fact. But receiving that grace requires a person to be properly disposed. He quotes St. Paul’s letter to the Corinthians about examining ourselves before receiving communion, lest we eat and drink damnation on ourselves. The salvation offered by the sacraments “requires a serious interior effort on our part.” At the same time, any interior effort that simply did not make use of the sacraments would be “sterile, and deserve to be condemned.” So, the Church also provides guidance on proper forms of private devotion, mostly in the form of providing a proper understanding of faith and devotion through teaching what has been handed on to us by the Apostles. This is the reason for the Church’s guidance on penance and fasting and various forms of private prayer like the rosary, stations of the cross, and a variety of other practices. It’s also why the Church strictly requires priests and other ministers to practice private prayer on a regular basis.
At this point, the pope turns to explaining the hierarchy of the Church as it applies to liturgy and the sacraments. The priesthood was given to the apostles, which enabled them to represent Christ to the people and to represent the people to God. This priesthood is not a human invention and it does not come from the voting of the community or from biological inheritance. It is a divine commission handed on through sacramental laying on of hands and one that is only given to designated men. As a sacrament, Holy Orders gives grace like all the sacraments, but it also imparts an “indelible character” – a permanent spiritual change – that marks the man’s conformity to Jesus Christ the Priest and gives them the power to preform official acts of the Church, especially the sacraments. Just as Baptism sets someone apart from the unbaptized, so Holy Orders sets a man apart from the rest of the baptized. This is done precisely for the sake of setting that man at the service of the baptized, particularly through preaching and the sacraments.
Pius XII then brings up a concept we’ve seen before – “lex orandi, lex credendi” – which means “the law of prayer is the law of faith.” This concept is used to emphasize the close connection between doctrine and worship, between what we believe and how we pray. The act of worshipping God is often a source for theological study. At the same time, it means that the specific forms of worship must align with the teachings of the Church. The pope then gives examples of how, over time, a deeper understanding of certain doctrines gradually influenced changes in the form of the liturgy. A great example of this is the way that devotion to Mary increased over time as we deepened our understanding of the connection between her and her Son. After giving several examples, he stresses once again that “the Sovereign Pontiff [the pope] alone enjoys the right to recognize and establish any practice touching the worship of God, to introduce and approve new rites, as also to modify those he judges to require modification.” This teaching is something repeated in councils, by other popes, and is something in our current canon law of the Church. If you remember back to when we talked about doctrine and Church authority, this kind of continuous teaching from the official channels of the Church is a good sign that it is an authoritative teaching.
It is helpful to remember this teaching in particular if you ever find yourself in an argument about what the Mass is supposed to look like and what changes were or were not “legitimate.” According to the Church, the pope has the authority to change the liturgy and to determine who else gets to make certain changes in certain circumstances. Obviously, just as the Pope cannot suddenly declare Jesus is not God, neither can he suddenly get rid of the Eucharist at Mass, but he does have the authority to change many aspects of how Mass is celebrated. Even back in 1947, Pope Pius XII talked about the Church’s ability to change Mass from Latin to the “mother tongue” if she so desired. It was not to be done by individual priests, but only with the approval of the Apostolic See (the pope’s authority). Obviously, that did happen a few decades later.
Pope Pius XII even points out that being older isn’t always better and that people cannot just “restore” older rituals simply because they want to. He encourages a reverence for old and new and, again, deference to the Church rather than private judgment. From there, he encourages scholars to study liturgy so they can help the Church discern how to formulate liturgy in the best way for the flourishing of faith. We’ll pick up next time with more focus on the Mass itself.
Thank you Father Albert. The “Authority” of the church is at times very misunderstood. Much can be learned through these writings. I pray you continue to offer this to us.