"quo Primum"

[cmotherofpirl]

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Q: "Quo Primum" is a papal bull decreed by Pope St. Pius V on July 14, 1570, which set in stone for all time the exactness of the holy sacrifice of the Mass to be said in the mother tongue of the Church. To quote his instruction: "[I]t shall be unlawful henceforth and forever throughout the Christian world to sing or to read Masses according to any formula other than that of this Missal published by Us; ..." Another: "… which shall have the force of law in perpetuity, We order and enjoin under pain of Our displeasure that nothing be added to Our newly published Missal, nothing omitted therefrom, and nothing whatsoever altered therein." Another: "In the case of those resident in other parts of the world it shall be excommunication 'latae sententiae' and all other penalties at Our discretion ..." Finally: "Should any person venture to do so, let him understand that he will incur the wrath of Almighty God and of the blessed Apostles Peter and Paul." In the light of the foregoing: 1) Can an ancient papal bull be amended, changed, modified, abrogated, etc., by future popes? If yes, then what are the conditions? 2) Is the Mass of Pope Paul VI licit and valid? -- A.D., Carindale, Australia

A: A papal bull (from "bolla," the leaden seal attached to the document) is a solemn instrument that popes use for various questions such as doctrinal decisions, canonizations, disciplinary questions, jubilees and the like. Only occasionally have they been used for the liturgy.

A bull's influence on later popes depends on the nature of its content and not the legal force of the document as such.

Thus a bull such as "Ineffabilis Deus" through which Blessed Pius IX defined the dogma of the Immaculate Conception in 1854 is a definitive and irreformable act.

Other bulls may contain a mixture of doctrinal and disciplinary matters. An example would be Pius IV's 1564 document "Dominici Gregis Custodiae" containing the rules for forbidding books, among which was the norm that reading a translation of the Old Testament was restricted to learned and pious men with permission from the bishop.

Such norms are evidently tied to the circumstances of time and place and may be adjusted, attenuated or abrogated by future popes as situations change.

St. Pius V's bull "Quo Primum" is above all a legal document although it also contains some doctrinal elements. As such it is not intended to be definitive in the same way as a doctrinal definition would be and would not bind St. Pius V himself or future popes if they decided to further fine-tune the missal.

The saintly Pope's concern was to ensure as much unity as possible for the liturgy in a time when such unity was sorely needed. Even so, the same bull contains a clause exempting any Church which had its own ordo more than 200 years old. Many local Churches could have availed of this concession but most preferred to adopt the new missal for practical reasons.

Some religious orders and some dioceses such as Lyon in France and Milan in Italy did opt to legitimately maintain their own rite. Thus expressions such as "it shall be unlawful henceforth and forever throughout the Christian world to sing or to read Masses according to any formula other than that of this Missal published by Us" cannot be interpreted in an absolutely literal sense.

Likewise, legal expressions such as "which shall have the force of law in perpetuity, We order and enjoin under pain of Our displeasure that nothing be added to Our newly published Missal, nothing omitted therefrom, and nothing whatsoever altered therein" cannot be literally interpreted as binding on possible later actions of Pope St. Pius V or upon his successors. The strictures fall only upon those who act without due authority.

If it were otherwise, then Pope St. Pius V would have excommunicated himself a couple of years after publishing "Quo Primum" when he added the feast of Our Lady of the Rosary to the missal following the Battle of Lepanto in 1571, not to mention Pope Clement XI who canonized Pius V in 1712, thus altering the missal.

Among the many other Popes who would have thus incurred "the wrath of Almighty God and of the blessed Apostles Peter and Paul" would have been St. Pius X for reforming the calendar, Pius XI who added the first new preface in centuries for the feast of Christ the King, Pius XII for completely revamping the rites of Holy Week as well as simplifying the rubrics, and Blessed John XXIII for adding St. Joseph's name to the Roman Canon.

Certainly, the reform undertaken under the Servant of God Pope Paul VI ranged more widely than anything done under earlier Popes since St. Pius V. But Paul VI acted with the same papal authority as all of them.

As the Roman proverb goes: "Popes die, the Pope never." Each individual pontiff -- saint or sinner though he be -- holds the same authority, granted by Christ, to bind and loose, forgive or retain, so that the Lord's flock may be fed through the centuries.

It is for this reason that, except in matters of faith and morals, a pope's disciplinary decrees in matters such as the non-essential elements of liturgical rites are never "set in stone" and can be changed by a subsequent Supreme Pontiff whenever he believes that the duty of feeding Christ's flock requires it.

Finally, the answer to the second question should be already clear, the so-called Mass of Paul VI is both valid and licit.

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Answered by Father Edward McNamara, professor of liturgy at the Regina Apostolorum university.

[heyyoimjohnny]

[quote]St. Pius V's bull "Quo Primum" is above all a legal document although it also contains some doctrinal elements. As such it is not intended to be definitive in the same way as a doctrinal definition would be and would not bind St. Pius V himself or future popes if they decided to further fine-tune the missal.[/quote]

I think if that point was developed and proven with citations & such, the argument would be twice as strong.

[phatcatholic]

also see these articles:
[url="http://www.ewtn.com/library/ANSWERS/QUOPIUS.HTM"]http://www.ewtn.com/library/ANSWERS/QUOPIUS.HTM[/url]
[url="http://www.cuf.org/Faithfacts/details_view.asp?ffID=185"]http://www.cuf.org/Faithfacts/details_view.asp?ffID=185[/url]

[son_of_angels]

Having read Quo Primum it is clear that, with equal authority as Paul VI promulgation of the New Mass, the Old Mass was established on the basis of Papal authority.

The main concern I have with the Western notion of liturgy is that anything, literally, anything, seems up for grabs, provided that it doesn't interfere with the validity of the rite itself. While I certainly agree that the Holy See, the supreme patriarchate of the West, has the task of pruning and enforcing the Holy Liturgy, it also seems that the West has left behind any concept of the Liturgy as a transmitter of tradition.

In other words, how the saints, how the ages, worshipped should be instructive to how we view worship today, and should not be constantly outmoded by a need for "updating" and "retranslation." If Thomas a'Kempis, St. Bernard, etc. were happy worshipping with Low Masses, said at barely a whisper, and with a Canon said secret tone, how are we to communicate with them if we have not experienced the same thing? It is these little customs that inspire saints to a higher glory, which are meant to be our lens for the action of the Holy Spirit in the Church. Perhaps if we put them away, or think of them as obsolete we suddenly find ourselves blind to the action of the Holy Spirit in the whole body of Christ, the sensus fidelium.

Quo Primum, by its very nature, recognizes the need to unify the many rites which existed prior, but it also recognizes the liturgical diversity which was a fruit of the different charisms of the Catholic Orders. It seems to me that, while the individual injunctions of Quo Primum may be modified in current law and practice, it's spirit should live on in the reform of the reform, as it were. We should, first of all, encourage the older Orders to return to their former rite, even forbidding the practice of other rites if necessary. We should unify the practice of the Novus Ordo and remove or modify many of the options presently available. We should make the most ancient parts of the rite correspond to their ancient and venerable rubrics, such as the Canon. We should respect the integrity and necessity of the Proper liturgical texts: Introit, Offertory, Communion, etc. We should limit the vernacular separation of the liturgies from one another by mandating the most ancient parts of the Mass to be in Latin. We should stress the importance of chanting those parts of the Mass traditionally sung in the Western Church. We should, as has been our custom, use terminology that corresponds to those used in the writings of the Latin authors. We should make sure that the antiphons, structure of the Psalter and Liturgy, and the content of the readings remain consist with that commented on in the sermons of our most important saints from the Medieval and early modern period.

Well that's my two cents, and a little more.