Rev. Ralph Wiltgen: The Rhine Flows Into the Tiber: A History of Vatican II

[Stone]

THE SECOND SESSION
September 29 to December 4, 1963

THE MECHANICS OF THE LITURGICAL COMMISSION

In the latter half of November and early December 1962, toward the end of the first session, the Liturgical Commission presented a revised introduction and lengthy first chapter of its schema to the plenary Council assembly for twenty-eight separate votes. Contrary to general expectations, there was very little opposition. The largest number of negative votes on a single ballot was 150. The average number of negative votes was forty. And when a vote was taken on the chapter as a whole, on December 7, only eleven of the 2018 Council Fathers cast negative votes.

Some credited this near-unanimous acceptance to the close attention that the Liturgical Commission had given to the observations made by Council Fathers during the debate. Moreover, before submitting the drafts to a vote, the Liturgical Commission had presented an exhaustive printed report filling five booklets to each of the Council Fathers explaining in detail what it had done, and why.

Elated at this reaction, the Liturgical Commission revised the text of the remaining chapters of the schema, and gathered in Rome for a working session starting April 23, 1963. Each subcommission had to report to the full Commission on the work it had done, and the full Commission then examined the proposed changes line by line and word by word.

I asked one of the members of the Liturgical Commission, Archbishop Paul Hallinan of Atlanta, Georgia, who was in Rome for the meeting, if he would give a press conference on the procedure used by the Commission in conducting its business. He agreed readily, and met the press on May 7 in the Columbus Hotel.

“What I should like especially to point out,” he said, “is the careful consideration given by the Liturgical Commission to each statement made by the Council Fathers last fall. We examined each of the statements, and divided them roughly into four categories.” The first category included “proposals already covered by the schema itself, or by previous amendments to the schema.” The second covered “proposals which our Liturgical Commission has passed on to other commissions where the matter in question is treated more directly.” The third covered proposals which the Commission considered too detailed, “and these have been referred to a post-conciliar commission to be set up after the Council ends.” The fourth and final category included “all real amendments to the liturgy schema, and these are what we have processed in our subcommission and Commission meetings.”

Archbishop Hallinan then explained the functioning of the Liturgical Commission and its subcommissions. The discussion on the liturgy in the Council hall had extended from October 22 to November 13, 1962, and during that time each Council Father had been free to present whatever proposals or observations he wished. He could do so either orally or in writing. “This material filled some ten mimeographed volumes, and ran to nearly a thousand pages,” the Archbishop said. The proposals on the Sacrifice of the Mass alone filled nearly 250 pages.

Throughout the session, the Commission had met daily. As soon as a Council Father had spoken in the Council hall, the General Secretariat would forward the text of his address to the Liturgical Commission. “Basically, the processing of proposals was the same last fall as during this current session of the Liturgical Commission,” the Archbishop said.

Each of the thirteen subcommissions included both Council Fathers and periti. After a particular subcommission had examined the Council proposals for which it was responsible, it would formulate the corresponding amendments and draw up a report explaining why they had been so formulated. “This report was then read before a full session of the Liturgical Commission, and all Commission members, as well as the periti, took part in the discussion that followed.” Archbishop Hallinan was chairman of the Subcommission on the Sacraments, and said that his first report and the accompanying discussion had lasted two and a half days. But after the Subcommission had revised the text once again, the next report and discussion took only a half hour.

At the time of the press conference, the Liturgical Commission had already been in session for two full weeks. “All discussions regarding the amendments proposed by Council Fathers on the Mass, the Sacraments, and the Divine Office have now been completed,” said Archbishop Hallinan. “This week we are voting on the final form of the amendments which are to be presented to the Council Fathers for their vote in September.” Once the Council Fathers accepted the amendments, as well as the individual chapters, by the required two-thirds majority, “all that remains is a final, formal vote taken in the presence of the Holy Father in a public meeting. Then, with the assent of the Holy Father, the constitution on the Sacred Liturgy will be promulgated and will become law for the entire Catholic Church. At this point, the Liturgical Commission of the Second Vatican Council will have com¬
pleted its work.”

The Archbishop maintained that there was “very good reason for the optimism and the confidence that has accompanied this three-week period on the part of all the members of the Commission. ... In the first place, we have been assured by Cardinal Larraona that the Holy Father himself is very pleased with the work of the Liturgical Commission. In an audience about three weeks ago, he expressed his confidence that the work done by the Liturgical Commission and the Council Fathers was a real step toward the aggiornamento. This naturally is a cause of confidence and satisfaction to us all.”

He then referred to the “very democratic style” in which Arcadio Cardinal Larraona, President of the Liturgical Commission, conducted its meetings. His policy of giving everyone at all times full opportunity to speak freely and develop his own thinking had had its effect. The Commission members had instructed one another. “You cannot help but learn from men who are in totally different environments — in Africa, behind the Iron Curtain, in Latin America, and elsewhere. It is certainly true to conclude,” he went on, “that this Commission has worked in a truly conciliar way. It has been international, it has been open, it has been free, and it has certainly consisted of a group of dedicated men.”

Archbishop Hallinan said that the optimism of the members of the Liturgical Commission had also been caused in large part by the enthusiasm that the Council Fathers themselves had shown in the closing days of the Council, when they voted “with almost unanimity on behalf of the renewal — the aggiornamento. And now this has carried over. You could feel it in the working of the Commission.”

Some thirty to forty periti had been assigned to the Commission. “These men,” said the Archbishop, “represent probably the finest minds in the liturgical world today in terms of research, in terms of hard work, in terms of zeal, in terms of experimentation and everything else. They come from all different continents. And to have this group here was just like having a library shelf with the best liturgical books in the world. Only these were not the books; these were the authors. It was a very remarkable privilege to have these men here.”

Father Frederick McManus, a professor of canon law at the Catholic University of America, and long associated with the liturgical movement in the United States, sat beside the Archbishop during the press conference. The Archbishop introduced him to the press as ‘'our American peritus in this field, one of the outstanding liturgists in the United States, a man who has the confidence of the bishops and of the laity in the very fast growing movement within the United States toward the liturgical revival.”