Modern liturgists may claim that these changes bring us closer to the way the first Christians worshipped. This is true, but as I have pointed out the early Christians worshipped in the way they did, using a table, for example, because they were a persecuted minority forbidden to build places of worship. Once the persecution ended, they built church which were a fitting setting for the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass which was offered in an increasingly elaborate rite inspired by the desire to render the greatest possible glory to God, to whom all honour is due. The way one worships in a time of persecution can not be considered the norm for a time of freedom.

The theory that the older a liturgical practice the better it is was condemned unequivocally by Pope Pius XII, the greatest and most erudite Pontiff of this century, who possessed an unrivalled knowledge of the principles of sound liturgy. In his encyclical Mediator Dei, published in 1947, he wrote:

The liturgy of early ages is worthy of veneration; but an ancient custom is not to be considered better, either in itself or in relation to later times and circumstances, just because it has the flavour of antiquity...The desire to restore everything indiscriminately to its ancient condition is neither wise nor praiseworthy.. It would be wrong, example, to want the altar restored to its ancient form of table; to want black eliminated from liturgical colours, and pictures and statues eliminated from our churches; to require crucifixes that do not represent the bitter sufferings of the divine Redeemer (66, p. 30))...this attitude is an attempt to revive the "archaeologism" to which the pseudo-synod of Pistoia (1794) gave rise; it seeks also to re-introduce the many pernicious errors which led to that synod and resulted from it, and which the Church in her capacity of watchful guardian of "the deposit of faith" entrusted to her by her divine Founder has rightly condemned. It is a wicked movement, that tends to paralyse the sanctifying and salutary action by which the liturgy leads the children of adoption on the path to their heavenly Father (paragraphs 65-68).

© 1997 Michael Davies.

Last modified 27th October, 1997, by David Joyce.