Full Text of Dr. Kwasniewski’s Talk on the Superiority of the Old Lectionary over the New

The following lecture, sponsored by the Coalition for Canceled Priests, was given at Velocity All Sports in Mokena, Illinois, on March 7, 2022. The video also includes an extensive Q&A.—PAK 

Mythbusting: Why the TLM’s Lectionary Is Superior to the New Lectionary

Peter A. Kwasniewski

While almost every other aspect of the liturgical reform following Vatican II has been the target of serious and sustained criticism, the revamped multi-year lectionary is the one element consistently put forward as a notable success, an instance of genuine progress. A popular Catholic author writes: 

In Defense of Preserving Readings in Latin

In light of Pope Francis’s frivolous and offensive remark about how doing the readings at Mass in Latin would be “like laughing at the Word of God,” it seemed opportune to republish here at Rorate an article first published eight years ago in The Latin Mass magazine (Summer 2013), with slight revisions. Although my thinking on all of these points has developed and deepened, it has done so in precisely the same direction. Those who, moreover, think that Francis’s July 16 motu proprio requires replacing Latin readings with vernacular ones should read two articles that argue the contrary, here and here.—PAK

In Defense of Preserving Readings in Latin

Peter A. Kwasniewski

When the Yearly Biblical Readings of Immemorial Tradition Were Cast Away

To commemorate the 50th anniversary of the revised Lectionary, promulgated with the decree Ordo Lectionum of May 25, 1969, Rorate has obtained permission from Bloomsbury to post the full text (slightly revised), albeit without its 59 detailed footnotes, of Dr. Kwasniewski's contribution to Sacra Liturgia 2015 in New York City, which was published in the proceedings, Liturgy in the Twenty-First Century: Contemporary Issues and Perspectives, ed. Alcuin Reid (London/New York: Bloomsbury T&T Clark, 2016), 287–320. (See here for a book review.) The publisher is offering a 35% discount on the book if you purchase it from their website using the code REID35 at checkout. Offer ends July 31, 2019.

A Systematic Critique of the New Lectionary, On the Occasion of Its Fiftieth Anniversary

Peter Kwasniewski

Not Just More Scripture, But Different Scripture — Comparing the Old and New Lectionaries

The following study was completed in March 2016 and subsequently published as the Foreword to Matthew Hazell's remarkable reference work "Index Lectionum: A Comparative Table of Readings for the Ordinary and Extraordinary Forms of the Roman Rite." The passage of time under the reign of Pope Francis has meanwhile witnessed the welcome development of a large number of Catholics of good will beginning to wake up to the magnitude of the rupture effected by the liturgical reform. Because not everyone has this volume or expects to have it, I've been encouraged to share the Foreword with a wider audience. Nevertheless, I encourage serious students of liturgy to purchase the Index Lectionum itself, because it is a formidable research tool.

Not Just More Scripture, But Different Scripture

by Peter A. Kwasniewski

As Matthew Hazell notes in his “Introduction and User’s Guide” below, this Index Lectionum may be used by any student of the Roman Rite, whether in its classical form or its modern form, who wishes to see exactly how the books, chapters, and verses of Sacred Scripture end up being utilized (or not utilized) in the readings given at Mass. For that function alone, this volume is a tool of obvious and immense value. But this Index also facilitates, in fact for the first time, fruitful scholarly comparisons between the old and new lectionaries. In this foreword, I will outline the kind of results that such comparisons yield, in the hopes that others, too, will be inspired to take up this important research.

A Case Study of Rupture in the Lex Orandi: The Epistles of Lenten Sundays

One of the most striking areas of rupture and discontinuity between the traditional Latin Mass and the Mass of Paul VI is to be found in the passages of Scripture read on Sundays. The annual cycle of the old Missal, embodying the practice of well over a millennium, puts before the Christian people year after year essential truths of the spiritual life and fundamentals of morality to which we must always return. The three-year cycle of the new Mass, an unprecedented novelty against the backdrop of all historic liturgical rites, brings in a greater quantity and variety of texts but, as a result, diffuses the impact and substance of the message.

It is as if the canvas on which the painting is being executed is so large and the subjects so numerous that one cannot quite make out what the painting is of. There is not enough “useful repetition” to allow the words to sink in deeply and remain in the heart, rather than passing in one ear and out the other. As a friend of mine likes to say, education involves cutting the groove many times until a lasting mark is left. The enormous contrast between the two is appreciated perhaps only by those who have regularly attended both forms of the Roman Rite over a long stretch of time.

Basking in the glow of Epiphany: The wedding feast at Cana

In the giant new lectionary, poster-child of the liturgical reform, we find very strange things if we take pains to scratch beneath the surface. One of the most surprising, to me, was the discovery that the passage from the second chapter of the Gospel of St. John about the wedding feast at Cana—among the most picturesque, moving, and theologically profound passages in all the Gospels—is read only once every three years in the Novus Ordo (in “Year C”). In contrast, it is read every year in the old Mass, on the Second Sunday after Epiphany, where it has appeared for centuries without interruption.