A history of changes in the Holy Mass since the Council of Trent

Hello all.

I was inspired recently on this very topic in question, because it seems like, within trad Catholic world, just like in the real world and your level of "wokeness", there's always somebody more "trad" than you are.

I go to the TLM using the 1962 Missal. 

But our TLM uses the 1955 Missal.

Yeah, but to avoid the real changes to the Mass, our community uses the 1945 Missal.

And so on and so forth.

As I've said before, I'm a Burkean.  I accept that change must occur.  But it must be slow; the effects must be observed and evaluated over time; and the initial reason for the change must be significant and overwhelming.  Some things may become necessary to change.  But let's not make a habit of it.

So why the Council of Trent?

Well, it did codify, in the modern age, what being a Catholic is and what the Catholic Church is.  (On a side point, when debating someone on Twitter, that bastion of demonic activity, I was told that to be Catholic was to be an Ultramontanist, which got me thinking - if this has a determitive dogmatic belief, why didn't 240 Popes before Pius IX proclaim it?  Why wasn't it proclaimed at the Council of Trent, when it seemed quite appropriate if true?  Curious...)

So lets start with the Council of Trent and move forward to Vatican II (no need to address those changes and assumed changes.  We've all suffered those for almost 50 years.)

The documents of the Council of Trent are signed and effective in 1570.

Next adjustment - by Pope Clement VIII in July, 1604 in a brief called Cum Sanctissimum.  I took a quick read of the document (you can read it yourself here ) and basically, there was a quality control problem with printers printing the text and documents for Holy Mass and Pope Clement wanted a Vatican printer to print all the documents consistently correct for the Church to use for Holy Mass rather than rely on printers everywhere to do it where things could become inconsistent and he imposed certain penalties for printers who printed these documents without permission.  So in essence, no changes to the Mass.  Just quality control procedures.

Next - Urban VIII in September, 1634 in a brief called Si Quid Est. I took a quick read of this one also (you can read it yourself here ) and it's essentially the same thing as in 1604.  Mistakes were being made that were becoming standardized within the Missal and Pope Urban, like Pope Clement, implemented a strategy to make sure that the Missal is printed correctly according to the Council of Trent for use around the world. 

In summary, up to this point, there have been no "changes" to the Holy Mass since Trent, but only acknowledgements that unauthorized alterations were entering into the Holy Mass and needed to be fixed.

From that point, it's very hard to find ANYTHING regarding a change or adjustment to the Holy Mass (if these two examples can even classify as that till we get to 1906.  St. Pius X, in the Vatican Gradual, contains restored forms of the chants offered by the celebrant during Holy Mass (which again, can be classified as simply a reversion back to the appropriate Trentian text.)

However, at this point is when things seem to get complicated (I have even come across comments that the Missal approved by Leo XIII varies from Trent.  I am in no position at this time to confirm this.)  Pope Pius X made adjustments to the Missal, specifically addressing feast days that were falling on Sundays.  As anyone who has been to a Holy Mass on a feast day, that Saint is the focal point rather than the readings or Gospel for that day.  Obviously, on Sundays, this could get problematic, so it appears that Pius X would rather have you focus on Christ than on a certain saint on Sundays.  But I'm not an expert.

I will not comment further on any other adjustments to the Missal, the liturgical changes for Holy Week by Pius XII in 1955, the Missal of John XIII in 1962 or beyond to our current day. 

But I wanted to put this starting point together to highlight one key point - there was significant continuity from the Council of Trent till we got to the current age.  There was no "movement" or "adjustments" to the Mass for centuries.  So one cannot short change the significance of the liturgical changes the last hundred years.  It has been unlike anything else the Church has ever gone through and one that, in my opinion, should be judged with suspicion as I do from my typical Burkean perspective.

Thank you and God bless.