Jeg leser nå Thomas Kociks bok «The Reform of the Reform?», og der kom jeg over en samtale (store deler av boka er lagt opp som en samtale mellom to personer) om det var for å blidgjøre protestantene at katolikker etter konsilet ønsket å tone ned offeraspektet i messen. Jeg har selv alltid ment at det ikke kan ha vært en slik direkte forbindelse; at det må ha vært andre ting som har gjort at forandringene kom, forandringer som likevel i praksis har svekket katolikkers forståelse av at messen er et offer båret fram for Gud. Teksten under er fra s 58-61 i Kociks bok:
R.: It is unlikely that anyone preoccupied with transubstantiation would want to devise a rite acceptable to Protestants. Yet you allege that the new Mass was created precisely for that purpose.
T: You are missing the point. The Real Presence of the Lords Body and Blood under the species of bread and with the Eucharist as sacrament is but one dimension of the Eucharistic mystery. The Eucharist is first and foremost the sacrifice of the Cross, re-presented sacramentally on the altar. When this is forgotten or obscured, the Mass is viewed simply as a ceremony for producing the Blessed Sacrament, and not as the means that Christ gave us in order to unite ourselves with him in the very act by which he redeemed the world. I fear that this truth is simply unknown to marry, if not most, Catholics today:
Even among the older generations the indications are that any concept of the Mass as being offered is limited to the sense in which any act of worship or piety – for example a decade of the Rosary – can be offered for a certain intention. The fact that Christ our Mediator has given to His Church a perpetual means by which we can make our own effective offering of His sacrificial death through the ministry of the ordained priesthood is fast fading from consciousness.
In their ecumenical zeal, the architects of the new Mass muted the theology of sacrifice by decimating the Tridentine Offertory. Even your fellow reformist Father Brian Harrison seems to be of this opinion. What is more, the anomaly of offering Mass facing the people only makes matters worse: the Mass is made to appear as a commemorative meal at which the «presider» repeats a narrative for the people to hear. The congregation focuses unduly on the human celebrant and upon itself. The impression is given that the Mass is essentially the representation of the Last Supper, whereas in fact the Mass is the unbloody renewal of Calvary.
R.: I wholeheartedly concur with you that the practice of celebrating toward the people obscures not only the sacrificial but, as Cardinal Ratzinger has shown, is also the eschatological and cosmic dimensions of the Eucharist. Bur let us leave the question of orientation aside for now. You assert that the changes to the Offertory rite amount to a tacit denial of the sacrifice of the Mass in order to appeal to Protestants. I am not quite convinced of that. There is another way of accounting for the revised Offertory, which requires a brief historical review.
T: Please go on.
R.: During the late Middle Ages, the connection between the sacrifice of the Cross and the sacrifice of the Mass was largely misunderstood. Particular abuses further obscured a correct understanding of the Eucharistic sacrifice. For fear of undercutting the unique sacrifice of the Cross, the Protestant Reformers denied the sacrificial nature of the Mass and even went so far as to call the Mass idolatrous (Heidelberg Catechism) and abominable (Smalcaldian Articles). The Council of Trent clarified the relation between the Eucharistic sacrifice and the sacrifice of the Cross: In the Mass, Christ’s all-sufficient sacrifice offered on the Cross is rendered present sacramentally. The Mass, in other words, is a representation (literally, a making present again) and an application of the sacrifice of Calvary and, thus, is neither a repetition of the unique event of the crucifixion nor a new sacrificial action of Christ. Theologians after Trent endeavored to explain exactly how this is so. One of the good fruits of the preconciliar liturgical movement has been a renewed understanding of the biblical concept of memorial (Hebrew=zikkaron; Greek=anamnesis) as the making present of a past event in salvation history: The Eucharist is the sacrament of Christ’s unique redemptive sacrifice; that is to say, the Eucharist actualizes throughout history the Lord’s eternal sacrifice on Calvary. This recovery has at the heart of the theology of the Paschal Mystery and has proved very helpful in clearing up misunderstandings between Catholics and Protestants. I suppose the concern to respect the indissolubility of the Eucharist as sacrament and as sacrifice is what motivated the excision of sacrificial language from the Offertory rite. In other words, there is no sacrifice until the sacrament has been confected.