Historical Accounts of First Concelebrated Mass of Vatican II

From The Second Vatican Council: An Unwritten Story by Roberto de Mattei, Loreto Publishers, 2010, pp. 341-2.

Chapter V

1964: THE THIRD SESSION

1. The opening of the third session

On September 14, 1964, Pope Paul VI, surrounded by twenty-four council fathers, opened the third session of the council with a concelebrated Mass. The ceremony, the first of its kind to take place in the council assembly, seemed like the liturgical expression of the new principle of collegiality.[1] “The solitude of the pope,” the correspondent of Le Monde commented, “has given way to a chorus of twenty-five prelates—including the bishop of Rome—celebrating the Mass together, with the same voice and the same gestures.”[2] The Mass was moreover completely in dialogue and, as Bishop Câmara pointed out, gave the impression of an “enormous distance from the opening Mass, which had been sung from beginning to end by the Choir of the Sistine Chapel.”[3] Shortly after the beginning of the third period, the delegates of the episcopal conferences asked to concelebrate in suitable chapels or churches, following the pope’s example, and from then on concelebrations began to multiply.[4]

[1] On June 26, 1964, Paul VI had authorized the first experiments in six Benedictine monasteries: San Anselmo, Montserrat, En-Calcat, Maredsous, Maria Laach, Collegeville and in the Dominican convent of Le Saulchoir. On Holy Thursday, April 15, 1965, concelebration was to become a normal rite of the Western Church. The teaching of the Church, reiterated until Pius XIl, is that in concelebration there is one Sacrifice of the Mass, and that it is not multiplied depending on the number of celebrants (cf. Pius XII, Allocution on November 2, 1954, in AAS 46 [1954): 669; Idem, Audience on September 22, 1956, on the occasion of the Second International Congress of pastoral liturgy, in AAS 48 [1956): 717). On the topic of concelebration see the excellent study by Joseph de Sainte-Marie, O,C.D., L'eucharistie, salut du monde: Etudes sur le Saint Sacrifice de la messe, sa célébration, sa concélébration (Paris, Editions du Cèdre, 1982), and the one by Monsignor R. M. Schmitz, "Zur Theologie der Konzelebration," in Theologisches 139 (1981): 4323-4334 (expanded as "La concelebrazione eucaristica," at http://www.haerentanimo.net, September 8, 2009).

[2] Fesquet, Drama, 298.

[3] Câmara, Lettres Conciliares, 2:505.

[4] Ibid., 694-695, J. A. Komonchak, “Toward an Ecclesiology of Communion,” in HVT 4:1-94.

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From Vatican Council II: An Authoritative One-Volume Version of the Four Historic Books by Xavier Rynne, Farrar, Straus, and Giroux, 1968, pp. 291-2.

The Third Session opened on September 14, 1964, with Pope Paul being carried into St. Peter’s on his portable throne surrounded by the papal court as usual, but a happy Pauline touch was evident as soon as he reached the altar. There, dismounting from his throne, he immediately joined twenty-four waiting prelates, all vested in red, with whom he intended to concelebrate the mass, as if to anticipate, symbolically, the doctrine of episcopal collegiality, not yet proclaimed by the Council. The altar, which stands directly above the tomb or shrine of St. Peter beneath Bernini’s splendid canopy, had been enlarged to a rectangular shape, and was decorated with a severely simple white cloth and six low candles. Attended only by his two masters of ceremony, the 80-year-old Archbishop Dante, secretary of the Congregation of Rites, and Monsignor Capoferri, the pope began the prayers at the foot of the altar in a resolute but peculiarly clouded voice. The basilica choir rendered the introductory motet in the plainest Gregorian chant, in striking contrast to the usual pompous polyphony, while the full congregation recited the Gloria, the Credo, the Sanctus and the Agnus Dei in alternate verses. At the offertory, the orationes super populum, or special prayers for the people in litany form, were re-introduced after centuries of omission, and during the canon of the mass, all the concelebrating prelates said the prayers out loud including the words of consecration over the bread and wine Communion was received by the participating concelebrants, each of whom took a piece of one of three large hosts used for the occasion, and a spoonful of wine from the common chalice; then the sacrament was distributed to the people. While sharp liturgical eyes criticized some of the details as not in accord with the most advanced liturgical thinking, the impression on the assembled prelates and the laity was decisive. Only three members of the Curia—Cardinal Tisserant, the dean of the Sacred College of Cardinals; Cardinal Larraona, and Archbishop Felici, secretary general of the Council—were among the concelebrants, the rest being residential bishops, including Cardinal Lercaro (Bologna), Archbishops Krol (Philadelphia) and Shehan (Baltimore), and two heads of religious orders.