Header image: Collages from Catholic diocesan newspapers in the United States from between April 9 and December 17, 1964. Scans via Catholic News Archive, public domain. To view the full-size image, click here.

This article was originally published on September 15, 2025.

Links to the other parts of the series can be found here: Main Page, Series Intro, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4, and the Series Conclusion.

As discussed in the general introduction to this series, the goal of this research project is to reconstruct how the laity in the English-speaking world (mainly the United States and the United Kingdom) experienced and reacted to the very first post-conciliar liturgical changes before 1970 – what could be termed “the reform before the reform”.

To begin, I will look at how the initial liturgical reforms beginning in 1964 were explained to and understood by the laity and the wider church. Were they described or understood as minor, temporary alterations to the liturgy? By contrast, when the revised Roman Missal of 1970 arrived, was it described or understood to be a dramatic new creation and radical break with what had come before?

In search of answers to these questions, I analyzed the contents of the US Bishops’ official news service and other national and diocesan Catholic newspapers during this period.[1] These materials offer direct and unfiltered access to the official press releases, legislation, pastoral letters, and commentary by the hierarchy in America and throughout the English-speaking world

Most of all, this content analysis provides a unique and unparalleled window into what life would have been like for the average Catholic during these years. What were they reading, hearing, saying, and being taught about the changes? When they turned to the official paper of their diocese for guidance, what did they find? What did they hear from their bishops, priests, and diocesan officials? 

This newspaper analysis makes it abundantly clear that the vast majority of Catholics viewed the initial liturgical changes as a dramatic break from the past. Newspapers in 1964, 1965, and 1966 were dominated by discussion of “the New Liturgy” and “the New Mass.” The headlines, explanations, editorials, commentary, cartoons, and letters to the editor all demonstrate beyond doubt that the modified liturgical worship which began in 1964 was understood to be a distinctly ‘new’ entity with a ‘new’ name.[2]

The zeitgeist was ably captured by one editorial cartoon which ran in Catholic diocesan newspapers throughout the United States in anticipation of the very first liturgical changes which were scheduled to begin on the First Sunday of Advent, November 29, 1964. This image depicted something labeled ‘The ‘New Mass’” being held aloft and illuminated by rays from heaven:

Fig. 1 – A nationally syndicated editorial cartoon depicting the arrival of the “New Mass,” featured in Catholic newspapers immediately prior to the start of the first liturgical changes in the United States. Source: The Catholic Commentator, November 27, 1964, page 4. Scan via Catholic News Archive, public domain.

It is difficult to adequately summarize the trends of reporting and commentary found in hundreds of editions of Diocesan Catholic newspapers between these years without resorting to an excessive and tedious number of citations. In an attempt to succinctly convey the sentiments about the liturgical changes beginning in 1964, how they were discussed and understood, I have compiled collages of relevant newspaper articles from 1964, 1965, and 1966:

Fig. 2 – Collages from Catholic diocesan newspapers in the United States from 1964, 1965, and 1966. Scans via Catholic News Archive, public domain. For a detailed citation of each image used, see Appendix 3.

These collages are obviously not intended to be an exhaustive and comprehensive treatment of the subject (though something closer to that will follow in the next section), but they are useful in imparting a general ‘flavor’ of the time and understanding what the laity were told about the initial liturgical changes. Several specific examples are worthy of mention to help illustrate just how the ‘reform before the reform’ was understood by the English-speaking church during these years.

One of the fundamental reasons that so many Catholics used the terms “the New Mass” and “the New Liturgy” to describe the initial liturgical change is that this is how they were labeled and described by all of the most ‘official’ and authoritative Catholic sources. This is precisely how a great many newspapers, books, catechetical materials, priests, officials, and bishops discussed the liturgical changes beginning in 1964. Even Pope Paul VI himself publicly referred to the very first liturgical changes as “the New Liturgy”!

The first Sunday of Advent, November 29, 1964, was the date chosen by the bishops of the United States and the United Kingdom to implement the first liturgical changes following the Second Vatican Council. In the months preceding this momentous change, Archbishop of Atlanta Paul Hallinan (an influential member of the Second Vatican Council’s Liturgical Commission and strong advocate for liturgical reform who would later become the head of the US Bishops’ liturgy committee) wrote a booklet titled How to Understand Changes in the Liturgy which was distributed nationwide and also syndicated in a series of installments in diocesan newspaper columns throughout the country.

In his explanation, Hallinan describes the coming liturgical changes as “the new liturgy” (emphasis added):

Fig. 3 – From the front page of The Criterion newspaper, November 27, 1964. Scans via the Criterion archives, public domain.

This continued to be the way the liturgy was labeled and announced by various bishops and official Catholic news outlets as they prepared the laity for the changes. “‘NEW’ MASS LITURGY TO BEGIN THIS SUNDAY” was the front page headline of The Criterion, the diocesan newspaper of the Archdiocese of Indianapolis on November 27, 1964. “The faithful of the Archdiocese–along with millions of Catholics throughout the United States—will inaugurate the “new liturgy” on Sunday, Nov. 29” ran the first line of the paper. 

A second article in the same paper, also on the front page, discussed the return of Archbishop Paul Clarence Schulte from the Second Vatican Council shortly before the implementation of the first liturgical changes. The headline announced: “BACK FROM COUNCIL – ARCHBISHOP HAILS NEW LITURGY.” 

In February 1965, the Archdiocese of Newark’s paper ran a special feature on “the New Liturgy” to help explain the changes and encourage the faithful to accept them. It also included a short retrospective on the efforts of the US Bishops to successfully prepare the faithful “for the Church’s New Liturgy.”[4]

Fig. 4 – Excerpts from the special feature on “the New Liturgy” in the Catholic Advocate, February 18, 1965, ‘topic’ section page 1 and 2. Scans via the Criterion archives, public domain.

Even Pope Paul VI referred to the initial liturgical changes as “the New Liturgy.” On Sunday, March 7, 1965, he celebrated the landmark first Italian Mass at the parish Church of All Saints in Rome. A news report of the Mass, which was covered worldwide, shared his comments (emphasis added):

Just over a week later at his general audience on Wednesday, March 17, the pope again referred to the liturgical changes as a new distinct entity, “the New Liturgy”:

Fig. 5 – Headline of article describing the milestone Mass in Italian celebrated by Pope Paul VI on March 7, 1965, which he described as “the new liturgy.” Scan via the Catholic News Archive, public domain.

Letters to the editor are another valuable way to evaluate how the laity thought about the liturgy.[7] One particularly useful example is from the Catholic Northwest Progress, the newspaper of the Archdiocese of Seattle.

The March 19, 1965 edition of the Catholic Northwest Progress contained twelve letters to the editor concerning the recent liturgical changes. The letters featured a mix of opinions: nine letters were written in support of the changes, while three were negative and opposed. Despite this variety in opinion about the liturgy, across ten of the letters there were fourteen total references to “the New Mass” and “the New Liturgy.”[8]

One of the writers, who lamented the development of this terminology, indicated that it was widely used at the time, saying: “It seems that so many call The Holy Sacrifice ‘The New Mass’…”.[9] This further demonstrates that the laity, no matter if they liked or disliked the changes, thought and spoke about the liturgy in these terms. 

Fig. 6 – Twelve letters to the editor about “the New Liturgy” in the Catholic Northwest Progress, March 19, 1965, page 5. Scan via Washington Digital Papers, public domain.

Another useful example is a lengthy letter printed in the Catholic Transcript, the diocesan newspaper of  the Archdiocese of Hartford, in September 1966. The letter was penned in response to a strong lament about the liturgical changes which had been written by an “Old Fashioned Catholic” in a previous issue. The writer implored all lay Catholics to come together and support the new liturgy, saying:

As the years progressed, and more changes occurred within the church, the initial liturgical reforms from 1964 would continue to be referenced as the start of “the New Mass” or “the New Liturgy.” In November 1965, on the one year anniversary of the first changes in the United States, the Archdiocese of Newark published a retrospective titled: “THE NEW LITURGY, ONE YEAR OLD.” The article reviews the progress of the liturgy in the past year, the attitudes of the laity, and celebrates various successes (like new church buildings designed specifically for “the New Liturgy”).

Other similar examples could be given, like an opinion column by Rose Riordan in the diocesan newspaper for the Archdiocese of Omaha also published in November 1965: “Next Sunday will be the first Sunday of Advent, believe it or not! On that day we’ll have been living the new liturgy for a whole year.”[11]

This is revealing and important to our understanding of how these changes were thought of in the minds of Catholics who lived through them. By the time these articles were published, an entirely new and much larger wave of liturgical reforms had already gone into effect–namely, the changes outlined in Inter Oecumenici which were implemented on March 7, 1965. Despite this, the articles do not mention the March changes at all. They clearly view the initial changes of November 29, 1964 as the unquestioned beginning of “the New Liturgy,” of  which the March changes are a subordinate part rather than a substantial development.

Fig. 7 – From the Catholic Advocate, November 25, 1965, page 7. Scan via Catholic News Archive, public domain.

This sentiment continued even into the 1970s after the publication of the Novus Ordo Missae of 1970. In 1974, the Catholic Transcript of the Archdiocese of Hartford featured a reflection and retrospective on the liturgical reforms by longtime editor Rev. David Quentin Liptak. “NEW MASS 10 YEARS OLD” ran the headline.[12] 

Liptak offers brief memories and comments from the previous ten years of life as a priest and as a strong supporter of the liturgical reforms. Most interesting of all, Liptak does not mention the publication of the revised liturgical books of 1970 at all (which occurred four years prior to his column), again clearly indicating that he likewise conceived of “the New Mass” as having begun in 1964 with the initial liturgical changes.

Fig. 8 – From the Catholic Transcript, January 25, 1974, page 4. Scan via Catholic News Archive, public domain.

These are useful data points, but there are limits to the conclusions which can be drawn thus far. Such a ‘sampling’ of diocesan newspapers is naturally limited and could be subject to various biases or shortcomings which would paint an incomplete picture of the reality during these years.

Because of this, I wished to perform a different analysis – something that had the potential to offer a more objective and ‘big picture’ understanding of how Catholics viewed the liturgical changes between 1964 and 1969. 

Ultimately, I chose to perform an “N-Gram”-style word frequency tracker.[13] Using of sixteen diocesan and national Catholic newspapers which had been digitized and processed with software allowing for specific word searches, I manually tallied and verified the number of times that the phrases “the New Liturgy” and “the New Mass” were used for describing the liturgy between 1961 and 1970.[14]

The sixteen newspapers used for this analysis are as follows:

The data are summarized and plotted in the charts below. They confirm and expand upon the analysis previously discussed.

The terms “the New Liturgy” and “the New Mass” dominate Catholic news coverage and popular parlance during these years. This N-gram analysis demonstrates that the English-speaking Catholic world viewed the initial liturgical changes, particularly those in 1964 and 1965, as the arrival of a distinctly new liturgy.

Fig. 9 – Plotted ‘N-Gram’ analysis of “the New Liturgy” and “the New Mass” in sixteen Catholic newspapers between 1961 and 1970. Image courtesy of the author. To view the chart in a slightly different and interactive form, click here to see it via DataWrapper.

Fig. 10 – Data summary of  ‘N-Gram’ analysis of “the New Liturgy” and “the New Mass” in sixteen Catholic newspapers between 1961 and 1970. Image courtesy of the author.

This N-gram analysis demonstrates that the English-speaking Catholic world viewed the initial liturgical changes, particularly those in 1964 and 1965, as the arrival of a distinctly new liturgy.

The results of the “N-Gram” word search also suggest another avenue of inquiry, one which could further illuminate how the church during these years understood and received these initial liturgical changes.

The data show that the terms “the New Liturgy” and “the New Mass” were used more in 1965 and 1966 than they were in 1969 and 1970. This struck me as unexpected and potentially significant.

Was not the revised missal Paul VI a far more dramatic liturgical change than the modifications which had occurred between 1964 and 1968? Was it not the long-planned culmination and fulfillment of the liturgical reform initiated by the Second Vatican Council? If so, how can those ideas be reconciled with the results of the word search results?

I therefore sought another way to explore popular understanding of and attitudes towards the liturgy during these interim years. For this next analysis, I examined how American diocesan newspapers announced and described the 1964 liturgical changes versus how those same diocesan newspapers announced and described the revised Missale Romanum six years later.

I judged this to be a fairly straightforward way to get to the heart of the matter. If any given Catholic in any of these dioceses had picked up the official diocesan newspaper either the week before or the week of the impending significant liturgical milestone, what would they have seen? What kind of announcements or explanations would they have found? What language, and what framing or context, was used by the diocese to discuss and prepare their flock for these foundation changes to the liturgical worship of the local church? Surely this would help explain the trends found in the N-Gram analysis above.

I therefore I selected a list of fourteen American dioceses and archdioceses around the nation.[15]

Next, I looked for the issues of their diocesan newspapers in the weeks leading up to the liturgical changes in both 1964 and 1970. The latter was surprisingly difficult because, as I discovered, there was not a uniform standard date upon which the dioceses of the United States adopted the revised missal of Paul VI.

The 1964 liturgical changes were implemented on a national basis, with the date of Sunday, November 29, 1964 having been chosen by the American bishops as the standard date for the entire country.[16] This made it easy to find and review the relevant issues of the diocesan newspapers.

By contrast, the 1970 liturgical changes were implemented in a much more chaotic fashion. Pope Paul VI promulgated the new order of the Mass on May 2, 1969, stating that it would go into effect throughout the world on November 30.[17] As the year progressed, however, various bishops’ conferences indicated that they would not or could not begin using the new missal on that date.

Whereas the bishops of the United States had moved swiftly to implement the 1964 changes, they showed very little urgency when it came to implementing the new Order of the Mass. The chairman of the US Bishops’ Committee on the Liturgy announced on August 22 (more than three months after the initial publication of the revised missal) that the American bishops would wait until their annual meeting in November before deciding when the New Mass would be implemented in the United States. And they were not the only episcopal conference to delay in this way![18] 

Just a month before the original deadline, the Congregation for Divine Worship acknowledged the general lack of preparedness and widespread difficulty in implementing the new changes by November 30. The congregation announced that the timeline for implementing the new Roman Missal would be extended and that it would not become mandatory until November 28, 1971.[19] During their annual meeting in November 1969, the American bishops voted that dioceses could begin to use the revised missal on Palm Sunday, March 22, 1970 but that it was left to the discretion of each bishop for when to implement the changes.[20] 

This resulted in an unusual and confusing situation. Unlike the previous liturgical changes which were generally implemented on the same dates throughout the nation and around the world, bishops throughout America – and in different countries – chose different dates to implement the missal of Paul VI. Even dioceses in the same state had widely divergent transitions to the revised Roman Missal, for example:

Once I determined the date of implementation for the 1964 and 1970 changes on a diocese-by-diocese basis, I then examined the newspapers published the week before or the week of the change, and examined the content to determine how they were covered. This comparison reveals a stark difference in how the same American diocesan newspapers announced and covered the 1964 liturgical change versus that of 1970:[22]

Fig. 11 – Charted analysis of fourteen diocesan newspapers, comparing coverage of the liturgical changes in 1964 vs 1970. Image courtesy of the author. To view the chart in a slightly different and interactive form, click here to see it via DataWrapper.

Fig. 12 – Data from analysis of fourteen diocesan newspapers, comparing coverage of the liturgical changes in 1964 vs 1970. Image courtesy of the author.

These results are just as surprising–if not more so–as those of the general newspaper analysis and ‘N-Gram’ tracker previously discussed. Indeed, they overturn many current assumptions and narratives about how these changes were viewed by the laity and the wider church at the time. 

Whereas the 1964 changes were universally announced, prepared for, and discussed by every diocese studied, there was a wide divergence of attitudes by these same dioceses when it came to the revised missal of 1970. The United States bishops, as a corporate body, seemed to approach the 1970 changes with notably less urgency than the 1964 changes. Additionally, there was a vastly different implementation strategy between 1964 and 1970: whereas the 1964 changes were initiated by almost all American dioceses on the same date, there were a dizzying number of different dates and permutations used when introducing the 1970 changes.

(The differences in how these dioceses covered the 1964 changes vs those of 1970 are further illuminated when compared with how these same diocesan newspapers covered the implementation of the new English translation of the Roman Missal in 2011, a much more minor liturgical change than that of 1970. For more on this, see Appendix 2 below.)

This difference in coverage corroborates and contextualizes the N-Gram results; taken together, they suggest that Catholics who lived through those years did not view the revised Roman Missal of Paul VI as the final culmination and landmark achievement of the post-conciliar liturgical reform. Rather, it appears that it was considered by many to be just one more installment in a series of seemingly interminable changes that had been underway for more than five years.

Several diocesan newspapers at the time even made explicit statements to that effect. 

The Diocese of Pittsburgh’s newspaper is a useful example. Whereas the paper had covered 1964 liturgical change with front page coverage, mention of the upcoming 1970 changes were relegated to a small notice on the bottom of page 2. The notice read, in part (emphasis added):

The newspaper of the Diocese of Baton Rouge published a similar sentiment. Across all editions of the paper between January 1 and March 20, there were only two brief mentions–of any kind–of the implementation of the new Roman Missal in the diocese. In one of those two editions, there was a short article on the upcoming changes with a headline which assured readers that “most changes in new Mass affect [sic] celebrant.”[28]

Fig. 13 – The Catholic Commentator, February 13, 1970.  Scan via Catholic News Archive, public domain.

To better illustrate the differences in newspaper coverage, I have compiled examples from some of the categories used to classify the results above. Below I will share examples of (1) a newspaper which announced both the 1964 and 1970 changes with front page coverage, (2) a newspaper which announced the 1970 changes on page 2, and (3) a newspaper which did not mention the 1970 changes at all in the weeks leading up to the deadline.

Example 1: Front page coverage in both 1964 and 1970

The Archdiocese of Seattle extensively covered both the 1964 and 1970 changes, and serves as a good representative example of the five papers which fall into this category. 

Fig. 14 – Comparison of the Catholic Northwest Progress newspaper’s coverage of the liturgical changes in 1964 vs 1970. Scans via Catholic News Archive, public domain. Graphic courtesy of the author.

Example 2: Front page coverage in 1964, page 2 coverage in 1970

The Diocese of Pittsburgh’s coverage of the 1970 changes, described above, serves as a useful example of papers which did not offer front page coverage. In the May 15, issue immediately preceding the change, there was no mention of the impending adoption of the revised 1970 missal on the front page but there was a small notice on the bottom of page 2:

Fig. 15 – Comparison of the Pittsburgh Catholic newspaper’s coverage of the liturgical changes in 1964 vs 1970. Scans via Catholic News Archive, public domain. Graphic courtesy of the author.

Example 3: Front page coverage in 1964, and no coverage in 1970

The Archdiocese of Atlanta is perhaps the most extreme example of the five dioceses in this analysis which did not announce or discuss the 1970 liturgical changes in the weeks leading up to the change.

The Archdiocese of Atlanta adopted the revised 1970 Missal on March 22, 1970, but across all editions of the paper between January and March, no mention–of any kind–of the implementation of the new Roman Missal in the diocese. In fact, in order to verify the date when the revised Roman Missal was implemented in the archdiocese, I had to use an interview given by the chancellor to a secular newspaper, because the date is never discussed once in the diocesan newspaper.[29]

Between 1962 and until his death in 1968, the Atlanta archdiocese had been led by Archbishop Paul Hallinan. Hallinan was, as discussed above, a hugely influential figure in the development and implementation of the revised liturgy. His archdiocese had always been on the cutting edge of liturgical progress owing to his personal predilections and enthusiasm. It is particularly arresting and illuminating, therefore, to see how dramatically his former see shifted in its approach to news coverage and general enthusiasm for the liturgical reform by 1970.

Fig. 16 – Comparison of the Georgia Bulletin’s newspaper’s coverage of the liturgical changes in 1964 vs 1970. Scans via Catholic News Archive, public domain. Graphic courtesy of the author.

All of these data paint an increasingly clear picture about how the changes in 1970 were received and understood by the Catholics who lived at the time. They do not seem to have been widely considered the final product and long awaited culmination of the council’s liturgical reforms; rather, it seems that many viewed them to be just one more change in a series of changes.

This was not just a sentiment evident amongst the laity, parish priests, or diocesan bishops. It was also shared by officials who collaborated closely with the Vatican on creating and implementing official versions of the liturgical books!

For example: Bishop John Joseph Dougherty, auxiliary bishop of Newark, was a member on the International Committee on English in the Liturgy (ICEL). ICEL was, and is, the body responsible for creating the official English translations of the liturgical texts for use by English speaking countries around the globe.

In an article published by the US Bishop’s news service on April 17, 1970, in the midst of the implementation of the new Order of the Mass throughout the United States, Dougherty responded to complaints and “unrest” amongst the laity regarding the mass changes (“When are they going to stop changing the Mass?” was the question on many lips).

In his comments, Dougherty did not reassure readers that the changes were over, nor did he describe the New Order of the Mass as the completion and fulfillment of what the reform begun by the council. Rather, Dougherty merely said that there would be a short pause before further changes were made: “with the changes introduced on Palm Sunday in most parts of the United States [i.e. the revised Missal of Paul VI], we have arrived at a kind of pause. I think it would be true to say that we have a moratorium on [changes to] the Mass for several years. Some are saying five years, but I think it safer to say several years.”[30]

Fig. 17 – Example of the US Bishops’ news service story on the Bishop Dougherty’s comments, which ran in diocesan newspapers and Catholic periodicals nationwide. Scan via Newspapers.com, public domain.

This further helps to explain the differences in diocesan news coverage of the 1964 and 1970 changes and the trends seen in the ‘N-Gram’ analysis. The 1970 liturgical changes appear to have been understood to be just one more change (though an important one) in a series of changes to the Mass which had begun in 1964 and would continue past 1970. That this belief was shared by even those in the hierarchy who worked closely with the Vatican to translate the official liturgical books into English strongly suggests that it cannot be explained away as merely a misunderstanding by the laity.

In this piece, I used three different types of analysis to more examine how English-speaking Catholics (both clerics and the laity) thought of the initial liturgical changes made before the revised missal of 1970. In aggregate, the evidence from these all sources suggest that for the overwhelming majority of English-speaking Catholics who lived through these changes, the “New Mass” arrived in 1964 rather than 1970. It also seems that the initial liturgical changes were widely viewed as the primary and fundamental liturgical change, and that when it arrived the revised missal of 1970 was considered by many to be something closer to a minor modification rather than a major new milestone.

These terms – the “New Mass” and the “New Liturgy” were essentially the universal labels used by bishops, chancery officials, priests, diocesan newspapers, and even the pope! There can be little wonder, then, that the laity also thought of and referred to the changes in these terms from the very beginning.

Nevertheless, we may still wonder why this was so. If these were truly only intended to be temporary, interim, minor changes, why did the Catholics who lived through those years not receive them in this way? Why did so many (including, apparently, members of the clergy and even bishops) fail to understand that a larger and more comprehensive revision of the entire Mass was being worked on and about to be published–one which was intended to be the full and true “New Mass”?

It is beyond the scope or ability of this paper to answer this question definitively, but there is one item that warrants brief comment. It may be–at least in part–that many people believed that the “New Mass” had already arrived by late 1965 because this is what the Vatican itself appeared to tell the world at the time.

In January 1966, the Consilium (the official Vatican committee established by Pope Paul VI to implement the revisions to the liturgy as called for by the Second Vatican Council) issued two comments about the present and future of the liturgical reform in its journal Notitiae. In the issue, the Consilium responded to a general sentiment which was fairly widespread at the time, concerning hand missals for the laity: given the changes to the liturgy, the introduction of the vernacular, and the chance of future changes which could render your missal out of date…. should anyone even use hand missals any longer? 

Many at the time thought not. Even as early as December 1964, diocesan newspapers featured articles with headlines like “MISSALS ON THE WAY OUT, LITURGIST TELLS TEACHERS” and which stated that “bringing a missal to Mass soon will be old-fashioned […] you do not take part in public worship by burying your nose in a book.” Clerical commentators, like Msgr. James Conway in his nationally syndicated “Question Box” Q&A column, explicitly told readers to not buy new hand missals and to rid themselves of their “selfish” desires to say their own personal prayers at Mass.[31]

But in the January 1966 issue of Notitiae, the Consilium disagreed with such sentiments. It criticized the idea that hand missals were an obstacle to active participation in the liturgy and denied that they had been made obsolete by liturgical reform. In stirring and beautiful language, the Consilium strongly encouraged the continued use and promotion of hand missals, including the custom of gifting a missal to children receiving their First Communion. In fact, they went so far as to say that hand missals were still necessary for the laity for a number of reasons.[32]

In a second comment in the same issue, the Consilium also addressed the concern that existing hand missals would soon be invalidated by new and significant liturgical changes which could be coming in the near future. In a statement which received a great deal of coverage in the Catholic press at the time[33] (but which to my knowledge has never been discussed in academic literature since) the Consilium directly dismissed such concerns and stated unequivocally that rumors about “a definitive renewal of the entire Missal” or an “impending reformation of the Order of the Mass” were “without foundation” and that hand missals produced for the “present reform” of the liturgy would be able to be “used for many years” to come.[34]

Fig. 18 – Examples of the US Bishops’ news service story on the Consilium’s announcement, which ran in diocesan newspapers and Catholic periodicals nationwide. Scans via Catholic News Archive, public domain.

With the benefit of hindsight and available historical sources, it is quite difficult to understand what the Consilium meant by saying – in January 1966 – that there was no impending reform of the Order of the Mass or definitive renewal of the entire Missal in the immediate future. By that point the Consilium had been at work on a new Order of the Mass for quite some time, had performed demonstration masses of the proposed new form in October 1965, and had been asked by the Vatican Secretary of State to present a thorough accounting of the proposed new Ordo Missae to the pope in December 1965. The Consilium would ultimately finalize a proposal for the new rite of the Mass in May 1966 and meet in special audience with the pope in June 1966 regarding the details. In light of all this, one cannot but wonder: what was the reason for this claim in the January issue of Notitiae?[35]

In any event, no matter what the Consilium meant by these public reassurances in Notitiae, they seem to have been taken at face value by the US Bishops’ news service and editors of diocesan newspapers throughout the nation. Perhaps they were also taken at face value by the priests and laity who read them. If so, it is no wonder that so many Catholics who lived through those years thought that “the New Liturgy” had obviously already arrived and that there was no other revised Missal or new Order of the Mass in the works, at least not for many years to come. 

Then, suddenly, a revised missal did arrive just a few short years later. Even though it was variably labeled in Catholic media as a New Mass, New Rite, and New Order, we have seen that it was not universally received or understood to be either substantially different from the earlier “New Liturgy” or the long-planned final culmination of post-conciliar reform.

It is likely for that reason that many Catholics in 1970 – even as they adopted the revised Missal of Paul VI – were wondering when the changes were going to end, rather than breathing a sigh of relief that the liturgical reform had been completed. It seems that, by 1970, the popular reception of the liturgy amongst both laity and clergy had been indelibly marked by the shared core memory of the arrival the “the New Liturgy” in 1964, and that the unending stream of changes and general upheaval and confusion which followed had taken their toll.

This is the end of Part 1 of this series, The “New Mass” of 1964: Popular reception of the first post-conciliar liturgical changes. Links to the other parts of the series can be found here: Main Page, Series Intro, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4, and the Series Conclusion.

[1] To do this, I utilized a mix of databases which offer access to digitized Catholic newspapers (including the Catholic News Archive, Newspapers.com, Washington Digital Newspapers, etc) as well as archival holdings of non-digitized editions (e.g. Archives of the Archdiocese of St. Louis, the Catholic Historical Research Center, etc). Owing to the confusion and lack of clarity with which secular journalistic institutions (even the most prestigious or reputable) reported on the details and terminology of Catholic affairs, I exclusively used official Catholic press materials for this analysis. This approach seemed to offer a reasonably high level of confidence in gaining an accurate account of how Catholics during these years thought about these liturgical changes in their own words.

[2] These findings are also supported by other non-newspaper sources published during these years, like hand missals published during these years (e.g. The 1965 New Saint Joseph Sunday Missal and Hymnal … in accordance with the New Revised Liturgy) and books like the 1967 Has The New Liturgy Changed You? by Mary Perkins Ryan.

[3] The Clarion Herald, September 17, 1964, Section 2 page 1.

[4] Catholic Advocate, February 18, 1965, ‘topic’ section page 1 and 2.

[5] St. Louis Review, March 12, 1965, page 1.

[6] NCWC News Service, March 22, 1965, page 2 of the special wire copy (foreign) ‘Documentary Service’ which produced a full English translation of the audience. The published Italian text of this audience can be found on the Vatican website.

[7] The examples given here are from American newspapers, but these same sentiments were also found amongst Catholics in the British Isles. See, for example: Dom Benet Innes, “Most People Are Good-Tempered about It but – How Are YOU Liking the New Liturgy?,” The Universe and Catholic Times (Manchester), July 30,1965, page 6; and Anonymous letter to Cardinal Heenan headed “The Observations of a Very Ordinary Catholic on the New Liturgy,” 1964, Archive of the Archdiocese of Westminster, Heenan, HEi/L6(a) Letters from the Laity 1964-8. Both of these are cited by Alana Harris, “A Fresh Stripping of the Altars? Liturgical Language and the Legacy of the Reformation in England, 1964-1984” in Catholics in the Vatican II Era: Local Histories of a Global Event (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2018).

[8] There were six uses of “the New Mass” and nine uses of “the New Liturgy.” The twelfth letter, which was quite negative about the changes, used the term “People’s Mass” which seems to have been a common local term for the new liturgy in the Archdiocese of Seattle during these years (all parishes had been required to purchase a standard hymnal in anticipation of the 1964 changes, The People’s Mass Book by the World Library of Sacred Music, and the English High Mass setting by Dom Gregory Murry titled An English People’s Mass was selected as one of the standardized, approved methods for the archdiocese).

[9] “Our Readers Write,” The Catholic Northwest Progress, March 19, 1965, page 5.

[10] “Letters to the Transcript,” The Catholic Transcript, September 2, 1966, page 3.

[11] Rose Riordan, “Distaff Doodles,” The True Voice, November 25, 1965, page 4.

[12] “New Mass 10 years Old,” The Catholic Transcript , January 25, 1974, page 4.

[13] An ‘N-Gram’ word search is inspired by the Google Books Ngram Viewer, a tool which allows you to search a vast amount of historical published material which has been scanned and made word-searchable via OCR (optical character recognition) software. It allows you to find and plot the occurrences of different words or phrases over time, thereby illustrating historical trends in word or phrase usage. While I was inspired by the Google Books Ngram Viewer, I was not able to use any existing software or program to perform my search of Catholic newspapers. I had to search each paper and manually verify relevance, manually tabulate, etc. The premise of this analysis was to count the number of times the phrases “the New Liturgy” and “the New Mass” were used in Catholic newspapers and news sources to refer to the liturgy. It was therefore of utmost importance to the credibility and accuracy of the analysis to ensure that the phrases which were counted were truly used as a descriptive label for the liturgy (e.g. “the new mass will be implemented in our diocese on Sunday”), rather than a ‘false positive’ which is not relevant or related (e.g. “the new mass schedule for our parish will begin on Sunday”). I therefore manually reviewed each match on the search phrase, and eliminated any which were false positives. For a detailed explanation of my sources, selection criteria, analysis methodology, results, and other information, see the Newspaper Analysis Methodology Appendix.

[14] The same set of sixteen papers were searched in each of the years of the analysis to ensure relevance and applicability of comparisons. Thirteen of the papers were official diocesan papers which covered eighteen dioceses in eleven states stretching from East to West Coast. Furthermore, all of the selected diocesan newspapers were independently published by their respective dioceses and not part of any nationwide press chain (e.g. the ‘Register’ or ‘Our Sunday Visitor’ chains). In 1965, essentially the midpoint of the survey, these eighteen dioceses had a combined Catholic population of over 8,756,000, just shy of 20% of the total national Catholic population of 44,300,000. These papers thus seem to be a very broad and useful representative sampling of the official Catholic press in America for the purposes of such a survey. For a detailed explanation of my sources, selection criteria, analysis methodology, results, and other information, see Section A of the Newspaper Analysis Methodology Appendix.

[15] These fourteen dioceses are of varying sizes in terms of Catholic population and are located in twelve states throughout the nation, and seem to be a sufficiently broad and useful representative sampling of dioceses and diocesan newspapers for the purposes of such a survey. Additionally, all but four of the papers studied for this analysis were the same papers used in the preceding ‘N-Gram’ analysis, which allows for a multi-faceted exploration of the same dataset and contributes directly applicable insights to the trends found in the ‘N-Gram’ chart. For a detailed explanation of my sources, selection criteria, analysis methodology, results, and other information, see Section B of the Newspaper Analysis Methodology Appendix.

[16] One or two American dioceses implemented the changes before November 1964. Besides these exceptions, every American diocese began using the new revised liturgy on November 29, 1964.

[17] “Pope Issues Replacement For Roman Missal,” NC News Service, May 2, 1969, wire copy (foreign) page 2.

[18] “Use of New Liturgical Practices Not Expected Until Spring,” NC News Service, August 22, 1969, wire copy (domestic) page 4. The bishops of the United Kingdom also delayed implementation of the new missal, announcing on October 1, 1969 that the new Order of the Mass would not begin in November but instead would be delayed until the first Sunday in Lent, 1970. See “New form of Mass delayed until Lent,” The Catholic Herald, October 3, 1969, front page. It must be said that this is a strikingly slow reaction by the bishops to the promulgation of what is now considered to be the capstone and centerpiece of the liturgical revisions following the Second Vatican Council. It also stands in stark contrast to how quickly the bishops responded to implement the initial liturgical changes in 1964.

[19] Rev. Annibale Bugnini, CM, secretary for the Congregation for Divine Worship, stated that November 30, 1969 was the “first day on which the new Ordo in Latin can (but not must) be used” and that “the new and old rites will continue to coexist side by side until Nov. 28, 1971, and only then will it become obligatory after a period of two years of transition and translation.” See “New ‘Order of Mass’ may be delayed because of translation,” NC News Service, October 30, 1969, wire copy (foreign) page 13.

[20] “Bishops’ Meeting: New Approaches Taken To Problems of Renewal,” The Catholic Advocate, November 20, 1969, pp 1&4; also “Not All Dioceses To Have New Mass At Same Time,” NC News Service, March 17, 1970, wire copy (domestic) page 27. Most dioceses ultimately chose dates which fell between March 22 and May 17, 1970; however, some bishops–like Cardinal John Carberry of St. Louis–adopted innovative ‘hybrid’ approaches which began implementing changes even earlier than permitted by blending portions of the old and new Roman Missals. For more details on this frankly bizarre and convoluted topic, see Section B.4 (“Piecemeal advance implementation permission”) of the Newspaper Analysis Methodology Appendix.

[21] Green Bay permitted parishes to begin using the new missal on March 22 and required that everyone use it by May 17. This approach was taken by a number of dioceses around the country, including several studied in my analysis (e.g. Seattle).

[22] For detailed information on the methodology of this analysis, the dioceses studied, the dates they implemented the 1970 changes, the page numbers where the changes were mentioned, etc, see see Section B of the Newspaper Analysis Methodology Appendix.

[23] The papers of the Archdiocese of Newark, Archdiocese of Miami, Archdiocese of Seattle, Archdiocese of Philadelphia, Archdiocese of Omaha, and the Diocese of Erie. Although my analysis looked for the bare minimum (i.e. was the upcoming liturgical change for the diocese announced or discussed at all), it seems useful to note that type and content of front page coverage varied significantly between dioceses. Some dioceses gave marquee headlines and article space to clearly announce and explain what was happening. For example, Omaha had a large headline at the top of the front page on March 20 announcing “NEW MASS ORDER STARTS MARCH 22” along with extensive explanations and commentary. Other dioceses made only brief mentions which were easy to overlook. For example, Erie’s front page coverage on March 13 is only a small article titled “MASS REVISION ON WICU-TV THIS SUNDAY” which included this single sentence: “A last minute substitution this coming Sunday will make the televised Mass on WICU, ch. 12 in Erie, a demonstration of the new revisions in the Mass which will officially go into effect on Mar. 22.”

[24] The paper of the Diocese of Pittsburgh.

[25] The papers of the Archdiocese of St. Louis and the Diocese of Wichita.

[26] The papers of the Archdiocese of Hartford, Diocese of Baton Rouge, Archdiocese of Indianapolis, Archdiocese of Denver, and the Archdiocese of Atlanta. Denver allowed for the revised missal to be optionally used beginning March 22 and mandated that it must be used in all parishes by May 17. As part of my analysis, I used the mandatory implementation date to determine qualifying newspaper coverage for all dioceses. If the optional start date is used instead, Denver would no longer fall into the “no mention” category, changing the total from five to four. For a detailed explanation of this analysis portion of the analysis and the relevant methodology considerations, Section B.3 (“Optional start dates vs mandatory final deadlines”) of the Newspaper Analysis Methodology Appendix.

[27] “Mass Changes Sunday,” Pittsburgh Catholic, May 15, 1970, page 2.

[28] “Most Changes in New Mass affect [sic] Celebrant,” The Catholic Commentator, February 13, 1970, page 7. This article was a feature of the US Bishops’ news service and did not contain any specific mention of the implementation of the revised 1970 missal in the Diocese of Baton Rouge or give any specific dates. It only generally references “the introduction this Spring of the new Order of the Mass” as something which needed to be prepared for.

[29] “English Mass [sic] Will Begin in Atlanta on Palm Sunday,” The Atlanta Constitution, March 21, 1970, page 6.

[30] “Mass Changes,” NC News Service, April 17, 1970, wire copy (foreign), page 1. Similar statements and commentary about the new Order of the Mass not signaling the end to changes in the Mass can be found from a number of liturgist sources at this same time. See, for example, the nationally syndicated commentary articles by Rev. Joseph M Champlin like “Change no more?” in the Pittsburgh Catholic, May 15, 1970, page 11. See also the lengthy commentaries by Rev. Donald Conger, like “New Liturgy ‘structures’ freedom; allows a combining of unity and flexibility” in The Catholic Northwest Progress, March 24, 1970, pp 4-5.

[31] “Missals on the Way Out, Liturgist Tells Teachers,” The Catholic Transcript, December 10, 1964, page 3; and “The Question Box,” The Catholic Commentator, December 11, 1964, page 5.

[32] “Hand missals […] are still necessary in order to perceive more perfectly the totality of the mystery of salvation as celebrated in the liturgical year; to nourish meditation and piety from the inexhaustible riches of liturgical texts; and to facilitate active participation.” See number 96 in Notitiae 2 (January 1966), pp 31-32. https://notitiae.ipsissima-verba.org/pdf/notitiae-1966-31-32.pdf

[33] The US Bishops’ official wire news service wrote an article about these comments by the Consilium, which was in turn picked up and published by diocesan newspapers around the nation between March 10 and April 22, 1966. It is impossible to know with certainty exactly how widespread the article was throughout the church at the time, but it seems likely that it was fairly universal. As one point of reference, every single newspaper held by the Catholic News Archive for the spring of 1966 ran an article on the Consilium’s responses.

[34] “Without foundation” is the translation used by the US Bishops news service, which provided only a partial translation of the Consilium’s responses in Nos. 96 and 97: “Notitiae said rumors about the imminent reform of the order of celebrating Mass or definitive renovation of the entire missal were without foundation,” see “Missals not made obsolete by liturgical changes,” NCWC News Service, March 5, 1966, wire copy (foreign) page 12. An original and complete English translation of the Consilium’s response #97 can be found below in Appendix 1.

[35] For a detailed history of the work to create a new Ordo Missae, see Rev. Annibale Bugnini, The Reform of the Liturgy: 1948-1975 (Collegeville: The Liturgical Press, 1990). For events immediately preceding the Consilium’s January 1966 article, see pp 150-152. It is clear from the plain text of the Consilium’s responses in Notitiae that there was reference to a “future reform” which would only occur after “much study and many years of study.” Therefore, there does not seem to be an effort by the Consilium to hide the fact that a future reform is possible or even likely in a general sense. Nevertheless, the Consilium also explicitly denied that there was any impending new Order of the Mass or complete revision of the Missal. It is extremely difficult to see how these statements can be reconciled with what the Consilium was actively planning and doing at that very moment, which was nothing less than creating a new Order of the Mass and planning to execute a definitive reform of the entire missal. One must assume that there was no active intent by the members of the Consilium to be deceptive about their new Ordo Missae. After all if the Consilium was the official body tasked with revising the liturgy according to the directives of the Second Vatican Council; if a fully revised missal was the intended culmination of the liturgical reforms (in contrast to deliberately temporary ‘interim’ changes), what need would there be for obfuscation or denial about the fact in January 1966?

1. Appendix 1: The Consilium’s 1966 announcement
2. Appendix 2: 1970 vs 2011 Newspaper coverage
3. Appendix 3: Collage citations
4. Appendix 4: Analysis methodology

Below is an original translation of the Consilium’s response in Notitiae 2 (January 1966). A scan of the original in Latin can be viewed here, part of Rev. Dylan Schrader’s very useful Notitiae Response Database: 

The comparison of newspaper coverage between 1964 and 1970 is even more interesting when viewed in light of the implementation of the revised English translation of the mass in 2011. This is the only real modern equivalent of a major liturgical change suitable for comparison to those which occurred in 1964 and 1970, and even then it pales in comparison given that it was merely an update to the English text for the Roman Missal of 1970. 

Despite this being a much more minor change (from English to English, and not a new order of the liturgy), I thought it would be useful to briefly look at how these same diocesan newspapers covered the 2011 change as a point of reference to 1964 and 1970. There were some differences in the Catholic newspaper scene of 2011 compared with 1970, particularly with things like titles, formats, and frequency of publication changing for some papers. Nevertheless, I was able to review the relevant 2011 diocesan newspapers from thirteen of the original fourteen dioceses studied in 1964 and 1970, thus offering substantial continuity and applicability of results.

In 2011, 100% of the diocesan papers studied mentioned the upcoming liturgical changes in the issue immediately preceding the date of transition. Ten did so with front page coverage, two did so on page 2, and one newspaper discussed the changes somewhere else (see below for details). Thus we can see that the 1970 liturgical changes are an anomaly, being the only occasion when a sizeable percentage of dioceses did not mention the upcoming liturgical changes immediately preceding the switch.

Below is a summary chart, displaying how the 1964, 1970, and 2011 liturgical changes as covered in the same fourteen diocesan newspapers in the issues immediately preceding the date of implementation:

Fig. 18 – Data from analysis of fourteen diocesan newspapers, comparing coverage of the liturgical changes in 1964 vs 1970 vs 2011. Image courtesy of the author. See the interactive chart on DataWrapper.

For more details on the 1964 vs 1970 vs 2011 comparisons, see Section B.5 (“Comparing the 1970 vs 2011 changes”) of the Newspaper Analysis Methodology Appendix.

Below are the citations for each newspaper clipping used in the 1964, 1965, and 1966 collages in Fig. 2 above:

For a detailed explanation of the general design, methodology, notes, limitations, and other considerations for the newspaper analyses used in this article, see the Newspaper Analysis Methodology Appendix.

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