In Advent 2011, the English translation of the Mass was revised in the wake of the liturgical “reform of the reform” and changes to norms for translation. The latter were intended to ensure that vernacular texts tracked more faithfully with the normative Latin typical edition. Since then, various other ritual books have been similarly revised.
The year 2024 saw the promulgation of a new English edition of Holy Communion and Worship of the Eucharistic Mystery Outside Mass. The revision replaces Holy Communion and Worship of the Eucharist Outside Mass, promulgated in 1973 with its English translation issued in 1976. That ritual collected in one place rites for administration of Holy Communion outside Mass; Viaticum; Exposition and Benediction of the Blessed Sacrament; Eucharistic processions; and norms for Eucharistic Congresses.
Father Paul Turner’s book Eucharistic Reservation: Holy Communion and Worship of the Eucharist Mystery Outside Mass combines an interpretation of the theology behind the documents, detailed histories of the evolution of the documents (especially the 1973 edition), and changes in the 2024 revision.
Eucharistic Theology 101
The author begins with theology. He insists that the post-Conciliar liturgical and theological shift was to put absolute focus on the celebration of the Eucharist. “Fully active and conscious participation of the faithful” in the liturgy—the Council’s norm (Sacrosanctum Concilium (SC), 14)—requires that Mass-centric focus, with Eucharistic worship outside Mass being subordinated to it.
Pre-conciliar Eucharistic practices, Turner argues, had lost that focus. Jansenist focus on sinfulness and practices of popular piety resulted in infrequent Communion by ordinary Catholics, something especially 20th-century popes (starting with St. Pius X) sought to remedy. As Eucharistic reception became less frequent, Eucharistic devotions such as holy hours, 40 hours, “Vespers” (which often meant Exposition and Benediction of the Blessed Sacrament) became more frequent. Other practices, such as distribution of Communion independently from celebration of Mass, furthered this trend.
One would be mistaken, however, says Turner, to think Vatican II’s vision was to get Catholics to communicate more often. “Communion” is but one component of the larger reality of the celebration of the Eucharist, in whose “devout and active participation” (SC, 50) the Council sought. Vatican II shifted focus from the Eucharist as sacrament to the Eucharist as celebration, a paradigm shift Turner thinks is arguably still incomplete.
Starting from that realigned focus, Turner presents the revised rites involving the Eucharist outside Mass. That means the primary purpose of reserving the Eucharist is to provide Viaticum for the dying. Communion outside Mass should be an exception, not the rule. Exposition of the Blessed Sacrament (as well as private adoration before the tabernacle) exists to deepen and nourish a person’s attachment to the celebration of the Mass and reception of Communion. Eucharistic Congresses should strengthen the faithful’s focus on the Mass, deepen their understanding of the Eucharistic mystery, and prompt acts of Christian charity.
Historical Renewal
Kudos to Turner for the prominent historical focus to this book. Broadly, he argues that various kinds of devotion to the Eucharist outside Mass developed at later periods in Church history, e.g., the phenomenon of national Eucharistic Congresses in the late-19th century. Phenomena like “40-hours devotions” appear to be post-Tridentine developments. Because of those relatively late developments, the 1973 ritual was arguably the most comprehensive collation to date (prior to the new edition) in one place of Eucharistic rites outside Mass.
Specifically, Turner does yeoman’s work in documentary reconstruction, showing how various post-Conciliar documents on the Eucharist and especially the 1973 ritual came to develop. This is not just dry history: by studying what was proposed, revised, dropped, added, and/or modified, one gains a more refined insight into the intent of a document’s or ritual’s framers. Such history in connection with the work of the Council and post-Conciliar implementation is needed. I would argue there remains a gap in our knowledge of the Second Vatican Council, which is increasingly shifting from an occurrence of personal experience to “just another” historical event. In the past 20 years, for example, we have moved from a Pope who was a Council Father to one who was a peritus to one who was just a young priest in South America to one who was a 10-year old when the Council ended.
The author devotes specific chapters to how the 1973 and 2024 rituals deal with Communion outside of Mass, with Viaticum and other forms of Communion for the sick, and with worship of the Eucharist outside Mass, particularly in Exposition and Benediction and in Eucharistic processions (especially at Corpus Christi). The chapters are detailed both in terms of changes and in the rubrics for proper celebration accompanying them.
The penultimate chapter, “Eucharistic Reservations,” is more of Turner’s thoughts on where what he takes post-Conciliar Eucharistic liturgical theology to require remains incomplete. When it comes to Viaticum, he thinks Catholics still think in terms of “last rites” and not of Viaticum as the “last sacrament.” He seems to suggest that Sunday services in the absence of the priest that regularly include distribution of Communion do damage to the Conciliar focus on the centrality of the Mass and reinforce a kind of consumerist mentality among participants: “Many would likely gather, pray, look at the tabernacle, and wonder why they did not receive communion after making the effort to come to church” (p. 156). He’s concerned that some Catholics (especially Latinos) still do not receive Communion at Sunday Mass and might be using Eucharistic devotions as a substitute for “best accomplish[ing] all that they can to correct the circumstances so that they may receive again” (p. 159). And he’s clearly committed, where possible, to removing the tabernacle from the sanctuary, arguing it distracts from focus on the altar.
Via Negativa?
I would argue that many liturgists’ approach to Eucharistic devotions outside Mass always carries a negative undertone and one senses this in Turner (though not as markedly as in Nathan Mitchell, e.g., Cult and Controversy: The Worship of the Eucharist Outside Mass [Pueblo, 1982]). It was that negativity, imbibed by the immediate post-Conciliar generation of clergy, that I think sidelined a lot of Eucharistic piety in the Church. Forty Hours disappeared. Parishes that routinely provided all night First Fridays nocturnal adoration stopped. Corpus Christi processions disappeared. A seminary rector once lectured a class of college seminarians who wanted to recite the Rosary in October during Exposition not to “confuse your Christological and your Mariological mysteries.” I even remember a visiting deacon at a seminary having to ask how one celebrates Exposition and Benediction. I cannot imagine the Council Fathers anticipated that any of this was entailed by their endorsement of “fully active and conscious participation” in the liturgy.
Happily, there has been a revival of such Eucharistic devotion outside Mass, fueled by young Catholics rightly rejecting the loss of their heritage and a generation of younger clergy who find they can combine multiple theological thoughts simultaneously without injury. The fact that the bishops of the United States reacted to the alarming news of the 2019 Pew survey about Catholic understanding of the Real Presence by organizing holy hours, exposition, and a national Eucharistic Congress (events about which Turner seems not too impressed) suggests also that perhaps we need to rethink whether some approaches done in the name of Vatican II remain justified.
I applaud the historical focus Turner provides, especially for the lessons he wants to draw from it in terms of what the Second Vatican Council and, even more so, the post-Conciliar liturgical reformers wanted to do. But 60 years after the Council, perhaps our focus should be less on what was happening more than six decades ago and more on what’s happened in the ensuing years. That the faithful want to recover these neglected forms of piety is worth examining. Pope Leo XIV identified attention to the sensus fidei as “fundamental” to Conciliar implementation: in this case, are the faithful expressing that sensus fidei? One example of this looking backwards/looking forward question: Turner notes that Jansenist scrupulosity may have resulted in infrequent Communion (and not without Confession). But that is not the reality today. Instead, we face the opposite: frequent Communion and infrequent Confession with a waning sense of personal sin and the holiness presupposed in approaching the Eucharist.
Continuity Issues
We can talk about a “return to the sources” and, yes, the Church of the first centuries establishes a certain liturgical normativity for the Church. But the Church is also a living institution guided in history by the Holy Spirit, which means (contrary to what seems to be the sentiments of some liturgists) that developments in the medieval or Tridentine period are not necessarily inferior: the idea of a “hermeneutic of continuity” makes sense in liturgical theology, too.
I’ll take a “symbolic issue”—tabernacle placement. Turner is committed to the post-Conciliar model of removing the tabernacle to some place other than the “central axis” of a church. He argues that is in keeping with Vatican II that the focus should be on the altar where Mass is celebrated rather than the tabernacle where the Eucharist is reserved.
The fact that churches are restoring the tabernacle to places of prominence—even in the sanctuary—is in my judgment a good thing. Has anybody asked whether confusion about the meaning and importance of “Real Presence” might have something to do with taking the reserved sacrament off the “central axis?” Yes, one can argue that reservation of the Eucharist was initially for Viaticum and that in earliest times it seems the reserved sacrament was kept less conspicuously in the sacristy or where the priest lived. But the fact that people recognized the reserved sacrament could be more publicly positioned and was a fitting subject of adoration was arguably not a deformation but a legitimate evolution of the faithful’s sense of Eucharistic consciousness and piety.
And the fact that the Eucharist is in a sense a unique sacrament—one perduring not just in effect but physically beyond the celebration of the rite—suggests that perhaps the idea of Eucharistic celebration and reservation—action and being—are not mutually exclusive categories. It’s telling to me that Turner never mentions (he’d probably argue the current rites do not implicate it) the debate over versus orientem/versus populum, which clearly touches on the question of altar and tabernacle and their placement.
I recommend Turner’s book. It is a worthwhile commentary on the revised rites for worship of the Eucharistic mystery outside Mass. Those who want to know both what’s different as well as how and why we’ve gotten to where we are will find this book very useful. But, that said, I am less interested in looking backwards to where we were prior to the 1960s than where we have been since, and to ask whether some of the common assumptions or practices made in the name or spirit of the Council have borne the test of time or rather perhaps merit modification.
