Talk:Text and rubrics of the Roman Canon

Copyright notice

The original text is taken from the 1908 Catholic Encyclopedia, which is now in the public domain. — MSchmahl 10:56, 30 March 2006 (UTC)

Supplices te rogamus

I reverted your edit because my Latin text of the Supplices te Rogamus is exactly as the Tridentine Missal, and is so attributed. Also my translation is preferable: 1)whoever heard of suppliantly? 2)shall is the correct future for 1st person sing. & plur. 3)in hac altaris participatione hac agrees with participatione. (User:MichaelaCollins)

I am sorry, but I feel I must revert back again.

The article is about the Roman Canon as it is now, not as it was from the time of Pope Pius V (1570) to that of Pope Clement VIII (1604), who made some changes in the Canon (see this section of the Tridentine Mass article), nor as it was from 1604 to 1962, when Pope John XXIII made another change, nor indeed as it was in any of the forms it had before 1570, especially before 400 (see Pre-Tridentine Mass).

The Council of Trent did not "define" the "Supplices te rogamus" prayer. It made no statement whatever about it. In its final session (3-4 December 1563), the Council entrusted to the Pope (who was Pius IV) the work on the Roman Missal (see an English translation of the text of the decree). It was the following Pope, Pius V, who actually revised, published and made obligatory the 1570 Missal.

"Supplices" is an adjective qualifying the understood subject of the verb "rogamus". The most natural way to English it is as an adverb modifying the verb.

I think almost anyone would consider "as many of us as" (like "some of us") to be of the third grammatical person,, not the first.

My correction yesterday of the text already took account of the fact that "hac" qualifies "participatione", and MichaelaCollins deserves thanks for noticing and drawing attention to the previous error. After the correction, the translation of "hac altaris participatione" read: "by this participation of the altar". I think "this partaking of the altar" would be better English, but I wanted to change no more than was necessary. By the way, "altaris participatione" is "partaking of the altar", not "partaking (of something else) at the altar".

I appreciate MichaelaCollins's very laudable interest in ensuring accuracy, and I hope this interest will continue to be shown in Wikipedia.

If Michaela wants to insist on a particular English translation of the "Supplices te rogamus" prayer, I will not resist (although I may possibly tweak it a little). But I must insist that the prayer itself (in Latin) be given in its official form, not in any one of the forms it had in the past, whether they were at that time fully official or not. Lima 19:59, 18 January 2007 (UTC)

Qui Pridie

Could there be a stub on the Qui Pridie rubric, since it is a fairly notable part of the Roman canon ? There are other similar rubrics that could also be deserving of a stub. [1] ADM (talk) 23:59, 10 April 2009 (UTC)

Copyright problem

The English translation of the Mass is copyrighted. This article grossly overuses the copyrighted text, in violation of WP:NFC#Unacceptable use of text. I will be deleting the entire English translation, without prejudice to reintroduction of smaller excerpts. RJaguar3 | u | t 20:53, 3 March 2016 (UTC)

"Standardizing terms"

User:Epistulae ad Familiares has just now made a series of radical changes in this article, which has been stable for a year. Changes that, at least as now, have not won consensus. If consensus is not attained, the article must return to its last stable version.

A declared aim of Epistulae ad Familiares is to identify the different versions of the text and rubrics of the Roman Canon only as "Tridentine Mass" and "Mass of Paul VI" on the grounds that these are the titles of Wikipedia's articles on these two forms of the Roman Rite Mass.

Outside these two articles, the history of whose discussion shows that the names, especially the second, are emotive for many, there is no need to impose these names on other subjects. That would be personal synthesis of material from what is not, in Wikipedia terms, a reliable source (Wikipedia itself).

More important, application of at least the first of these two terms to the differing texts and rubrics of the Roman Canon is ambiguous. What is the "Tridentine" Roman Canon? Is it the form in what most people today see as the "Tridentine Mass", namely that of 1962? That Roman Canon, with its "et beato Ioseph eiusdem Virginis sponso", differs from the form used immediately before. Or is it the form of the Roman Canon in the 1570 Roman Missal that Saint Pius V in his apostolic constitution Quo primo imposed on every place or group that didn't have a rite that could be shown to be at least two centuries old? The rubrics of that 1570 Roman canon are not the same as those of the Roman canon in later "Tridentine" editions of the Roman Missal.

A clearer way to indicate the versions of the text and rubrics of the Roman Canon is to indicate the source of each version. Of the two versions at present in public liturgical use, the 1962 Roman Canon is unambiguously that which Saint John XXIII imposed in 1962, and the 1970 Roman Canon is unambiguously that which Saint Paul VI imposed in 1970. (That all three popes mentioned have been canonized is an interesting coincidence.) Bealtainemí (talk) 10:16, 16 February 2019 (UTC)

@Bealtainemí: Before discussing the future direction of this article, in the interest of transparency and avoidance of misunderstanding, I feel it would be helpful in explaining the intentions behind my edits. Standardising synonyms is not radical. It is the convention on Wikipedia to use an article's title where possible as the term to refer to that topic from within another article. This is useful because some synonyms are seen by different people as excessively pejorative (or likewise, unduely laudatory), but article titles are determined through the principle of WP:COMMONNAME, which ultimately looks at whether a term is commonly used, not whether it appeals to a specific POV. That is, for example, why we typically use "Catholic Church" in Wikipedia to refer to the group of believers led by a Pope based in Rome, not "Popish Church" or "Holy Mother Church", even though these are both recognised synonyms on Wikipedia, unless a specific context compellingly requires it.

At the same time, it is also easier for readers to follow when the same terms are used throughout the article when referring to the same thing. If one switches from "Mass of Paul VI" in one paragraph to "the revised Mass" or "the 1970 Mass" in another, it may not be clear to the average Wikipedia reader (who may not be Catholic) that they are referring to the same thing, which impedes readability. Hence, in the interest of ensuring ease of understanding, it is generally preferred to use the same article titles where possible.

These are two of the principles I applied when choosing to standardise the names as "Tridentine Mass" and "Mass of Paul VI" when mentioning which Mass within the Roman Rite a certain characteristic (be it textual or rubrical) was found. While I understand you may find them "emotive", but if you can suggest a better set of terms to neutrally and broadly specify which version of Mass a specific text and/or rubric is from (if a specific year is not necessary) and the reasons for those terms, I would certainly be very open to discussion and suggestions. It is also relevant to note that any such reasoning would also be relevant in proposing a renaming of the articles at Talk:Tridentine Mass or Talk:Mass of Paul VI, if you feel the necessity to do so.

I certainly agree that when certain years need to be specified because there are multiple variations that exist within the larger set of values (i.e., the 1570, 1604, and 1962 versions of the Canon within the Tridentine Mass group), they should be specified as such, and I did not force any standardisations where these years were specified. The instances where I standardised the terms to "Tridentine Mass" were in fact situations where synonyms of that same term were used, such as, "Tridentine form of the Mass", "Tridentine text", "Tridentine rubrics", or "Tridentine Missal", which are entirely appropriate. If they are imprecise because the sentence was actually only unique to a specific year and not the entire group, then it would be an issue to take up with the editors who used the original synonym, not me. However, if you have sources available, you are certainly free to improve the article and specify the years. I did make one exception, however: I considered "1970 revision of the Roman Missal" as fully synonymous with "Mass of Paul VI". In my view, that was not "personal [sic] synthesis" (I suppose you meant inappropriate synthesis, per WP:OR), because, per the sources on this article, there appears to only be one version of the Canon that has ever been used within the Mass of Paul VI, and none of the sources seem to mention any other version after 1970.

All that aside, I fully agree with your proposal to indicate the specific source of each version as "1962 Canon" and "1970 Canon". It is certainly clearer and allows us to be unambiguous about the versions that are being discussed in the article. Another advantage I find is that it allows the article to focus on the specific texts and rubrics found in the two versions that are currently in official use within the Catholic Church (i.e., 1962 and 1970), and leaving aside (or at least minimising) the lengthier discussions about characteristics only found in the previous versions of the Roman Rite that are no longer in use (e.g. 1570, 1604, or the various versions of the Pre-Tridentine Mass), which I feel is a topic best left for History of the Roman Canon. It also allows us to avoid the entire aforementioned debate about whether we should be using different synonyms to refer to the Tridentine Mass and Mass of Paul VI.

In summary, allow me to lay out the points of agreement and disagreement, so that we can move forward on improving this article:

1. We disagree on the exact terms that should be used to refer to Tridentine Mass and Mass of Paul VI. This may require further discussion, if you feel my reasoning does not satisfy you.
2. We agree that there is a need to specify the version year where there are variations within a larger group of versions.
3. We agree with the proposal to use such names as "1962 Canon" and "1970 Canon" to unambiguously specify different versions that are discussed in the article.

Going forward, I would like to go ahead and implement your fine proposal to use the terms "1962 Canon" and "1970 Canon" in the article. I also hope we can continue to work towards building a consensus in improving this article. Epistulae ad Familiares (talk) 15:15, 16 February 2019 (UTC)

Thank you. I agree. Your changes did at first seem radical, but were not meant as such. Thank you also for your latest edits of the article I look forward to working with you on it. We should soon be able to remove the heading that complains of the lack of inline citations.

Do you think the article should in practice limit itself to the two texts of 1962 and 1970, those now in authorized public use as liturgy? Or should it cover those since 1570, if not still further back. I have in printed form a commentary on and a facsimile of the 1570 editio princeps of the Tridentine Roman Missal, what one could well call the Tridentine Roman Missal; a few dozen other editions from different centuries are available on the Internet. Bealtainemí (talk) 20:29, 16 February 2019 (UTC)

That is indeed my view as well. My concern is that the discussion of the history behind certain components of text and rubrics is more appropriate to the article History of the Roman Canon, and that this article should instead focus on explaining the text and rubrics of the Canon as currently used. Any underlying sacramental theology would be appropriate as well, but it should otherwise refrain from discussing its history except where unavoidable (e.g. the differences between the 1962 to the 1970 version, or a historical explanation of its theology). If we were to discuss all aspects of its historical development here as well, we would cause us to duplicate in large part the content already at History of the Roman Canon, which seems quite unnecessary. In addition, we would invariably have to include its development during the pre-Tridentine era as well, which carried a greater degree of variability in text as well as rubrics and would run into the aforementioned problem of duplication of information.

Of course, I'm not asking you to acc

In an ideal world where there was only one version of the Canon that was currently used, this article would only focus on the text and rubrics of that version as well its underlying theology, and leave most discussion of its historical development to History of the Roman Canon. But of course, the reality is that as of 2019, the Catholic Church has two versions that simultaneously count count as "currently used Canons" (i.e., the 1962 and 1970 versions), so this article has to slightly broaden that criteria to discussion the text and rubrics of both, but otherwise we should still restrain ourselves from the aforementioned tendencies.

That is not to say that your efforts will be to waste. They still belong on Wikipedia, just in a different article. I intend to move discussion about the historical development of the Canon to History of the Roman Canon so it will be maintained in a more appropriate setting, while keeping this article lean and focused. Epistulae ad Familiares (talk) 16:18, 18 February 2019 (UTC)

Your most recent version says "the priest says this part of the Canon inaudibly". It is best to specify what "part" and what precisely is meant by "inaudibly": Gihr said that the priest must hear himself. In the same section the origin of the "inaudibility" is explained as: "It became customary for the priest, having himself said the Sanctus, to continue immediately with the rest of the Canon while the choir was still singing the Sanctus. Mystic reasons were assigned to the silent prayers of the Canon, being purely sacerdotal and belonging only to the priest, with the silence increasing reverence at the most sacred moment of the Mass and removing the Consecration from ordinary vulgar use". Surely the sourced proposed explanations must be given for this question that concerns very much this aspect of the text and rubrics of the Roman Canon?

Yours also said: "Past variations of this prayer included the once universal mention of the civil ruler (emperor or king), which Pope Pius V removed in the 1570 revision that created the Tridentine Mass, but continued in use in the Holy Roman Empire until 1806 and later in the Austrian Empire until 1918. The prayer also included, at one time, a special mention of the priest himself, though not by name." Again unsourced. This surely concerns the text of the Roman Canon (and needs to be sourced).

Since you have not proposed to change this article to "The 1962 and 1970 texts and rubrics of the Roman Canon", "et rege nostro N." and its presence in the Roman Canon for centuries after Pius V's attempt to exclude it still belongs here. If you were to exclude such information from this article, nothing would be left here. Bealtainemí (talk) 20:12, 18 February 2019 (UTC)

I do not understand why I am being asked to account for those statements. They have been in place long before I started editing this article, and all I did was reword it more better readability. I agree that they need to be sourced, but there is no need to state that to me unless you are saying that this was somehow my fault.

Secondly, the article title does not dictate the scope of an article, and it needs not be made extremely specific and overly precise to match the scope. That is why, for instance, List of cities with the most high-rise buildings is not List of cities with more than 100 high-rise buildings that are at least 35 metres or 12 stories tall. The title and scope, while related, are each determined by other criteria. I am in favour of not unnecessarily broadening the scope as this article would still have plenty of discussion on the details of text and rubrics of two versions, as well as the underlying theology of its component prayers; historical information would not be removed and still belong on History of the Roman Canon, which discusses in great detail the historical development of the Canon itself. Epistulae ad Familiares (talk) 05:19, 19 February 2019 (UTC)

Of course you aren't "being asked to account for those statements", nor are you in any way blamed for their presence, a presence that shows that this article has always treated as pertinent the background to the present formulation of text and rubrics. The title, too, does not limit the scope of the article by excluding what gave rise to the text and rubrics. Perhaps it does exclude raising irrelevant questions about whether Benedict XVI was right or wrong in speaking as he did of the 1962 Roman Missal as "an" extraordinary form of the Roman Rite rather than as "the Extraordinary Form".

I don't object to your use of "æ" in Latin liturgical texts. I suppose you know that it is to avoid mispronunciation by people with little knowledge of ecclesiastical Latin that liturgical books use "æ" instead of "ae" and place stress accents on words of more than two syllables, but that Latin is not normally written even with only one of these two peculiarities. Bealtainemí (talk) 11:46, 19 February 2019 (UTC)

I understand now, please accept my apologies for misunderstanding your point. I do agree that giving some background to the origin of the some text and rubrics is acceptable, but it is my view that this should be restrained and kept minimal to avoid an excessively detailed discussion of a detailed historical lineage which would be end up duplicating the content at History of the Roman Canon.

You are quite right regarding the issue of the use of "æ" in both Classical and Ecclesiastical Latin. I feel since the intention is to reproduce the original text here, it seems appropriate to use the letters and spellings as done in the source text (unless it was a typo). For instance, I syng of a mayden provides the spelling and letters peculiar to its source (Middle English), even though the words would otherwise perfectly match Modern English. Epistulae ad Familiares (talk) 13:41, 19 February 2019 (UTC)

I think that, by that logic, the accent marks should be reproduced as well as the "æ" combination (or that both should be normalized); but I do not insist. Bealtainemí (talk) 20:20, 21 February 2019 (UTC)

Citing a book for content

"A primary source may only be used on Wikipedia to make straightforward, descriptive statements of facts that can be verified by any educated person with access to the primary source but without further, specialized knowledge. For example, an article about a novel may cite passages to describe the plot, but any interpretation needs a secondary source" (WP:PRIMARY).

On what grounds is it claimed that citing Missale Romanum 1920, p. 339 for the presence of a rubric in that edition, and [Missale Romanum 1962, p. 310 for its absence in that edition "amounts to inappropriate synthesis"? These facts can be verified by any educated person with no more than the access provided to the sources, and no interpretation is added to what the sources say. Bealtainemí (talk) 07:50, 5 July 2019 (UTC)

Thank you for reaching out. The issue here is fundamentally epistemological and how certain statements derived from the sources interact with Wikipedia's policies on WP:VERIFIABILITY and WP:ORIGINALRESEARCH. There are two separate groups of content that are involved in the edits in question. The first point is that Fortescue and Gueranger both discuss the fact that there is a rubric where the priest bows his head at the "Per eundeum..." and that this is unparalleled elsewhere in the liturgy. I have no issues with this, as this is sourced to the appropriate secondary sources.

However, the second point is the claim that this same rubric did not exist in the missals of certain years, solely based upon the fact that the WP:PRIMARY sources selected by the editor do not appear to contain that rubric in the place where the editor expects it to be, and then phrasing it in a way that appears to say that the secondary source is wrong on this point, when there are no sources that support this implicit statement. While it may not appear obvious, the way the sources are used runs afoul of the finer points of WP:OR, in particular the policy on inappropriate synthesis. Per WP:SYN, "Do not combine material from multiple sources to reach or imply a conclusion not explicitly stated by any of the sources." Statements such as "Although Fortescue attributes it also to Pius V's Missal, it is in fact absent in the original 1570 Tridentine Roman Missal" is considered inappropriate synthesis because the way it is phrased implies that a secondary source (Fortescue) is wrong when such a statement is not supported by any of the given sources.

You may like to take a look at the examples given in WP:SYN to help. For instance, the statement "The United Nations' stated objective is to maintain international peace and security, but since its creation there have been 160 wars throughout the world." is considered inappropriate synthesis. While both halves of the statement may be separately reliably sourced, when they are combined in this manner they imply a conclusion that is not present in either of the sources (namely, that the United Nations has failed in its objective). In this sense, it can be seen how the aforementioned statement is also considered inappropriate synthesis. Do note that an inappropriate synthesis does not need to be explicitly stated, much like the example given.

Furthermore, even setting aside the fact that Fortescue stated that the rubric was already present in the Pius V Missal, it is still inherently problematic to generate a commentary on which editions of the Missal the rubric was omitted based upon primary sources rather than a secondary source, such as a commentator who has analysed the history and development of different Missals and has definitively said that it is missing from certain years. It is important to bear in mind that sources are typically referenced to support whatever they do contain (in a positive sense), rather than what they do not contain. How do we know with absolute surety the rubric must have been omitted in this particular year? How certain are we that the rubric was not separately stipulated in a separate book, similar to a General Instruction of the Roman Missal or a Additiones et Variationes or a Ritus servandus in celebratione Missae? How certain are we that the omission of the rubric was not a printing/scanning error that was later corrected in a different edition? Or that perhaps that the rubric was customary rather than written down? Or contained somewhere else in the text? These are all questions that require "further, specialized knowledge" to answer, and causes the subsequent commentary to exceed the boundaries of WP:PRIMARY.

I hope this helps! Epistulae ad Familiares (talk) 17:39, 6 July 2019 (UTC)

Surely relevant to an article on the text and rubrics of the Roman Canon is the fact that both versions in use today (the Vatican II version and the 1962 Council of Trent edition) the rubric of which Fortescue and Guéranger speak is not present. Your speculation about "later corrections" of these two versions would indeed be synthesis. But to look up the page in which the prayer in question is given in each of the two versions involves no synthesis, no specialized knowledge, no commentary on other editions past or future, no speculation about whether the rule still exists ... All that is stated, and that is demonstrated by precise reliable sources, is that the rubric of which F. and G. spoke, is not there in either of the two versions. I certainly hope this helps! Bealtainemí (talk) 20:28, 6 July 2019 (UTC)

As regards your statement Your speculation about "later corrections" of these two versions would indeed be synthesis, I believe you may be confused about Wikipedia's policy on WP:OR, and possibly the role of a talk page as well. Expressing doubts in a talk page about the verifiability of certain statements is not inappropriate synthesis. However, if I were to assert the same doubts in the content of the article without being supported by my own sources, then it would be inappropriate synthesis.

Further to this, I have already explained why stating an omission should be supported by a secondary source that positively says that such a rubric is missing. I understand your good intentions in trying to explain to readers that the rubric may no longer be present in the 1962 and 1970 versions used today, and I appreciate it. However, sources are typically cited to support what they contain, not what they do not contain. There is a fundamental epistemiological problem in using a negative source to support a positive statement. It does require specialised knowledge to know with certainty that such a rubric does not occur in a different document or elsewhere in the book in the 1962 and 1970 versions other than the page given, and it does involve speculation about whether the rule still exists (indeed, the statements currently in the body of the article speculate that it does not). This is why it is preferable that it be sourced to a secondary source that can positively assert that the rubric is missing. The problem is that, when it comes to the rubrics surrounding the Missal, is that it is known that many rubrics could be themselves mentioned not in the Missal itself but in a separate document. If I may give an example, the 1970 Missal itself does not ask the priest to bow his head at the mention of the name of Jesus, but such a rubric is mentioned instead in a separate document, the GIRM. The possibility, in principle, of a similar rubric being distributed to a separate document is why it is difficult to make such assertions based solely on a primary source. I recognise the good faith behind your edits, but we need to find a stronger source to stand up to the requirements of WP:V.

All that being said, I would like to take this opportunity to express my appreciation for the the patient and extensive work you have put into this article at large, even if sometimes we may not see eye-to-eye on certain matters. Epistulae ad Familiares (talk) 01:44, 7 July 2019 (UTC)

Do you deny that

1. this source shows that Fortescue said that in his time the Memento etiam prayer contained the rubric in question?
2. this source shows that Guéranger said that in his time the Memento etiam prayer contained the rubric in question?
3. this source shows that in the 1920 Missale Romanum the Memento etiam prayer contained the rubric in question?
4. this source shows that in the 1962 Missale Romanum the Memento etiam prayer did not contain the rubric in question?

If you do, you seem to be trolling. Bealtainemí (talk) 06:07, 7 July 2019 (UTC)