From Trent to the Present

The Council of Trent asked for order in a landscape of diverging local missals, and Pius V delivered it in 1570: a standardized Missale Romanum imposed on the whole Latin Church, with exceptions only for rites that could prove two centuries of continuous use, such as the Ambrosian rite of Milan and the Mozarabic rite of Toledo. The Tridentine missal proved remarkably stable. Revisions under Clement VIII in 1604 and Urban VIII in 1634 adjusted details, and later popes added feasts, but a priest of 1600 would have recognized the book of 1900.

The edition issued under John XXIII in 1962 was the last of that line. After the Second Vatican Council, the Missal of Paul VI, promulgated in 1969 and issued in 1970, rebuilt the book for a reformed rite: celebrated in the vernacular as well as Latin, with an expanded cycle of readings in a separate lectionary, additional eucharistic prayers, and revised prayers throughout. A third typical edition followed in 2002 under John Paul II, and its English translation of 2011 replaced the earlier rendering with one closer to the Latin. The 1962 missal did not disappear; communities attached to the older form continue to use it under conditions the papacy has adjusted more than once, and the two books now mark the two poles of modern Roman Catholic liturgical life. Through every revision the missal has remained what Trent made it, the instrument by which Rome keeps the Mass one.