[Question:]{.underline} What is the basis for concelebration of Mass?
[Answer:]{.underline} The emphasis on the necessity and opportunity of concelebration of Mass by several priests at the same time is as novelty of the modern post-conciliar, which takes its origin in the conciliar document on the Liturgy, Sacrosanctum Concilium. It has this to say in the paragraph in which it promotes this practice: “Concelebration whereby the unity of the priesthood is appropriately manifested has remained in use to this day in the Church both in the East and in the West” (§57).
Vatican II consequently makes it sound as if concelebration is a traditional practice. In fact, it is not at all the case. An essential distinction is lacking, and it is between ceremonial concelebration and sacramental concelebration. It is the ceremonial concelebration which has always been traditional. This is the situation that takes place when the Bishop is surrounded by his presbyterium, that is his priests, who share in certain ceremonial activities. This happens, for example, during the ceremony of consecration of the Holy Oils, during which the priests also breathe into the holy oils. It also happens during the ordination ceremony when the priests all impose their hands on the newly ordained priest, together with the bishop. However, the priests present do not consecrate the Holy Oils nor do they ordain the ordinand. They are simply present, participating in the ceremonies, and showing their unity with their bishop, who alone has the fullness of the priesthood to accomplish these functions.
The same is the traditional practice in the Roman rite. Until the 10^th^ century, priests did not celebrate their own Mass if they were present at the Pontifical or Solemn High Mass. They participated in the ceremonies celebrated by the bishop. It was a ceremonial concelebration. However, only the bishop celebrated the Mass. It was the development of the Low Mass in the 9^th^ centuries that made it possible for the priests to celebrate themselves every day.
It was during the 13^th^ century that the custom of sacramental concelebration developed for two special ceremonies, namely the ordination of priests and the consecration of bishops. The ordinands to this very day keep this practice, by reciting together with the celebrant, not just the words of consecration, but all the words of the Offertory and Canon of the Mass. It is a laborious ceremony, but demonstrates the union around the altar of the newly ordained priests or bishops with the ordaining bishop.
However, it was never more than a special ceremony for this extraordinary circumstance of ordination. The very same reasons that brought about the introduction of so-called “private” Masses during the 9^th^ and 10^th^ centuries in the Latin rite, when priests began the custom of celebrating Mass every day, also prevented any consideration of regular concelebration. The development of the understanding of the Mass as an unbloody renewal of the sacrifice of the Cross led to a greater understanding of its power to apply to the souls of those present, and for whom the Mass if offered, the infinite graces of the Redemption. Since it is the sacrifice itself that is renewed in an unbloody way which applies graces to souls, the more frequently and devoutly the sacrifice is offered the more graces are applied to souls.
This applies to concelebrations, since when several priests concelebrate, there is only one offering of the Body and Blood of Christ, and consequently only one Mass, and only one application of the merits of the Redemption. However, if they offer their Masses separately then there are several Masses offered up.
The whole concept of concelebration is an invention of modernists within the liturgical movement who desire to make the value of the liturgical ceremonies depend upon the social or community aspect of the celebration — namely the assistance and participation of faithful or of several priests. Consequently, they disdain “private” Masses, as if they were not public acts of worship, applying the graces of the Cross simply because there is no assistance of the faithful. Likewise they promote concelebration of several priests, thus emphasizing the community aspect of the priesthood. However, in both cases it is the efficacity of the Mass that is despised, as if the unbloody renewal of the sacrifice of Calvary itself, without the assistance of a community, were not all-powerful to atone for the sins of the people and to honor God and obtain graces for those for whom it is offered, and especially for the entire Catholic Church, for which every traditional Mass if offered.
This is what Pope Pius XII had to say in his 1947 encyclical Mediator Dei condemning the errors and excesses of the liturgical movement: “They assert that the people are possessed of a true priestly power, while the priest only acts in virtue of an office committed to him by the community. Wherefore they look on the Eucharistic Sacrifice as a ‘concelebration’ in the literal meaning of that term, and consider it more fitting that priests should ‘concelebrate’ with the people present than that they should offer the Sacrifice privately when the people are absent. It is superfluous to explain how captious errors of this sort completely contradict the truths which we have just stated above, when treating of the place of the priest in the Mystical Body of Jesus Christ.” (§ 83,84)
If it is true that the concelebration of priests together is not the same thing as the concelebration of the people with the priest(s), it is also true that the first leads to the second, and that the same error about the value of the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass underlies both practices of concelebration. This is the reason why the 1917 Code of Canon Law (Canon 803) strictly forbade concelebration of several priests, other than in Masses of ordination of priests and consecration of bishops. Not only is this encouraged by the 1983 Code (Canon 902), but it actually forbids the edifying example of different priests celebrating Masses on side altars at the same time as the main celebration. All this is but one more consequence of the failure of the New Mass to express the reality that the Mass is a true propitiatory sacrifice.
Answered by Father Peter Scott, SSPX.