Andrew,

The text's capital letters seem to suggest that the Ecce Panis had some particular significance. Why you would have skipped from verse 3 to verse 21 is a matter of conjecture.

My missal has this notation:

"Wherever, according to local customs, the procession still takes place during the former Octave of Corpus Christi, two votive Masses (2nd class) of the Blessed Sacraement may be said with Gloria and Creed. The Sequence is not said. [emphasis added]. ..."

I suspect (but I can't say for certain) that the practice you describe developed in the modern era, when optional verses are bracketed, so that "Wives, be subject to your husbands" is optional, and the "short form" of other texts exists because Mass can't be more than 57'36".

@MatthewRoth that's what I thought and expected, thanks.

@Chris it may be that the note was made for a time when singing in the Novus Rite, presumably on Corpus Christi Sunday. As I say, I can not recall.

Being in a liturgical hurry is (sadly) typical of the Ordo of Paul VI.

Or is it typical human? The stories of hurried 12 minute Masses from before 1962 are abound, so much that they cannot be just anecdotal.

That aside, in Masses with the 1970 Roman Missal, the sequence Lauda Sion should – IMHO – only be shortened when there are just reasons to do so. The text has a doctrinal richness that one shouldn't omit just out of laziness.

I understand that the number given may be for exaggeration, but still, even twenty minutes is pushing it. I tend to think that people who recall such things either didn't have a good notion of time, even if it's still true that the clergy rushed through Mass; in that case, why is rushing through an entirely new liturgy still acceptable? The critics who defend the new rite on the grounds that the traditional liturgy was celebrated carelessly also tend to believe that it was universally celebrated without any care or devotion and that trads mistakenly think that the care taken today was universally found before the council. Neither is the case, but the evidence is strong to suggest that the truth is somewhere in the middle, particularly once you leave the context of large American cities that were then heavily impacted by white flight, because the suburban churches of the 1950s and early 1960s are frequently dignified (more than many trads might wish to credit) but are obviously set up for low Mass and Benediction without much more.

@MatthewRoth that's an intriguing claim : what of the architecture or the “setup” of a church suggests that it's for Low Mass and Benediction and not much more?

Yeah. It depends, right. It's not like solemn Mass was impossible, but the sanctuary was small, space being dedicated to pews in the nave. The altar wasn't yet close to the square altar of the Byzantine liturgy frequently used today, but it wasn't as long as what you'd find in most pre-conciliar churches.

Sometimes, the ceiling corresponds to what I expect a church to look like, like most of the ubiquitous brick buildings that are sort of mid-century modern, like both cathedral churches of St Thomas More (one in Arlington, the other in Tallahassee), and in both cases, actually, the sanctuaries are fairly spacious (less so with a forward altar…). There are also churches that are much too small in terms of height, but they're also very long, with tiny sanctuaries, like St Mary's, Cecil PA (exterior here), which isn't even the best example, since it has a cemetery and clearly replaced an earlier building. There are other examples; I'm not actually sure that Our Mother of Sorrows in Louisville kept the original, "temporary" church of the 1930s, because the current building looks like churches of the 1950s, but it's a great example. The thing that looks like the rail is the one remaining piece, and it's where the high altar used to be until they decided to move it forward…

It's hard to find good pictures since so many churches have been renovated, unfortunately, plus Google Images is junk these days. But hopefully that gives you an idea of what I mean. IMHO, the real reason why things went south is because the people in charge were already badly formed and then found themselves in an environment turned upside down.

The normal form of the Mass is the Solemn High Mass with deacon and subdeacon, you will have two acolytes, a thurifer, cross bearer, torches etc. How do the full ceremonies work with a small square table pretending to be an altar halfway down the nave? Most churches these days are set up to have low Mass with hymns, which is basically what the N.O. Mass is.

Oh? Then why does Michael Uwe Lang writes this:

However, the comprehensive and detailed Ritus servandus in the opening section of the missal seems to give priority to the low Mass (Missa lecta), which was said (rather than sung) by a priest with the assistance of one or more servers. The indications for the solemn Mass appear as additions to an underlying shape and structure, which is that of the low Mass. Hence it could be argued that the Ritus servandus ratifies the shift, which began with the Franciscan ordinal Indutus planeta, towards an understanding that the ritual forms of the Mass were, as Chadwick has aptly put it, “based on low Mass rather than low Mass being a reduction of the normative pontifical Mass, from which the solemn form with deacon and subdeacon is also a reduction.”[4]

Isn’t it the reformed Roman Missal that reversed this? Low Mass with hymns is not what the 1970 Roman Missal is about, but is in practice sadly often reduced to.

It should be noted that the Missale Romanum issued by St. Pius V after the Council of Trent is a revision of the Curial Missal, which was intended for the private (i.e. Low) Masses of Vatican officials, not the Diocesan Missal. This also accounts for the great lack of choir ceremony in the Tridentine Missal when compared to other rites of the time, which would have been normal for sung Masses (Pontifical or Solemn): i.e., number of cantors, rulers of the choir, where things like the Gradual (chant at the step) would be sung from, etc.

The Ritus servandus would take priority in the Missal because through Church history most Masses would have been Low Masses said at side altars. I am sure we have all noticed these now disused altars, but historically they would have been used on a daily basis so each priest could say his Mass.

The Main Mass is supposed to be the Solemn High Mass, this was celebrated in every small parish Church every day in Sarum England. We can tell the importance of the sung Mass in the manuscripts we have great variety of Graduales and notated Missals.

You may dislike the low Mass, but what do you want, priests not saying Mass?

As for the N.O. Mass music appears to be an afterthought beset by a vast variety of choices. When was the last time you heard the Propers, Epistle, Gospel or Creed sung at an N.O. Mass? I thought that Gregorian chant was to take pride of place, but it seems they meant on dusty library shelves.

What this shows is that there was room for genuine renewal and reform of the Missal of 1570; however, neither the 1955 Holy Week NOR the 1969 Missale Romanum are the answer to that. The rubrics of the Ordo Missae could have been reformed and amended without the creation of a (NB) Novus Ordo Missae and an entirely new Rite.

Re: solemn Mass, it could be argued that it's low Mass onto which solemn Mass is an imposition, but it's not in reality what the normative form of the Roman rite is. Lang himself even mentions that the pontifical Mass is normative, but low Mass derives its ceremonies from solemn Mass, not the other way around, and even in the 20th century, the rubrics were still derived from solemn Mass, which was still to be celebrated as conventual Mass; only when that wasn't possible could it be sung. After 1910, the chapter's assistance in choir wasn't required at a second Mass, but that Mass was not supposed to be a low Mass. (I think that it could be, but nothing said that it had to be.)

Heck, even the 1955 Holy Week came out with the solemn liturgy before providing a simplified form for parishes lacking the necessary sacred ministers.

The 1965 rubrics were terrible, actually. They chopped off the prayers at the foot of the altar, which made them uniform, as they went with the Requiem rubrics, not the festal ones, and therefore more like an imposition. There are no rubrics on how to celebrate pontifical Mass without ministers or a sung Mass with just a deacon. Everyone was left to figure it out on their own.

The Pax had disappeared, or begun to disappear, in many places (England, but surely elsewhere) by the time of the Black Death, and just because the curial rite doesn't have these extra features doesn't mean that preserving them was the only way forward and that we screwed up after Trent.