WI after Vatican II the Roman Catholic Church continued on with the Tridentine, or Latin, Mass? One of the reasons Pope Paul VI cited for his new Mass (the one most celebrated today) was to make the Mass more relevant to the modern world. Was this reform necessary? Could the church continue on with a medieval liturgical mindset up until the present day?
A minority of Catholics (like me) still worship at the Latin Mass, so in some respects they are living this WI scenario. But what would have happened if reform never happened and everyone continued on as before? Would this decision alienate people from the Church, or would alienation stem from other factors that have come to pass in OTL?
Pope Pius XII was in favor of an incremental liturgical reform. Here is paragraph 60 of his encyclical
Mediator Dei.
60. The use of the Latin language, customary in a considerable portion of the Church, is a manifest and beautiful sign of unity, as well as an effective antidote for any corruption of doctrinal truth. In spite of this,
the use of the mother tongue in connection with several of the rites may be of much advantage to the people. But the Apostolic See alone is empowered to grant this permission. It is forbidden, therefore, to take any action whatever of this nature without having requested and obtained such consent, since the sacred liturgy, as We have said, is entirely subject to the discretion and approval of the Holy See. [emphasis mine]
The missal was revised several times during his Papacy by Bagnini. Mostly these were changes in Holy Week rites but in 1958 he approved Dialogue Mass which had been experimented with in some dioceses previously without Rome's approval. There are some signs that if he had lived longer he would have next approved an incremental vernacularization.
Given this background it is hard to see how the Second Vatican Council would not have approved at least some form of vernacularization. As it was the Constitution on the Sacred Liturgy had only 2 explicit changes---resurrecting the Prayer of the Faithful and vernacularization subject to the approval of the national bishops conferences. Everything else the CSL said about the liturgy were vague and not completely consistent general principles. It will be noted that the CSL passed by an extremely large margin in even the preliminary secret ballots.