Thursday 7 January 2010

''Papal Prohibitions...''


If any readers don't already, I would heartily recommend Liturgical Notes by Fr John Hunwicke. Fr Hunwicke may be an Anglican, but he knows more about Liturgy than at least one priest blogger (whom I will not name). His most recent post is well worth a read. He asks, pertinently: does the promulgation of new liturgical books, a so-called ''organic'' development in the Liturgy, permit or render totally obsolete previous ones? It is a rather good rule of thumb in my opinion; the rule that if a new promulgation forbids previous editions of the Missal or Breviary after a certain time (such as Divino afflatu of St Pius X) then the reform is ''inorganic.'' I fail to see personally how anyone can uphold the thesis that committee work before the Council constitutes ''organic'' development in the Liturgy, whereas the same sort of committee work during and after the Council is inorganic, without employing the Orwellian principles of Doublethink. It seems that such people would deceive us unless they themselves have been deceived. The same goes for people, powers-that-be etc, who champion the 1962 liturgical books as the ''traditional Latin Mass,'' the ''usus antiquior,'' the ''ancient Roman Rite'' or whatever they call it. They would fain have us think that the '62 books are the Old Rite though. It is quite monstrous, just like this weather. For someone whose parents were both born in 1961, and are therefore, technically, older than the old, I find this hard.

What do we do then? I simply pray for the edification of traditional Faithful, the reversal of previous liturgical reform (particularly the stuff in Divino afflatu about priests not fulfilling their obligation to say the Office if they use the old Psalter) and the destruction of the '62 liturgical books. It is, afterall, just made-up Liturgy.

3 comments:

  1. Patricius,

    As someone else who was born in 1961 I too object to be described as ancient.

    I certainly believe 'Doublethink' is endemic at the moment. What is even more suprising is that the lead movers involved with the recent history of liturgical reform both in it pre-Conciliar and post-Conciliar stages were the same people. How committee work revision, a lot of it plainly wrong, can be 'organic' development in the period 1948 - 1962 whilst the same people and a similar, if larger, committee working after the Council produces 'inorganic' development is bizzare. The reality is that there is a desire to blame the Council for all woes rather than looking deeper.

    Looking at liturgical development over a wider period of time there is an excellent article from a few years back by Nathan Mitchell I shall copy and send to you.

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  2. P.S.

    I heartily agree with your estimation of Fr. John Hunwicke's liturgical knowledge in comparison to certain other clergy.

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  3. Rubricarius, many thanks for your comment. I know little of 20th century liturgical reform. I just know roughly what happened and roughly when. I would love to own Bugnini's own work, The Reform of the Liturgy; apparently he confesses everything. Can you recommend any ''historical'' reading for this subject - particularly the reform of the Psalter and parts of the Mass 1911?

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