The Bugnini-Liturgy and the Reform of the Reform - MusicaSacra

The following studies 1 contain critical reflections on the Novus Ordo.
We start with a seemingly unessential theme, the position of hymns in the
Office. It is, however, suitable to make clear some basic aspects. The second
study concerns the very center of the liturgy: the Holy Week. The Divine
Office is a much more important element in this affair than many regard;
it stands in the focus of the third chapter. The proper chant of the Mass is
connected with the organism of the liturgical year, and the fifth section on
the pericopes and calendar completes this theme.
Three more tracts (published elsewhere) have been appended to the
series. The first addresses the friends of the Tridentine Movement, and its
intention is to convince them that the long-term alternative of the Novus
Ordo is not simply the restoration of the 1962 Missal. The last two treatises
are about music, but some remarkable theological and pastoral issues are
also discussed in them.
* * *
By way of introduction, let me draw the lines immediately so as to separate
myself from certain views on the one hand, and on the other to exclude
some other topics, albeit important, from discussion:
1. The critical approach to the "Bugnini Liturgy" 2 presented here reflects
neither disobedience toward higher church authority nor a practical opposition
to liturgical regulations. In everyday life, I am ready to accommodate
myself to the currently valid liturgical prescriptions even though as an expert
dealing with the liturgy, I consider them wrong or unsuccessful in many
respects. Thus, my remarks are made in a spirit of service and not of contestation.
1 Since some of them have been published separately, certain thematic repetitions could
not be entirely avoided.
2 My expression 'Bugnini Liturgy' was earlier criticized by saying that the new liturgy was
elaborated by commissions and not a single person, and was introduced under the
authority of the Pope and the Curial Office concerned. These readers do not seem to
have noticed the essentially provocative nature of the title. The name was naturally not
meant to attribute this liturgy to one person, but had to do with the contents: It symbolized
that the new liturgy is not a recent form of the Roman rite, nor another stage of an organic
development, but a hastily created, voluntarist invention, in which individual ideas
and ambitions played a decisive, dominant role. This has remained so as regards the content
even if it had received /^/approbation.
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