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

of the oration and the Gradual Christus factus est became obsolete (the latter
was replaced by a per annum text with eucharistic content). The possibility
of including the foot-washing ceremony after the Gospel was retained;
the denudation of the altar after the Mass is still more insignificant in this
liturgy than it had been earlier.
Upon reading the description of the earliest witnesses of the Holy Week
(e.g. the Jerusalem account of the pilgrim Aetheria) and comparing these
memories with the practice of the Eastern Church as well as with the ancient
documents of the Latin Church, it becomes clear that originally the
Christians celebrated these holy days with a coherent sequence of rites, with
a liturgy stretching throughout almost the whole day. The rite of Maundy
Thursday according to the Bugnini liturgy is practically identical with the
normalized form of the daily Mass, and all further demands are to be met
by locally constructed devotions.
The possible arguments to defend these changes are that a "pastoral
liturgy" should contain no more than what is executable by the faithful of
an average-sized community. This is certainly an essential difference in attitude.
In the earlier liturgy it was always the whole Church that celebrated
and invited the individual communities and individual faithful to take part in
the celebration according to their own circumstances, yet to the greatest extent
possible. The Church manifests itself in those parts of the rite as well
in which the given community as a whole cannot participate. (In the last
analysis two ecclesiological views seem to be at conflict here. The "modern"
notion identifies the Church with the edifice built of its members. The classic
view of Catholic theology holds that the Church is the city descending
from heaven or, in other words: the temple into which the faithful are incorporated.)
In my opinion the task of the reforms should have been to restore the
complex order of the Maundy Thursday celebration beginning with the Office
of the day and incorporating the rite of purification ("Reconciliatio
Paenitentium") closing down the Lenten period; the cathedral Mass with
the benediction of the chrism; then the solemn evening Mass; and finally
the Mandatum (adapted to present-day conditions but preserving its essence).
This ordo represents, of course, an ideal which cannot be realized
everywhere in its integrity. But it is good to see it together, to regard this
complex as the starting point of the celebration of particular churches
while the rubrics for adaptations could refer to legitimate differences of
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