16 February 2011

Antiphon's excellence & An important book

Good things seem to be happening with the Society for Catholic Liturgy’s journal Antiphon. It’s editor Fr Thomas Kocik has posted a note on the NLM about its recent issue which includes articles on mutual enrichment, eastward facing for the Mass, ars celebrandi and actuosa participatio as well as reviews by Dr Alcuin Reid, Fr Uwe Michael Lang, Fr Paul Gunter OSB, Dr Daniel Van Slyke and others. Not at all a bad team there.

Fr Kocik’s post also includes the text of Reid’s review of Nicola Giampietro’s new book
The Development of the Liturgical Reform(as seen by Cardinal Ferdinando Antonelli from 1948-1970).  It looks important. Some quotes from Cardinal Antonelli about the Vatican II reform in the review seem to show the other side of the coin to what we are usually told.

“I am not enthusiastic about this work. I am unhappy about how much the Commission has changed. It is merely an assembly of people, many of them incompetent, and others of them well advanced on the road to novelty. The discussions are extremely hurried. Discussions are based on impressions and the voting is chaotic. What is most displeasing is that the expositive Promemorias and the relative questions are drawn up in advanced terms and often in a very suggestive form. The direction is weak.”

“That which is sad... however, is a fundamental datum, a mutual attitude, a pre-established position, namely, many of those who have influenced the reform...and others, have no love, and no veneration of that which has been handed down to us. They begin by despising everything that is actually there. This negative mentality is unjust and pernicious, and unfortunately, Paul VI tends a little to this side. They have all the best intentions, but with this mentality they have only been able to demolish and not to restore."

What more is there to be said?


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