Liturgy: There to Here in 40 Years

How did Catholic liturgy, once awe-inspiring and ineffable to behold, so quickly find itself laden down by the accretions of gringe-worthy soppiness, folderol and kitsch? Some answers may be found in excerpts from an excellent article written by Kenneth J. Wolfe, appearing in the New York Times (of all places):

...it was Pius himself who was largely responsible for the momentous changes of 1969. It was he who appointed the chief architect of the new Mass, Annibale Bugnini, to the Vatican’s liturgical commission in 1948.

Bugnini was born in 1912 and ordained a Vincentian priest in 1936. Though Bugnini had barely a decade of parish work, Pius XII made him secretary to the Commission for Liturgical Reform. In the 1950s, Bugnini led a major revision of the liturgies of Holy Week. As a result, on Good Friday of 1955, congregations for the first time joined the priest in reciting the Pater Noster, and the priest faced the congregation for some of the liturgy.

The next pope, John XXIII, named Bugnini secretary to the Preparatory Commission for the Liturgy of Vatican II, in which position he worked with Catholic clergymen and, surprisingly, some Protestant ministers on liturgical reforms. In 1962 he wrote what would eventually become the Constitution on the Sacred Liturgy, the document that gave the form of the new Mass.

Many of Bugnini’s reforms were aimed at appeasing non-Catholics, and changes emulating Protestant services were made, including placing altars to face the people instead of a sacrifice toward the liturgical east. As he put it, “We must strip from our ... Catholic liturgy everything which can be the shadow of a stumbling block for our separated brethren, that is, for the Protestants.”

How was Bugnini able to make such sweeping changes? In part because none of the popes he served were liturgists. Bugnini changed so many things that John’s successor, Paul VI, sometimes did not know the latest directives. The pope once questioned the vestments set out for him by his staff, saying they were the wrong color, only to be told he had eliminated the week-long celebration of Pentecost and could not wear the corresponding red garments for Mass. The pope’s master of ceremonies then witnessed Paul VI break down in tears.

(Emphasis added)

It's not a stretch to propose that the virtual disappearance of a distinct Catholic culture and identity in the United States can be traced directly back to this attack on the ancient liturgy. Thanks to this experiment to make the Church more congenial to Protestants, an entire generation of Catholics (perhaps even more by now) has been denied the beautiful celebration of the liturgy that their parents, grandparents, great-grandparents, and so on and so on, going back over one-thousand years, experienced. Bugnini's wrecking ball changed all that within the short span of forty years. It's both remarkable and sad.