The Pro-Cathedral, Marlbrough Street. Help needed.

The history of the liturgical movement prior to the Second Vatican Council was an very varied and complex phenomenon and embraced all sorts and shades of opinion. The beginnings, c. 1910, were modest enough but by the 1930s some very strage stuff was coming out France and Germany. I would point especially to Odo Cassell and his historiography of liturgy basically positing a three stage division of the history of the Liturgy: a primitive one, the high point reached at the time of Gregory the Great who died in 604, and a long radical decline and curruption since then. For him, the purpose of the liturgical reform was the radical cutting away of all accretions gathered during the second milennium so as to return to the rites and ceremonies of the V century by reconstructing them with an almost archeological compulsion. So, the theory went that by 1975, the Church would be celebrating the Liturgy as it had been celebrated in 675.

This kind of mentality was already to be seen in some schools of archeology from the early 1930s. The results of their work is something like the interior of Santa Sabina which saw its interior stripped of nearly everything that did not date from the first milennium so as to reconstruct the interior as it was in say 600. The implication of all of this somehow being that everything after that date had no historical, or religious, significance, or a significance no longer relevant.

A more moderate and sane approach to the question of liturgical reform was adopted by Cardinal Antonelli, who as professor of Archeology in the Antonianum in 1920s and 1930s fully realized that while adjustments had to be made to ensure that the rites and ceremonies of the Church retained and communicated their original significance and meaning, such adjustments had to be done minimally and bearing in mind the valid historical evolution of many of these rites, texts and ceremonies which form part of the Church’s tradition and cultural and religious heritage.

Both of these opposing trends affected every stage of the liturgical movement before, during and after the Second Vatican Council. All of the strains and tensions inherent in this clash are to be found in Sacrosanctum Concilium (1963). However, the Council generally tended towards a more “conservative” line while accepting and incorporating many valuable insights from the Cassell camp. For instance, the Council accepted in principle “the wider use” of the vernacular in the Mass and the Council Fathers specifically mandated that the collects of the Mass, the Eucharistic prayers and the Communion would remain in Latin. On the question of retaining the collects in Latin the vote was something like 2,200 to 120! Other examples could be given.

The implementation of Sacrosanctum Concilium began in the late 60s and early 70s. A special commission was set up to carry forward the reform of the liturgy “willed by the Fathers of the Council”. While the Council outlined the general lines and principles to be followed, the details of the reform were left to the special commission. Here again, the old tensions of conflicting schools of thought quickly emerged and focused on the persons of Cardinal Giacomo Antonelli and Archbishop Annibale Bugnini who was an aggressive sisciple of Odo Cassell. The result was a “power” struggle between these two schools for the implementation of the reform in the middle of which a general anarchy spreading ( from social collapse e.g. France and the soixanthuitards) into the whole liturgical domain which lead to a free for all and general chaos.

Timid efforts to resolve the conflict of schools were made by Rome. Bugnini was disgraced when Paul VI eventually realized that what he was about was not what the Council wnated. He was banished to Iran. Firmer action began in 1988 when John Paul II issued a document to commemorate the 25 anniversary of the Sacrosanctum Concilium publication of Sacrosanctum Concilium entitled Vicesimusquintus annus adveniens. This was the red fag for the anarchy and marks the beginning of a period when the Church’s central authority begins to reassert itself in the field of liturgy and begin the task of eradicating the worst abuses that had occurred. In the last ten years, Rome has published a series of official legislative documents all instigated by this fresh approach to the reform of the liturgy – indeed, geared to salvage the reform from the lunatic element that lead to the wholesale destruction of many of our finest churches in Ireland (e.g. the unforgiveable committed by Casey in Killarney and Duffy in Monaghan).

To turn to the question of whether the kind of vvandalism experienced by us in Ireland was replicated in other countries, we would have to say that that depended very much on the country. In practically all of the European countries there exist bodies such as the Monuments Historiques in France , the Beni Culturali in Italy or the Denkmalamt in Germany and Austria. these operate merely on architectural, cultural or historical criteria. But they have ensured that nothing such as what has happened in Ireland took place. A second factor in European countries is whether or not the lunatic element took over the Church in the field of liturgy. Where that happened and there was no heritage authority, disaster ensued e.g. Ireland, to a lesser extent in Britain.

As regards Ireland and the Second Vatican Council I would recommend viewers to go to a good university library and consult the Acta of the Council – which have all been published. In the very early volumes you will find the replies send in by the Bishops of the worls when they were asked to advise on the topics that could be siscussed during the council. That is, they were ased to comment on the great theological questions to be placed before the Council. The contribution of the Irish Hierarchy will be found under “Hibernia”. It contains the personal response sent by every bishop in Ireland on the subject of the Council. From reading these, it quickly emerges that, with one or two exceptions, none of the Irish bishops had the slightest contact with the enormous evolution that had taken place in theology in the previous fifty years. They were absolutely clueless. This is extraordinary given the role they, a particularly Cardinal Cullen of Dublin, had played in the First Vatican Council just ninty years before. The conclusion of this is that despite all the talk about the Council, most of the Irish bishops had not a clue about what it was about. In this condition, they were not in a position to halt the onward march of the ecclesiastical internationale whose ethos is so well preserved in the pages of the Furrow.

This I realize is a potted version of events but it serves to explain in a general way the problem underlying the difficulties we have experienced in insular Ireland.