The Liturgical Movement
How the traditional Roman Rite,
over one thousand years old, was
destroyed
Michael Davies
REMNANT
COLUMNIST,
The Liturgical Movement—Guéranger to
Beauduin to Bugnini by Fr. D. Bonneterre (Angelus Press, 2002). Available from The Remnant for $12.95
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During the first session of the Second Vatican
Council, in the debate on the Liturgy Constitution, Cardinal Alfredo Ottaviani asked: “Are these Fathers planning a
revolution?” The Cardinal was old and
partly blind. He spoke from the heart
without a text about a subject which moved him deeply, and continued:
Are we seeking to stir up wonder,
or perhaps scandal among the Christian people, by introducing changes in so
venerable a rite, that has been approved for so many centuries and is now so
familiar? The rite of Holy Mass should
not be treated as if it were a piece of cloth to be refashioned according to
the whim of each generation.
So concerned was he at the revolutionary potential
of the Constitution, and having no prepared text, the elderly Cardinal exceeded
the ten-minute time limit for speeches. At a signal from Cardinal Alfrink, who was presiding at the session, a technician
switched off the microphone, and Cardinal Ottaviani
stumbled back to his seat in humiliation.[1]
The Council
Fathers clapped with glee, and the journalists to whose dictatorship Father
Louis Bouyer claimed the Council had surrendered itself,
were even more gleeful when they wrote their reports that night and when they
wrote their books at the end of the session.
When we laugh, we do not think, and, had they not been laughing, at
least some of the bishops might have wondered whether, perhaps, Cardinal Ottaviani had a point.
He did
indeed!
A liturgical
revolution had been planned, one which very few of the 3000 bishops present in
St. Peter’s would have endorsed had they suspected its true nature. The revolution had been planned before the
Council, and its manifesto was the preparatory schema on the liturgy, the draft
document for which the bishops would vote after discussing and amending
it. The document can properly be termed
the Bugnini Manifesto, as it was primarily the work
of Vincentian priest, Father Annibale
Bugnini. He
managed to secure its approval shortly before being dismissed by Pope John
XXIII from his post as secretary of the Liturgical Preparatory Commission and
from his chair at the
Bugnini’s
allies on the Conciliar Liturgy Constitution, who had
worked with him on preparing the schema, now had the task of securing its
acceptance by the bishops without any substantial alterations. They did so with
a degree of success that certainly exceeded the hopes of their wildest dreams.[3] They presumed that the bishops would be a
bunch of useful idiots, men who preferred to laugh rather than think. “It was
all good fun,” wrote Archbishop R. J. Dwyer, one of the most erudite of the
American bishops. “And when the vote came round, like wise Sir Joseph Porter,
KCM, ‘We always voted at our parties’ call; we never thought of thinking for
ourselves at all.’ That way you can save
yourself a whole world of trouble.”[4]
The late Msgr. Klaus Gamber was described by Cardinal Ratzinger
as "the one scholar who, among the army of pseudo-liturgists, truly
represents the liturgical thinking of the centre of the Church." As regards the attitude the Council Fathers
would have taken to the changes that have been foisted upon us in the name of
Vatican II, he informs us in his book The
Reform of the Roman Liturgy that: “One statement we can make with certainty
is that the new Ordo
of the Mass that has now emerged would not have been endorsed by the majority
of the Council Fathers.”[5]
Why then did these bishops endorse the Liturgy
Constitution? Archbishop Lefebvre has given us the answer: "There were time bombs in the
Council."[6] These "time bombs" were, of course,
the ambiguous passages inserted in the official documents by the liberal periti or
experts. The answer to Cardinal Ottaviani’s question as to whether the Council Fathers were
planning a revolution is that most of the Fathers, the 3000 bishops, most
certainly were not, but that some of the most influential periti, the experts who accompanied the bishops to Rome, were definitely
planning a revolution. It is not
exaggerating in any way to claim that these liberal periti hijacked Pope John’s
Council, a fact which I have documented in great detail in my book on Vatican
II.[7]
Douglas Woodruff, one of
This is an exceptionally perceptive comment, and it
would be hard to improve on "the Council of the periti" as a one-phrase
description of Vatican II. Bishop Lucey of
The manner in which the liberal periti laid the foundations for
their revolution during the first session of the Council was spelled out in
precise detail by Cardinal John Heenan of
The subject most fully debated
was liturgical reform. It might be more
accurate to say
that the bishops were
under the impression that the
liturgy had been fully discussed.
In retrospect it
is clear that
they were given
the opportunity of discussing only general principles. Subsequent
changes were more radical than those
intended by Pope John and the
bishops who passed the decree on the liturgy. His sermon at the end
of the first
session shows that Pone John did not suspect what was being planned
by the liturgical experts (my emphasis).
God forbid, warned Cardinal Heenan,
that the periti
should take control of the commissions established after the Council to
interpret it for the world. But this is precisely what happened. The liberals
had constructed the Liturgy Constitution as a weapon with which to initiate a
revolution, and the Council Fathers had placed this weapon in the hands of the
revolutionaries who had forged it. Archbishop R. J. Dwyer observed, with the
benefit of hindsight, that the great mistake of the Council Fathers was
"to allow the implementation of the Constitution to fall into the hands of
men who were either unscrupulous or incompetent. This is the so-called ‘Liturgical Establishment,’
a Sacred Cow which acts more like a white elephant as it tramples the shards of
a shattered liturgy with ponderous abandon."[10]
What the experts had been planning was made clear
on
As most Catholics know very little about the
liturgical movement, most of what they read in Father Bonneterre’s
book will come as a complete surprise.
Those who know anything of its history will be aware that it was
endorsed by the pre-Vatican II popes and may be surprised at the strength of
Father Bonneterre’s criticism and his insistence that
it is the font and origin of the liturgical anarchy which is emptying our
churches today. The inescapable
conclusion of his book is that the movement, like Vatican II, was hijacked by
liberals.
One does not need to be a liturgical scholar to
know that Dom Prosper Guéranger was the greatest of
all liturgists, and his principles and his work were fully endorsed by St. Pius
X. They can be considered the founders of the liturgical movement. Does the
linking of their names to that of Archbishop Bugnini
via Dom Beauduin in the title of this book imply that
they must bear some responsibility for the post-conciliar
reform, which Monsignor Gamber has summed up in one
devastating sentence: “At this critical juncture, the traditional Roman rite,
more than one thousand years old, has been destroyed.”[11]
Father Bonneterre refutes
this suggestion in the introduction to his book and also makes clear his
purpose in writing it:
The relationship suggested by such a
title may seem rather bold to our reader, but it is not we who see a link
between the author of the Institutions Liturgiques (Dom Guéranger)
and the "gravedigger of the Mass" (Annibale
Bugnini). It is the Roman authorities themselves. In
fact, Pope Paul VI wrote to the Abbot of Solesmes on
Already the Foreword of the Institutio Generalis of
the New Missal claimed that contemporary reforms were the continuation of the
work of St. Pius X. The conclusion of the Foreword claims that "Vatican II
brought to completion all the efforts to bring the faithful closer to the
Liturgy, efforts undertaken throughout the last four centuries, and especially
in recent times, thanks to the liturgical zeal shown by St. Pius X and his
successors." Thus, and we can give an infinite number of examples, the
most advanced liturgists and the "Conciliar
Church" herself claim that there is continuity, and even a
"homogeneous development," in the Liturgical Movement between Dom Guéranger, or even St. Pius X, and Annibale
Bugnini.
That is a deception that we cannot accept!
That is why we have written this book on the Liturgical Movement. We will
endeavour to show the way in which the movement was diverted from its course.
Certainly, historically Dom Guéranger and St. Pius X
are truly at the origin of the Liturgical Movement, but it is false and
pernicious to claim that this movement, at least in its contemporary forms, is
derived from their thought; worse still that it is the continuation of their
work. To expound this thesis, we must study the history of the Liturgical
Movement, acknowledge its magnificent fruits, but also establish from external
evidence the early deviations of this grandiose enterprise which could have
brought so much to the Church.
It is important to note the fact that the
Liturgical Movement did indeed bring forth magnificent fruits, though rarely so
in English-speaking countries. Father Bonneterre insists that his book is not intended to be
purely negative:
Far from being negative, such a study enables us to discern what we must
reject and what we must carefully conserve of the Liturgical Movement. It is vitally important that above all we who
work for the maintenance of Catholic Liturgy become the heirs and successors of
the work of Dom Guéranger and St. Pius X. We make the
wishes of St. Pius X our own.
Father Bonneterre
endorses the definition of the Liturgical Movement given by Dom Oliver
Rousseau, OSB, as “the renewal of fervour for the liturgy among the clergy and
the faithful.” This year marks the 100th
anniversary of the election of St. Pius X.
Traditional Catholics everywhere should be preparing appropriate
celebrations. Father Bonneterre writes:
In 1903 the person who was to give the
movement a definite impetus had just ascended to the See of Peter—St. Pius X.
Gifted with an immense pastoral experience, this saintly pope suffered terribly
from the decadence of liturgical life. But he knew that a trend for renewal was
developing, and he decided to do his utmost to ensure that it bring forth good
fruits. That is why on
Our
keen desire being that the true Christian spirit may once more flourish, cost
what it may, and be maintained among all the faithful.... We deem it necessary
to provide before aught else for the sanctity and dignity of the temple, in
which the faithful assemble for no other object than that of acquiring this
spirit from its primary and indispensable source, which is the active
participation in the most holy mysteries and in the public and solemn prayer of
the Church. (Tra le Sollecitudini,
November 22,1903.)
For St. Pius X as for Dom Guéranger,
writes Father Bonneterre, “the liturgy is essentially
theocentric; it is for the worship of God rather than
for the teaching of the faithful. Nevertheless, this great pastor underlined an
important aspect of the liturgy: it is educative of the true Christian spirit.
But let us stress that this function of the liturgy is only secondary.” The tragedy of the liturgical movement was
that it would make this secondary aspect of the liturgy the primary aspect, as
is made manifest today in any typical parish celebration of the New Mass.
Father Bonneterre has nothing but praise for initial
stages of the movement: “Born of Dom Guéranger's
genius and the indomitable energy of St. Pius X, the movement at this time
brought magnificent fruits of spiritual renewal.”
If there is a villain of the book he is Dom Lambert
Beauduin, but Father Bonneterre
has no hesitation in paying tribute to the great contribution that he made to
the movement in its early years:
The merit of having understood all that
could be learned from the teaching of St. Pius X falls to Dom Lambert Beauduin (1873-1960). Alas, this monk was unable to
maintain throughout his life this hierarchy of the ends of the liturgy, i.e.,
worship first, teaching second, as we shall see in the course of this study,
but let us not anticipate.
Dom Lambert Beauduin
at first was a priest of the diocese of
It is important to set the Liturgical Movement
within the context of the Modernist crisis which is documented in my book Partisans of Error. Father Bonneterre writes:
Crushed by St. Pius X, the Modernists
understood that they could not penetrate the Church by theology, that is, by a
clear exposé of their doctrines. They had recourse to the Marxist notion of
praxis, having understood that the Church could become modernist through
action, especially through the sacred action of the liturgy. Revolutions always
use the living energies of the organism itself, taking control of them little
by little and finally using them to destroy the body under attack. It is the
well-known process of the Trojan horse.
The Liturgical Movement of Dom Guéranger, of St. Pius X, and of the Belgian monasteries,
in origin at any rate, was a considerable force in the Church, a prodigious
means of spiritual rejuvenation which, moreover, brought forth good fruits. The
Liturgical Movement was thus the ideal Trojan horse for the modernist
revolution. It was easy for all the revolutionaries to hide themselves in the
belly of such a large carcass. Before Mediator
Dei, who among the Catholic hierarchy was concerned about liturgy? What vigilance
was applied to detecting this particularly subtle form of practical Modernism?
It was from the 1920's onward that it became clear
that the Liturgical Movement had been diverted from its original admirable
aims:
Dom Beauduin
first of all favored in an exaggerated way the
teaching and preaching aspect of the liturgy, and then conceived the idea of
making it serve the "Ecumenical Movement" to which he was devoted
body and soul. Dom Parsch tied the movement to
Biblical renewal. Dom Casel made it the vehicle of a
fanatical antiquarianism and of a completely personal conception of the
"Christian mystery." These first revolutionaries were largely
overtaken by the generation of the new liturgists of the various preconciliar liturgical commissions.
This new generation is described by Father Bonneterre as the “young wolves.” In any revolution it is
almost routine for the first moderate revolutionaries to be replaced or even
eradicated by more radical revolutionaries, as was the case with the Russian
Revolution when the Mensheviks (majority) were ousted by the Bolsheviks
(minority).
Faced by this excessive
acceleration of the movement, Dom Beaudin was
frightened... We witness here the first phenomena of “permanent excesses,” a
feature of all revolutions: yesterday’s managers are overtaken by today’s
agitators, the first revolutionaries are overtaken by today’s agitators.
Just as nothing could prevent the rise to power of
the Bolsheviks, nothing could prevent the triumph of the young wolves:
After the Second World War, the
movement became a force that nothing could stop. Protected from on high by
eminent prelates, the new liturgists took control little by little of the
Commission for Reform of the Liturgy founded by Pius XII, and influenced the
reforms devised by this Commission at the end of the pontificate of Pius XII
and at the beginning of that of John XXIII. Already masters, thanks to the
Pope, of the preconciliar liturgical commission, the
new liturgists got the Fathers of the Council to accept a self-contradictory
and ambiguous document, the constitution Sacrosanctum Concilium. Pope Paul VI, Cardinal Lercaro and Fr. Bugnini,
themselves very active members of the Italian Liturgical Movement, directed the
efforts of the Consilium which culminated in the promulgation
of the New Mass.
How could Pope Pius XII, the Pastor Angelicus, the most scholarly Pope
of the century, and one whose orthodoxy could not possibly be questioned, have
allowed the young wolves of the liturgical movement to consolidate their power during
his pontificate? Father Bonneterre makes it clear that this saintly pontiff was
well-aware of the subversive elements within the Liturgical Movement. In His Encyclical Mediator Dei, perhaps the most sublime exposition of the true
nature of the Mass ever to be written, Pope Pius wrote: “We observe that
certain people are too fond of novelty and go astray from the oaths of sound
doctrine and prudence.... They sully
this sacred cause with errors, errors which affect the Catholic faith and
ascetical teaching.” Father Bonneterre insists that, alas:
Pope Pius XII did not know the
true position of the Liturgical Movement. Its most dangerous leaders were being
supported and protected by the highest dignitaries of the Church. How could the Pope have suspected that the
"experts" who were so highly praised by Cardinals Bea and Lercaro were in fact the most dangerous enemies of the
Church?
He laments the fact that: “Thus Pius XII gave the
most inopportune encouragement to the congress at
The Liturgical Movement is like
an indication of the plans of divine providence for the present time, like the
wind of the Holy Ghost blowing through the Church, bringing men closer to the
mysteries of the faith and the treasures of grace, which flow from the active
participation of the faithful in the life of the liturgy.”
Father Bonneterre
comments: “This declaration could have been true and timely before 1920; in
1956 it was no longer so. In the intervening years, the Liturgical Movement had
denied its origins and abandoned the principles laid down by Dom Guéranger and St. Pius X.”
The most influential of the new liturgists, the
great architect of the post-Vatican II liturgical revolution, was Father Annibale Bugnini. Father Bonneterre
recounts a visit by Father Bugnini to a liturgical
convention held at Thieulin near
Some days before the reunion at Thieulin, I had a visit from an Italian Lazarist,
Fr. Bugnini, who had asked me to obtain an invitation
for him. The Father listened very attentively, without saying a word, for four
days. During our return journey to
Father Bonneterre
comments:
This revealing text shows us one of the first
appearances of the "gravedigger of the Mass," a revolutionary more
clever than the others, he who killed the Catholic liturgy before disappearing
from the official scene. So it was at this date that the
"Counter-Church" completely pervaded the Liturgical Movement. Until
then it had been occupied by the modernist and ecumenical forces: after the war
it was rotten enough for Freemasonry to take direct control of the reins: Satan
got into the Trojan Horse.
The reference to Freemasonry is based on the fact
that in 1975 Pope Paul VI removed Bugnini, an
Archbishop by then, from his position as Secretary of the Sacred Congregation
for Divine Worship and the Sacraments, dissolved the entire Congregation, and
in 1976 exiled him as Nuncio to Iran.
Pope Paul did this because he had been given documentation which
convinced him that the Archbishop was a freemason. Bugnini denied that
he was a mason, but accepted that he was dismissed because the Pope believed
him to be a member of the Brotherhood.
All the relevant documentation is contained in Chapter 24 of my book Pope Paul’s New Mass.
Father Bonneterre
explains that:
Although the reforms of Pius XII
had given some satisfaction to the leaders of the Movement, the implacable
orthodoxy that the Pope had maintained throughout had not been to their taste.
New and more daring reforms were called for, and they needed a pope who
understood the problem of ecumenism and who was a wholehearted supporter of the
Movement.
He claims that “The news of the death of the
Angelic Pastor was received with almost delirious joy by the deviated
Liturgical Movement.” The aged Dom Lambert Beauduin
had not the least doubt as to the cardinal he hoped would be elected, and
confided his hopes to Father Bouyer:
If they elect Roncalli,"
he said "all will be saved. He will be capable of calling a Council and
canonizing ecumenism..." Silence fell; then, with a return of his old
mischievousness, he said with flashing eyes, "I believe we have a good
chance. Most of the cardinals are not sure what to do. They are capable of
voting for him.
Father Bonneterre comments:
To consecrate ecumenism, yes,
indeed, but also to consecrate the Liturgical Movement, such would be the task
of the long-awaited Council. For more than forty years the new liturgists had
been spreading their errors, they had succeeded in influencing a considerable
portion of the Catholic hierarchy, and they had won some encouraging reforms
from the Holy See. All this patient underground work was about to bear fruit.
The liturgical revolutionaries took advantage of the Constitution on the
Liturgy to get their ideas accepted. Then, when they were appointed members of
the Consilium, they only had to draw the extreme conclusions
from the principles of Vatican II.
Father Bonneterre insists
that:
This new rite carries on in its
turn all the errors which have come forth since the beginning of the deviations
of the "Movement." This rite is ecumenical, antiquarian, community-based,
democratic, and almost totally desacralized; it also
echoes the theological deviations of the modernists and the Protestants: toning
down the sense of the Real Presence and diminution of the ministerial role of
the priesthood, of the sacrificial character of the Mass, and especially of its
propitiatory character. The Eucharist becomes much more a communal love feast
than the renewal of the Sacrifice of the Cross.
It is thus with the New Mass that the Liturgical
Movement which had started so well ended so badly. The 1959 liturgy of the Protestant Taizé community is printed as an appendix to the book, and
shows some disturbing similarities to the New Mass. Father Bonneterre
does not, however, refer to the alarming correspondence of the changes, principally
omissions, made to the Order of Mass in the Missal of St. Pius V in the
concoction of the order of Mass in the 1970 Missal and the almost identical
omissions from the Sarum Missal made by Thomas Cranmer in concocting his 1549 Communion Service. These are documented in great detail in my
book Pope Paul’s
In 1975, Father Bouyer
stated: "The Catholic liturgy has been overthrown under the pretext of
rendering it more acceptable to the secularised masses, but in reality to conform
it with the buffooneries that the religious orders were induced to impose,
whether they liked it or not, upon the other clergy. We do not have to wait for the results: a
sudden decline in religious practice, varying between twenty and forty per cent
among those who were practising Catholics....
Those who were not have not displayed a trace of interest in this
pseudo-missionary liturgy, particularly the young whom they had deluded
themselves into thinking that they would win over with their clowning.[15]
The value of Father Bonneterre’s
book would have been enhanced considerably had he been asked to adapt and
update it by researching the wealth of documentation published since he wrote
it in 1980, the most important item in this respect being the posthumous
memoirs or Archbishop Bugnini, which provide the most
valuable source available for researching the actual concoction of Pope Paul’s
New Mass.[16] There are frequent references in this book
to figures included in that of Father Bonneterre, and
to many of the experts who are not. One
of these, Father Joseph Gelineau, is described by
Archbishop Bugnini as one of the "great masters
of the international liturgical world".[17] This “great master tells us, with
commendable honesty, but no a trace of regret:
Let those who like myself have
known and sung a Latin-Gregorian High Mass remember it if they can. Let them compare it with the Mass that we now
have. Not only the words, the melodies,
and some of
the gestures are
different. To tell the truth, it is a different liturgy of the Mass.
This needs to be said without ambiguity: the Roman Rite as we knew it no longer
exists (le rite romain
tel que nous
l'avons connu n'existe plus). It has been destroyed (il est détruit).” [18]
Despite these reservations, The Liturgical Movement—Guéranger to Beauduin to Bugnini is a book
which, like Msgr. Gamber’s Reform of the Roman Rite, no Catholic
can afford to be without if he wishes to understand the post-Vatican II
liturgical revolution. It is profusely
illustrated and has an excellent index.
The
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THE LITURGICAL
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by Michael Davies $19.95
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by Michael Davies $19.95
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[1] M. Davies, Pope John’s Council (PJC), p. 93
[2] M. Davies, Pope Paul’s New Mass (PPNM), p. 499.
[3] PPNM, p. 500.
[4] PJC, pp. 92-93.
[5] K. Gamber,
The Reform of the Roman Liturgy
(RRL), K. Gamber ( Harrison, N.Y.,1993), p. 61.
[6] Marcel
Lefebvre, Un Leveque
Parle (Paris 1974), p. 196.
[7] PJC, Chapter 5.
[8] The Tablet,
[9] Catholic Standard (
[10] The
Tidings,
[11] RRL, p. 99.
[12] L. Bouyer, The Decomposition of Catholicism (
[13] Ibid.
[14] Ibid.
[15] Religieux et clercs contre Dieu (
[16] A. Bugnini, The Reform of the Liturgy: 1948-1975
(Collegeville, Minnesota, 1990).
[17] Bugnini, p. 221.
[18] J. Gelineau, Demain la
liturgie (Paris, 1976), pp. 9-10.