Organic Development of the Liturgy
Latin Mass Magazine recently published a wonderful article on what constitutes authentic, organic development of the liturgy by the scholar of liturgy, Dom Alcuin Reid. I had been considering doing a post about it, but, lo and behold, The Pertincacious Papist was given permission to publish it on-line in its entirety. So, without further ado, I’ll simply refer you to the whole article.
Here’s a snippet:
It is in understanding that context, it is by identifying ad defending the true nature of Sacrosanctum Concilium’s call for an organic development of the Liturgy, and in recognising that this was grossly exceeded, that we underline our insistence that the liturgical reform be looked at again and with some urgency. For the Roman rite has suffered severe damage and its repair is urgently required.
None of us, not even our beloved Holy Father, can know with absolute certainty the best way of celebrating the new rites in a manner consistent with Catholic worship, whilst others talk of reforming the reform, and others still come to savour the splendour and value of the unreformed traditional Liturgy, a solution, please God, draws nearer.
History will record the answer to our malaise. We, in daring to do as much as we are able I response to this crisis, through our studies and most importantly by our worthy celebration of the Sacred Liturgy, may be privileged to be part of that answer.
Update 1: Unfortunately, it appears that the article was taken down.
Update 2: Dad29 has the cached article.
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The appeal of some to organic development strikes me as a little weak. It was mentioned all of once in Sacrosanctum Concilium. There were signficant numbers of documents coming from the Consilium and the pope in the 60’s, and organic development was not considered a benchmark of the early post-conciliar years.
Many traditionalists eschew the principle. They resisted it before the Council, criticizing the insertion of St Joseph into the anaphora as an intrusion along the line of adding a new book to the Bible.
That said, I would gladly admit that the principle of gradual development was overlooked. We know from experience and hearsay that implementing liturgical reforms in parishes and dioceses was poorly done.
If liturgical reform was more than pastorally blundered, I would be interested to see how advocates of the 1570/1962 Missal might undertake the clarion call of Vatican II and get to work on the traditional liturgy. The world’s bishops were in near unaminous agreement that the liturgy needed a lot of attention and work in 1962. Today, there is nothing near consensus on either the current Roman Missal or the place for the old one.
I think our crisis is less one of malaise than one of polarization and politics.
Comment by Todd — June 8, 2007 @ 12:07 pm
“There were signficant numbers of documents coming from the Consilium and the pope in the 60’s, and organic development was not considered a benchmark of the early post-conciliar years.”
Precisely the point of the entire article, which I’m certain you read carefully.
It is passing strange that you take the Judgment Seat to declare that the Fathers of the Council’s requirement for “organic development” is a weak argument.
It’s also somewhat odd that you ignore the “organic development” of the Roman Missal prior to AND following Trent.
Comment by dad29 — June 8, 2007 @ 12:38 pm
I’m having trouble with the link to the article - any suggestions?
Comment by jds — June 9, 2007 @ 10:49 pm
You can find the article, but it’s “cached.” A little Googling will help, or since I fixed the link on my blog, you can find it there:
http://dad29.blogspot.com/2007/06/alcuin-reed-on-liturgical-reform.html
Click on the internal link to find the article.
Comment by dad29 — June 12, 2007 @ 11:53 am