“Ironically, today it is often in the celebrations of the older, pre-conciliar rites that we find what the Council Fathers truly desired: the full, conscious, actual and utterly fruitful participation in the Ordo Missæ which has grown up in the course of the centuries, as well as in the other liturgical rites. That is to say that the primary liturgical goal of the Council – bringing about the fruitful participation in the Sacred Liturgy – did not and does not necessarily require ritual reform. That is not to say that people cannot and do not participate fruitfully in the rites promulgated by Paul VI; but it is to say that they are not necessary for such fruitful participation.
“Many will find this assertion controversial if not shocking, but it is true. The early twentieth-century liturgical movement knew this perfectly well. It was only later that the idea that some moderate reform was desirable came to be aired (and it was) and then became the obsession with reform that possessed the “brave” Father Bugnini and his merry band of men, leading them to create an entirely new liturgy from which the Mass of Vatican II is, sadly, absent.
“In March 1965 Pope Paul VI hailed his celebration of the new liturgy as “a great event, that shall be remembered as the beginning of a flourishing spiritual life, as a new effort to participate in the great dialogue between God and man.” Alas, as all the indicators show only too clearly, that flourishing has not come to pass. For all his sincerity and good intentions it is perhaps more accurate to quote William Buckley’s assessment: “The tragic epitaph of Pope Paul’s reign is the half-filled American Church on Sunday” (11 August 1978). Unfortunately, almost five decades on the statistics still bear out this judgement.
“The liturgical reform desired by the Fathers of the Second Vatican Council – and glimpsed by them with satisfaction sixty years ago today – quickly became a runaway train. Its engineers took it far beyond its intended destination, and those who attempt to control it today are unwilling and/or unable to get it back onto the tracks the Council laid down for it. Indeed, many seem to be enjoying the ride!
“It is important to reiterate that this does not mean that the new rites cannot assist those who actually still practise the Faith in encountering God, but it does mean that the Mass and other liturgical rites that masquerade under the Council’s name are simply not that which the Second Vatican Council called for or authorised. They are products created afterwards according to a different set of principles.
“All of this begs the question of whether today, or in the future, it is or shall be possible to find what the Council Fathers actually desired. Without a full-scale reform of the reform it seems unlikely in the usus recentior – the modern use of the Roman rite.
“But that the full, conscious, actual and fruitful participation in the Ordo Missæwhich has grown up in the course of the centuries, and the other liturgical rites, can be found in the usus antiquior – the older use of the Roman rite – as they are celebrated today, is unquestionable. It may well be that many of the Council Fathers present in St Peter’s Square sixty years ago today would more than understand those who – and particularly the young who are searching for God – given everything that has happened since, turn to the older rites and discover in them treasures that are old yet ever new.”
Full text: https://thecatholicherald.com/article/whither-the-mass-of-vatican-ii
