Richard Barile
The Mass as it might have been, preserving the rites, prayers, and gestures of the Old Ordo in the Novus Ordo. A dream that concerns priests above all, but also the people.
“ I have a dream / I have a dream”: this is what Martin Luther King saidAugust 28, 1963, and from then on, important and prophetic figures within the Church also began to dream, such as Cardinal Martini, who in his 1996 address to Saint Ambrose exclaimed: "At the end of the millennium, let us dream!" Recently, "liturgical dreams" have emerged: reinventing new canons as in the 1970s and 1980s, revising the language of prayers and prefaces in an existential way, avoiding addressing God as "Majesty" since we are children, postulating "a true laboratory (...) that will initiate a liturgical reform, without fear" (E. Bianchi in VP 2025/01, p. 51). All progressive dreams and therefore welcome.
It is more difficult, however, in the Church to dream of a future that recovers a lost past . And yet, just as when faced with the proposal to eliminate the Orate fratres , Paul VI observed: "It would be a lost gem" (Annibale Bugnini, La riforma liturgica . CLV Edizioni liturgiche, Rome 1997, p. 376), in the same way I would like here to rediscover some "gems" of the Vetus Ordo Mass "lost" in the Novus Ordo Mass , but which could have been inserted without modifying the current structure, maintaining a stronger link with the previous rite. A dangerous path, because officially it is never said that the reform had limits and that it could/should be revised; indeed, «the liturgical reform is irreversible» (Pope Francis, Speech to the CAL 08.24.2017) and again – something to make Pravda envious – «it is better to avoid using the expression “reform of the reform”» (Communiqué from the Holy See Press Office: Some clarifications on the celebration of the Mass , 07.11.2016).
So here we will be reduced to dreaming of what today's Mass could have been with a more generous continuity with yesterday's Mass and limiting ourselves to very few texts/rites.
No comments:
Post a Comment