Jeg mottok nylig flere bøker jeg hadde bestilt fra amazon.co.uk om liturgiske spørsmål – sikkert svært ovverraskende for leserne av bloggen, at jeg er interessert i slikt. Flere av bøkene er kritiske til flere av forandringene av liturgien, men boka jeg begynte med er kalt «Reforming the Liturgy. A Response to Critics.» av John F. Baldovin, SJ. Han tar for seg flere av de kjente kritikerne av liturgireformen, bl.a. Klaus Gamber og Alcuin Reid. Han oppsummerer her Reids synspunkter i boka The Organic Development of the Liturgy på denne måten:
.. (the book) ends with the beginning of Vatican II and so does not deal directly with Sacrosanctum Concilium or with the postconciliar application of its principles. The author’s attitude toward the conciliar constitution and subsequent reform of the liturgy can fairly easily be culled from his work. His objections can be summarized as follows:
1. A major reform of the liturgy has never been successfully undertaken by centralized authority in the church. For the papacy to mount a wholesale reform lies outside the ambit of papal authority, since the pope may not alter tradition. This reform was much too quick and too radical.
2. Although it may make sense to translate the readings of the liturgy into the vernacular, there was no good reason to vernacularize the entire liturgy.
3. The replacement of the traditional Sunday readings by a three year cycle did «unprecedented violence to the objective traditional Liturgy.»
4. The same can be said for the addition of new eucharistic prayers to the Missal.
5. The reforms are founded on the erroneous assumption that Catholic worship needs to be accommodated to historical times and cultures. This is a mistaken understanding of the meaning of «Pastoral Liturgy.»
6. The historical-critical findings of scholars must be assessed very carefully since there is a tendency among many liturgical historians to advocate for a forgotten «Golden Age» of the liturgy to the detriment of the organic, living tradition of the Roman Rite and thus to submit the objective tradition to ideological currents.
7. Catholie liturgy is «essentially incarnational»; i.e. its extenral forms cannot be changed without changing the meaning of the liturgy.