Louis Bouyers erfaringer fra konsilet – del 3

15okt_bouyer Boyer skriver dernest en hel del om sin deltagelse i kommisjonen som skulle revidere den katolske messen. Om dette skriver han slik:

What shall I say, after this, of my collaboration in the Consilium for the reform of liturgical books from which, after the publication of my Eucharistie and the call from Paul VI, I could not demur?

I should not like to be too harsh on this commission’s labors. It numbered a certain number of genuine scholars and more than one experienced and judicious pastor. Under different circumstances, they might have accomplished excellent work. Unfortunately, on the one hand, a deadly error in judgment placed the official leadership of this committee in the hands of a man who, though generous and brave, was not very knowledgeable: Cardinal Lercaro. He was utterly incapable of resisting the maneuvers of the mealy-mouthed scoundrel that the Neapolitan Vincentian, Bugnini, a man as bereft of culture as he was of basic honesty, soon revealed himself to be.

Even besides this, there was no hope of producing anything of greater value than what would actually come out of it, what with this claim of recasting from top to bottom and in a few months an entire liturgy it had taken twenty centuries to develop.

Having been expressly called to the sub-commission in charge of the Missal, I was petrified to discover a preparatory sub-commission’s projects when I arrived. It was inspired principally by Dom Cipriano Vagaggin from the Bruges Abbey and by the excellent Msgr. Wagner, from Trier. The idea was to obviate the Holland-born fashion of Eucharists being improvised in complete ignorance of the liturgical tradition going back to Christian origins. I still cannot understand by what aberration these excellent people, who were rather good historians and generally reasonable intellects, could suggest that the Roman Canon should be so disconcertingly carved up and put together again, as well as other projects claiming to be «inspired» by Hippolytus of Rome, but which were no less harebrained. …

For my part I was ready to resign on the spot and go home. But Dom Botte convinced me to stay on, if only to obtain some lesser evil.

At the end of the day, the Roman Canon was more or less respected and we managed to produce three Eucharistic Prayers which, despite rather wordy intercessions, reclaimed pieces of great antiquity and unequalled theological and euchological richness, long since out of use since the disappearance of the ancient Gallican rites. I have in mind the anamnesis of the third Eucharistic prayer, and also what we were able to salvage of a rather successful attempt to adapt a series of formulas from the ancient so-called «Saint James’s» prayer to the Roman scheme, thanks to Father Gelineau’s work, who was not always so well advised. …

Bouyer er som vi leser her lite imponert over kommisjonens leder, Annibale Bugnini – jeg har tidligere lest hans egen framstilling av reformarbeidet «The Reform of the Liturgy 1948-75». Og som Bouyer skriver er det utrolig at man i løpet av noen få måneder ønsket (og også gjennomførte!) en radikal reform av hele messeliturgien, en liturgi som hadde vokst fram i løpet av 2000 år – og konsilets biskoper ønsket jo bare en forsiktig reform av de meste nødvendige ting.

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