Michael Davies’ bok om Pope Paul’s New Mass er på ca 675 sider (med fotnoter etc) og inneholder så mye informasjon at jeg bare kan nevne en lite brøkdel på bloggen min. På side 90 og 91 siterer han et innlegg i den tids The Tablet (som visst var mer konservativ da) fra mars 1966. Innlegget viser hvordan legfolket ble påvirket til å si at de liker det nye og ikke det gamle, men at det ikke uten videre er riktig oppfattet. Jeg var 10 år i mars 1960 (og heller ikke katolikk), men kanskje noen som levde på den tid kan informere oss unge om hvordan de selv opplevde denne liturgiovergangen?
The shallowness of the propaganda intended to induce the Catholic people to accept or at least not to resist change was obvious to the discerning layman from the very beginning. Writing in The Tablet in March 1966, Christopher Sykes, the biographer of Evelyn Waugh, observed:
«The average Catholic layman is most aware of the Aggiornamento movement in the Church by the experience of going to church and attending Mass in the new liturgy. We love it; we are deeply grateful for it; we have never had it so good; so we are repeatedly told. Those who don’t like it are a small unintelligent minority who would cling to anything, good or bad, just because it happened to be old. We are repeatedly told this too. We are also told by many of our clergy that we were most dissatisfied with the Mass as it was; that when attending it we paid no heed to its significance but, on the contrary, regardcd it as the priest’s business and nothing to do with us laymen, to whom it was merely a meaningless gabble in a language we particularly disliked. We were all very happy, so we are told, to have done with the old Mass.
The propaganda in favor of the new rite, which I have not caricatured above, strikes me as being particularly weak in respect of the alleged general dislike of Catholics for the former rite. It is weak as a propaganda Point, because the same clergy told us for years, certatinly since I can remember first hearing a sermon or a religious instruction, that the Mass bound us into a fellowship because (doctrine apart) love of the Mass was an emotion which we shared … (The vernacular) would weaken that majestic unity of the Church reflected in its ceremony. We were told that such a custom would offend far more people than it would please, and do far more harm than good. When the same people turn round and congratulate us on having got rid of the bad old liturgy, and promise us more vernacular and less and less of the Mass as we were said to love it, what are we to believe? Were they consciously talking nonsense all those years or are they really sincere in their criticisms (which sometimes amount to denigrations) today? Either way, the clergy who indulge in this propaganda are weakening their authority in the minds of people who can remember.»
I det norske tidsskriftet St. Olav ble det i 1964 ført en lignende debatt mellom den daværende pateren Erik Gunnes og Una Voce-grunnleggeren Borghild Krane om messeliturgien, og den ensidige, positive fremstillingen av de planlagte reformene. Dr. Krane skrev bl.a. ”I St. Olav – vårt eneste katolske organ – trykkes artikler som bestreber seg på å omkaste, for ikke å si latterliggjøre, argumenter og betraktninger som i lange, lange tider var – bokstavelig talt – god latin” (St. Olav, nr.10/1964).
Ikke bare var hun bekymret for at latinen som ”enhetens bånd” skulle forsvinne fra kirken (”I enhver søndagsmesse i Oslo er vi omgitt av utenlandske trosfeller. Mellom oss virker latinen som et høyst verdifullt vinculum untatis”), men også at selve messens innhold skulle forandres: ”Det dypest alvorlige problem som reiser seg i liturgidiskusjonen er dette: er det selve messens innhold man er i ferd med å forandre, er det læren som er under angrep?” (St. Olav, nr.11/1964).