Jeg nevnte noen ganger i august 2011 – HER, HER og HER et foredrag av professor Manfred Hauke (som jeg fant på NLM-bloggen). I foredraget var det første og fremst noen tanker av Romano Guardini (som var så viktig for Ratzinger) som kan forklare hvordan vi er kommet dit vi er i dag; at messen knapt forstås som et offer båret fram for Gud mer. Slik leser vi:
The discussion of our topic, in its stricter sense, begins in 1939 with some meditations of Romano Guardini, … The core of the discussion revolves around the idea that, according to Guardini, the “structure” (or “form, figure, shape”, in German Gestalt) and its “content” (Gehalt) are entirely different things: the Holy Mass, in its “structure”, is a meal, but its “content” is a sacrifice. This divergence between liturgical structure and dogmatic content, according to Ratzinger, “must be regarded as the central problem of the liturgical reform. Failure to deal with it has resulted in a great many of the individual problems which have since preoccupied us.” …
… Guardini refers especially to the Last Supper, and then continues: “The supporting structure of the Mass is the meal. The sacrifice does not emerge as structure, but remains behind the whole. In this way, it is not pushed back. Already in the history of religion, every cultic meal, or even ultimately every meal, depends on it. … The animal that should serve for food must be immolated, properly speaking, before the altar, because blood and life belong to God … From the altar, from the hands of the Lord, man then receives the immolated victim and uses it as nourishment.” Applied to the Mass, this means: “Its structure is the meal; behind it – not as structure, but as reality, as fountain, as condition – is the sacrifice.”
Guardini forstod selv ganske snart at hans tanker ble misforstått av mange – jeg må innrømme at jeg ikke selv forstår hva han mener, enten tenker han for avansert, eller rett og slett feil – og han gjorde forandringer i senere utgaver av skriftet:
In the fourth edition of 1947, Guardini omits his expositions on the “structure” of the Holy Mass. He explains this omission in his preface, writing: “the chapter ‘The Form of Commemoration, the Meal’ … had to be omitted because it gave rise to certain misunderstandings. … The reflections of the chapter dealt with … a pure problem of form [Formproblem]. They were not, however, understood in this way, but they were implicated in the old controversy in which the Catholic doctrine says that the Mass is ‘a true and proper sacrifice’ … The reflections of the mentioned chapter did not concern, not even in a minimal way, this controversy. …
På tross av dette inneholdt senere utgaver likevel det Guardini selv hadde tatt bort.