Kenneth Whitehead skriver i sin bok «Mass Misunderstandings» videre om hvodan liturgiforandringene ble gjennomført – mest av liturgieksperter, som stort sett fikk sine forslag akseptert av biskoper og Vatikanet. Dette skjedde etter at Vatikankonsilet hadde vedtatt et balansert og forsiktig dokument om liturgien (se her), som også erkebiskop Marcel Lefebvre stemte for. Her er et sitat fa s 102-104 i Whiteheads bok (før han går over til å se på en del enkeltsaker; bl.a. om at liturgiekspertene vant fram med sitt syn om at man skulle stå når man mottar kommunion, men ikke med sitt ønske om at folk ikke skulle knele i kirkene i det hele tatt, og at knelebenkene burde tas bort):
…. … there is probably no single or easy answer to the overall question of why the things that went wrong did go wrong. We have already adverted to some of these reasons: an imperfect understanding of the Council’s intentions; the abrupt and seemingly unplanned way that so many things were changed, often in no particular order and without many explanations being provided; and the fact that most priests did not really understand what was happening and why. There was also a fairly general failure on the part of Church authorities to understand that any change, even a needed and legitimate change, in people’s deep-seated habits of prayer and worship, was bound to have consequences. These consequences should have been anticipated and taken into account. Nor was it just a matter of not disturbing people’s habits: constant changes too easily do accustom us to regard the Mass and the sacraments as malleable things, as things that we can devise and control, rather than things coming to us by the will of Christ in the Church.
To all these reasons there must be added yet another one, namely. the undue influence of modem «liturgists,» that is, liturgical experts too often intent upon their own in-group ideas rather than upon the needs and sensibilities of the faithful. Reliance on «experts» and «professionals,» rather than upon reason and common sense, has in many ways been the bane of the post-conciliar period generally.
Then, of course, there was the too frequent and marked impatience and sometimes even the arrogance of some of those in authority, relying uncritically upon their experts, and prone to dig in their heels when faced with perceived resistance to, or criticism of, many of the changes that were being made.
And yet again, in a much more general sense, it should also have been more clearly recognized by Church authority that concepts such as «noble simplicity» and «full, conscious, and active participation» in liturgical celebrations, although consciously and honestly launched by the Council itself, were almost inevitably going to be interpreted in different ways by different people. For some, «noble simplicity» can apparently mean denuding churches of statues and stations of the cross, or dismantling decorative altar rails or screens – just as «full, conscious, and active participation» can mean requiring the proliferation of the various lay «Ministries» that have in fact Proliferated in the post-conciliar era – or trying, perhaps, to require standing rather than kneeling because that supposedly means that we are all standing together as a symbol of our sacred communion (and, meanwhile, the priest, deacon, and other servers are, after all, still standing too!).
Beyond that, «full, conscious, and active participation” for many meant insisting upon the dialogue Mass with the priest facing the people and with numerous responses from the congregation (even though Sacrosanctum Concilium specifically also decrees (SC 30) that «at the proper time a reverent silence should be observed”!).
These are only some of the ways in which what began as the perfectly honest and legitimate decisions of Vatican Council II with respect to the reform of the sacred liturgy, set forth in Sacrosanctum Concilium and the post-conciliar implementing documents from the Holy See on the liturgy which followed it, nevertheless could be, as they definitely were, subject to misinterpretation, misapplication, and even abuse.
The very comprehensiveness and complexity of what was entailed in the decision of the Second Vatican Council to reform the entire liturgy of the Catholic Church were almost bound in the nature of things to result in many missteps and even conflicting instructions in actually carrying out of the conciliar reforms. Nobody knew, or could have known, in advance, how to implement the liturgical reforms, or how they were going to work out. And sometimes the particular reforms themselves were not decreed in response to any specific mandate of the Council or felt need of the faithful. Rather, too often, as we have suggested, they just seem to have been put in place following various theories of some of our contemporary professional «liturgists.»
In one important sense, perhaps, this should not surprise us. We live in an age of professional expertise, after all, and it would have been unusual if the Catholic bishops had not tended to rely on professional experts, as do leaders in so many areas of our society. The trouble came, it seems, when Church leaders continued to rely uncritically on these experts, even after it became increasingly clear that the experts in question were departing significantly, and sometimes even radically, not only from the spirit but sometimes even from the letter of Sacrosanctum Concilium and the actual post-conciliar liturgical directives from the Holy See. Sometimes they were departing from the canons of common sense as well, not to speak of the habits and preferences of the faithful!
We might have hoped, for example, for an occasional salutary pause in the pace of the reform, and perhaps even for a reconsideration of what was being put in place, when it turned out that the faithful, or even just some of them, were reacting strongly and negatively to what was being done to their cherished habits and practices with regard to the worship of the divine Majesty.
Alas, these negative reactions occurred in all too many cases; and among the results of them, there came instead not accommodation but rather the seemingly never-ending liturgical disputes that ensued, some of which have lasted up to dispute that has endured to the present day. … …