The liturgical vision of Vatican II

It is reported that the Secretary of the Congregation for Divine Worship and the Discipline of the Sacraments, Archbishop Malcolm Ranjith, has written a forward to a book based upon the diaries and notes of Cardinal Fernando Antonelli, O.F.M. (1896-1993). In the forward, Archbishop Ranjith is quoted as saying:

"Some practices which Sacrosanctum Concilium had never even contemplated were allowed into the Liturgy, like Mass versus populum, Holy Communion in the hand, altogether giving up on the Latin and Gregorian Chant in favor of the vernacular and songs and hymns without much space for God, and extension beyond any reasonable limits of the faculty to concelebrate at Holy Mass. There was also the gross misinterpretation of the principle of 'active participation'."

"Basic concepts and themes like Sacrifice and Redemption, Mission, Proclamation and Conversion, Adoration as an integral element of Communion, and the need of the Church for salvation--all were sidelined, while Dialogue, Inculturation, Ecumenism, Eucharist-as-Banquet, Evangelization-as-Witness, etc., became more important. Absolute values were disdained."

"An exaggerated sense of antiquarianism, anthopologism, confusion of roles between the ordained and the non-ordained, a limitless provision of space for experimentation-- and indeed, the tendency to look down upon some aspects of the development of the Liturgy in the second millennium-- were increasingly visible among certain liturgical schools."

The book, in its English edition, is entitled True Development of the Liturgy and is written by Msgr. Nicola Giampietro, O.F.M. Cap. who is on the staff of the Congregation of Divine Worship and the Discipline of the Sacraments. Msgr. Giampietro has previously published Il Card. Ferdinando Antonelli a gli sviluppi della riforma liturgica dal 1948 al 1970 in Italian.

[The full text is now available on the blog New Liturgical Movement. 9th March, 2009]