Abbey-Roads2

The Bugnini guy wears Prada.

I’m just having fun with a few titles here - some people have real jobs in publishing, wherein that is all they do - they just dream up titles and headlines.  Anyway, Archbishop Marini, the former Vatican fashion director for liturgical costumes and Master of Ceremonies for papal liturgies has come out with a new book.  Catholic News Service is one of many to have the story:

The book, “A Challenging Reform,” was written by Archbishop Piero Marini, who recently ended a 20-year tenure as papal liturgist. His Vatican career began in 1965 in the office charged with implementing liturgical renewal.Archbishop Marini recounted the rise of a decentralized and dynamic reform movement in the 1960s and its “curialization” in the 1970s by Vatican officials afraid of losing control.

Many of the hard-won liturgical changes were accompanied by tensions and disagreements inside the Vatican’s central bureaucracy, he said.

The archbishop’s book, published by Liturgical Press, was scheduled for presentation Dec. 14 in London, where the author was being honored at a reception hosted by Cardinal Cormac Murphy-O’Connor.

The book focuses in large part on Italian Father Annibale Bugnini, secretary of the consilium and its driving force. As a young priest, Archbishop Marini worked closely with Father Bugnini and at one point was his personal secretary. - CNS 

So anyway…

The Archbishop’s book should be an interesting read - and it just may support some of the criticisms of the post-Conciliar liturgical mess and reforms documented in another book, The Great Facade,  by Christopher Ferrara and Thomas Woods Jr.  The Ferrara/Woods book is a mean one, yet really tells it like it is when it comes to what happened in the Church since Vatican II.  If you are comfortable with the Church as it is, I suggest you never read it.

However, I’m sure Archbishop Marini’s book is more self-congratulatory and affirming of the liturgical changes that were slipped in and imposed upon the Church since the Council.  In fact, Alcuin Reid suggests the new book is hostile to the reforms of Pope Benedict XVI.  If Marini’s book is hostile to the Benedictine reforms, it may well substantiate some of the harsher criticisms of the V-II liturgical reforms posed by the authors of The Great Facade.  The following is an excerpt from a review of Marini’s book from the  British Catholic Herald:

The book is also an act of filial homage by Marini to his mentor, Bugnini. Marini was at Bugnini’s side in the work of reform from the outset while still a young deacon and priest. It is a pity that their close personal association is not clearly acknowledged or discussed here.

Nevertheless, the book is significant because for the first time the political manoeuvring and motivations of Bugnini and Lercaro et al as they sought rapidly to bring about a “a liturgy that would be more pastoral and open to the needs of the contemporary world” are openly discussed.

What is clear is that the implementation of the liturgical reform was politicised from the beginning. The “enemy”, the Congregation for Rites, which was responsible for the liturgy after the Council of Trent, “was still firmly anchored to a limited tradition since the Council of Trent and not in favour of the broad innovations desired by the Council.” - Catholic Herald

It sounds as if Piero Marini’s words may someday be held against him.

[To read reviews for The Great Facade go to: Seattle Catholic; and  Christian Order]