Novus Ordo: a workshop of perpetual innovation?

Fr. Joseph Gelineau (pictured left), who has been described by Archbishop Annibale Bugnini (the revisionist chief architect of the Novus Ordo) as one of the "great masters of the international liturgical world" following the Second Vatican Council, testifies to the fact that the liturgical revolution following the Council went far beyond what the Council Fathers intended, when he wrote:

"It would be false to identify this liturgical renewal with the reform of rites decided on by Vatican II. This reform goes back much further and goes forward far beyond the conciliar prescriptions. The liturgy is a permanent workshop." (Demain la Liturgie, p. 10, n. 18, emphasis added)

This is the same Gelineau, it may be recalled, who, without a shred of regret, declared: "the Roman Rite as we knew it no longer exists. It has been destroyed." (Op cit., pp. 9-10)

Cardinal Ratzinger, though animated by radically different, non-revisionist sympathies, draws quite similar conclusions:

"Today we might ask: Is there a Latin Rite anymore? Certainly there is no awareness of it. To most people the liturgy appears to be rather something for the individual congregation to arrange." (Feast of Faith, p. 84)