I love the fact that the following quotation is from Michael Davies:
Let there be no mistake, there was great need and great scope [prior to Vatican II] for liturgical renewal within the Roman rite ...
That is one impressive quote to have from Michael Davies, the late great champion of traditionalism. But of course the quote goes on and the other shoe falls:
... but a renewal within the correct sense of the term, using the existing liturgy to its fullest potential.
The quote, of course, is from Michael Davies'
Liturgical Time Bombs, p. 2. Davies goes on to note that this was the aim of the liturgical movement initiated by Dom Prosper Gueranger and edorsed by St. Pius X. When the latter published his famous
motu proprio "Tra le Sollecitudini" in 1903, restoring Gregorian chant, he wrote:
Our keen desire being that the true Christian spirit may once more flourish, cost what it may, and be maintained among all the faithful, We deem it necessary to provide before anything else for the sanctity and dignity of the temple, in which the faithful assemble for ... [the purpose] of acquiring this spirit from its primary and indispensable source, which is the active participation in the most holy mysteries and the public and solemn prayer of the Church. (Emphasis added)
Pius X could not have ever imagined or dreamed -- even in his worst nightmare -- how his phrase, "active participation," would come to be interpreted in our own day. For Pius X as for Dom Gueranger, liturgy was essentially theocentric, for the worship of God more than anything else, even the teaching of the faithful or cultivating a sense of community. Certainly these other purposes have their due place, but they are secondary, at best. Davies goes on to argue that modernist theologians who could no longer propagate their theories in public saw in the burgeoning Liturgical Movement the prospect of a Trojan Horse for their revolutionary intentions -- an argument Dietrich von Hildebrand also makes elsewhere.
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