This is just absolutely not true. Pope John XXIII's law of 1962 is a revision of St Pius V's missal. It precedes the Ecclesia Dei by over 20 years and "S.P." by 40 years.
You and Drew just keep repeating yourself, with no proof. Have you ever read the 1962 law change? I assure you it exists.
PAX,
Let's try a different approach.
It was, of all people, Ratzinger, who commented that the idea that the liturgy is something that is “received” was done away with by the reformers and in its place developed the concept that the reformers could do whatever they wanted to the liturgy.
This is really the foundation of the Bugnini liturgical reform. It is my opinion that this became the unofficial formal policy after Pius XII in
Mediator Dei in which he inverted, what Pope Celestine I called a “dogma of faith”, ‘lex orandi, lex credendi’, the law of prayers determines the law of belief became the ‘law of belief determines the law of prayer’.
About six months after the publication of
Mediator Dei, the liturgical commission was established by Pius XII with Bugnini as its secretary in 1948. This commission envisioned the Novus Ordo as its end from the beginning of its work and as Bugnini himself said, the principles of liturgical reform adopted in 1948 remained the same and were consistently and uniformly applied throughout his tenure which ended in 1975. The first application of the Bugnini reform principles to the Missal was implemented in the 1956. From the changes in 1956 until the edition of the Missal in 1969 there were constant small changes. Each change was imposed by the same authority of the pope.
By the time the Novus Ordo was imposed in 1969 almost all the liturgical changes had already been implemented excepting the three additional canons. The typical parishioner accustomed to liturgical innovation found nothing shocking in the Novus Ordo because they were already doing it.
You argue that because the pope implemented these changes they should be accepted unless they are, in your personal judgment, harmful. Therefore you accept all of Bugnini’s changes until 1962 and reject the Bugnini changes after 1962 because you regard them as harmful. This is the same argument offered by Fr. Williamson in 1962. It presupposes, as Fr. Williamson said, that the “pope is the master of liturgy” and he can do with it whatever he wants. That is, the liturgy is a matter of mere discipline. The problem with the argument is it makes the individual Catholic the “master of the liturgy” because he judges each individual liturgical change implemented by the pope. This makes you the “master of the liturgy”.
Your problem is serious because it is indefensible and makes defending the “received and approved” rites impossible. I have put before you the same question asked Fr. Richard Williamson in 1983. On what grounds do you reject the changes of Paul VI that were implemented in 1965 by
Sacram Liturgiam and
Inter Oecuмenici? These changes were accepted by Archbishop Lefebvre and used in Econe for many years until 1983. Fr. Williamson offered no reply. The same question was put to Fr. Laisney and he offered no reply. I don’t think that you could reply to this question either.
Unlike yourself, I do not place myself as the judge of the pope and his individual liturgical experimentations. I attend the immemorial “received and approved” rite of Mass before any of the Bugnini changes were imposed. I do not argue at what stage the Bugnini reform in act formally corrupted the Mass, at what stage it formally ceased to be the “received and approved” Roman rite. I have already said to my local ordinary that should Rome at some time recognize the 1962 Missal as the normative edition of the “received and approved” rite of Mass, and declare that all the legislative acts that had reduced it to an Indult or a grant of legal privilege were null and void from their inception, and that everyone of the faithful has a right to the “received and approved” rites, then it is the Missal I would accept. But until then, I assume that the liturgical principles adopted by Bugnini and the Pian Commission constituted a break in the organic development of the liturgy which resulted in the liturgy being relegated to a matter of mere discipline untethered from its dogmatic moorings.
But not only has this not been done, it is unlikely to ever be done. I do not know and neither do you what specific change that occurred between 1956 and 1969 constituted the formal breaking from the “received and approved” rite to the Novus Ordo Missa. Our opinions are immaterial. What is most certain is that I am attending the “received and approved” rite because I am attending the Mass that is untouched by Bugnini, and you may not. What is also certain is that I can defend myself by appealing to dogma for what I do and I can appeal to the manner in which Rome has treated the Missal in its changes since 1956 as a matter of mere discipline open to the free and independent will of the legislator as
prima facie evidence that it is not the “received and approved” rite because the “received and approved” rite could never be treated as an Indult or grant of conditional legal privilege. You cannot.
All you can do is oppose your personal judgment against the current Roman authority as to what is or is not harmful to the liturgy because you have accepted the very first Bugnini principle of liturgical reform.This first principle has been accepted by nearly all traditional Catholics. Those who attend the Latin Mass in the 1962 Bugnini transitional edition accept it as a grant of legal privilege and in doing this they will have no legal or even moral argument when it is taken away, or revised in the "reform of the reform" to incorporate the celebrations of Novus Ordo saints, three years liturgical calendar, vernacular usage, etc.
Drew