From Attie Schlebusch, Camperdown, KZN:
In his letter “How Mass language changed” (June 30), John Lee is correct in stating that the early liturgy was celebrated quite freely by the presider.
But author Mike Aqualina in The Mass of the Early Christians writes that prudence however led to increasing regulation of the Mass as time went on and while Hippolytus encouraged a bishop to pray “in his own words”, he immediately added that his words should, if possible, “be grand and elevated”, and in any event “orthodox”.
This suggests that improvised prayers were sometimes sliding into a sloppy or even heretical language.
The great Jesuit liturgical scholar Joseph Jungmann SJ, commenting on the fixed Mass rites of the Council of Trent (Pastoral Liturgy), wrote that “the Church’s worship was now prevented from running wild, as it had threatened to do in the hands of ignorant priests, to the vexation of the faithful”.
With all the abuses that have taken place since Vatican II, the Holy See probably thinks there has been enough “vexation of the faithful”. For Mr Lee to suggest “an insidious move afoot to dismantle Vatican II reforms”, shows that he has not been aware of either abuses worldwide or has not been aware of the call for a “reform of the reform” over many years by liturgical scholars like Cardinals Antonelli and Ratzinger, Fathers Klaus Gamber, Thomas Kocik, Kenneth Baker SJ, and Aidan Nichols OP as well as Drs Alcuin Reid and Laszlo Dobzay and others.
Although Jungmann is critical of the Tridentine liturgy, he admits that “the Baroque period itself preferred to draw from secondary channels and yet from these it nourished an amazingly rich life”.
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