Alcuin Reid

As a straight record of the documented changes to the Roman Liturgy this is a valuable work. However, the author's thesis - which has been woven in amid the documentation - that (1) only very moderate degrees of liturgical change at any given time have been proper and (2) that the very restrained approach taken to liturgical change between Trent and Vatican II is normative as an example - is not so much grounded in the actual facts as it is imposed upon them.

Although that is one possible way of reading the record, especially if one has a rather ultramontaine approach to papal and more generally Roman authority, it would be just as possible, even for someone who sees the Missal 1970 as a gross overreaction, to see the history of the suppression of significant reforms put forward between 1600 and 1930 or so as a holding back of a growing pressure which might have been expected to result in overreaction once the dam broke - that is, that the model presented, even viewed from a conservative point of view, is a bad one.

There is the further problem that, if one does accept Reid's arguments, there is no good way forward - the degrees of incremental change which he views as acceptable could not be harnessed to undo the changes made under Paul VI in any significant way. As a critique of the changes made after the Council, then, this would be a dead end even if accepted.

Nevertheless, this is worth reading for its details, though it should be qualified by other liturgiology as far as the conclusions to be drawn go.… (mehr)