At Trent:
Thanks so much for posting this. This really is an important document, at least historically, if not for additional reasons even as we witness the promulgation of a new 2011 General Instruction of the Roman Missal (GIRM). I would be merely speculating if I gave a reason for why I think the original 1969 version may have been so hard to find for all these years.
ProVobis:
I find a discrepancy between the wording of the famous Article 7. of the 1969 GIRM from Monsignor Gamber’s book as you cite it and what Rorate Caeli has, including the text reproduced as page 15 of the original document in the attachment:
“7. Cena dominica sive Missa est sacra synaxis seu congregatio populi Dei in unum convenientis, sacerdote praeside, ad memoriale Domini celebrandum…”
which Rorate Caeli translates as:
“7. The Lord’s Supper, or Mass, is the sacred meeting or congregation of the people of God assembled, the priest presiding, to celebrate the memorial of the Lord…”
The words “personamque Christi gerente” / “taking on the persona of Christ” appear to be a correction made to the 1970 edition of the GIRM and not to be part of the first 1969 GIRM, just as “seu sacrificium eucharisticum” / “or the Eucharistic sacrifice” was a 1970 “correction” to the original text. It seems quite likely that these and other “corrections” in the 1970 edition were made in response to the document delivered to Pope Paul VI by Cardinals Ottaviani and Bacci on September 25, 1969 entitled “A Brief Critical Study of the New Order of the Mass,” the original GIRM itself having been released April 3, 1969. That document, sometimes called the “Ottaviani Intervention,” can be found at:
ewtn.com/library/curia/reformof.htm#1
What influence, if any, the “Brief Critical Study…” may have had on the actual form of the Mass in later years remains a subject of continuing debate.
