The post-1955 is seen by many as a stepping stone to the NO. The pre-1955 Holy Week is more expressive of what the Church had done for centuries.
And the 1910 Divine Office of Pius XII was the stepping stone for the Liturgy of the Hours as we now know it. Annibale Bugnini borrowed heavily on one major trend it started, dividing of psalms and composing new antiphons out of the blue, for which there was no traditional melodies to chant them. Your point is?
It’s really odd when you think about it that traditional parishes and traditional orders and EFs in diocesan parishes, during Holy Week, are actually using a liturgy that was used for less than 20 years of the Church’s history (1955-1969 or so).
It’s really odd that secular Catholics in 1955 used a Divine Office that was used for less than 45 years of the Church’s history, when a 1400 y.o. traditional Office was still being used by the religious order whose founder designed it. It’s even odder that “traditional” Catholics are using a breviary that removed 15 of 18 Octaves, changed the rubrics substantially, changed the way the antiphon was chanted before and after the psalm, prohibited Vespers from being anticipated before noon during Lent, and I could go on. And it’s especially odd that we complain about the LOTH which has been around for 42 years now, when we don’t complain about the pre-1955 Divine Office (of which the Holy Week reforms significantly modified), which at that time was around for a comparable length of time and had similar innovations to the innovations of 1970.
Another reason: the post-1955 rites were changed largely under the direction of Annibale Bugnini, who also directed much of the change in the NO under Pope Paul VI. Many people are wary of anything with his hand in it.
They should then also be wary of Pius X. He was in fact the one that set several of the precedents that Mgr Bugnini adopted for the 1970 LOTH. Among other things, Pius X:
- Broke up the Laudate psalms after the OT canticle (ps. 148, 149, 150) every day, which Mgr Bugnini perpetuated
- Shortened Matins from 12 to 9 psalms or psalm parts; Mgr Bugnini reduced it further to 3 psalms or psalm parts and changed its name
- Broke up the psalms into more or less equal lengths, a practice that Mgr Bugnini also used liberally
- Composed new antiphons for the psalm sections, which required composing of new melodies, ditching a 1000 year musical tradition going back to the Carolingian era, which Mgr Bugnini also did, and which meant it took 40 years to be able to finally have proper Gregorian chant books for the LOTH.
Could it simply be that liturgy is a dynamic field? Even today the monks of Solesmes discover new things when interpreting ancient manuscripts, for example changing an antiphon’s melody slightly and making it into a mode VIIIc instead of VIIIg.
With the more important liturgical reforms, ISTM that “feature creep” set into the Liturgy over time. For example the anticipation of Vespers before noon had to do with the lenten fast and the fact that the main meal had to be after Vespers (cf. Rule of St. Benedict, chapter 41). But folks wanted to eat the main meal at mid-day (which sort of makes sense for busy diocesan clergy), so Vespers ended up being anticipated. Which makes no sense and is the result of a Pharisaical reading of the rules.
For that matter the timing of the Divine Office used to be set by the sun and the Rule of St. Benedict even shortened the night office to accommodate a shorter night. The invention of clocks changed all that and the Divine Office migrated to set times and there was no need to shorten the Offices, though the Monastic tradition of shortening the readings of Matins persists in some abbeys.
I really think your arguments about going back to the pre-'55 Holy Week is either some sort of nostalgia for a specific time and place, or simply trying to win an Internet debate. The Church’s hierarchy, in its wisdom, has found over time that the liturgy loses its relevance or meaning, or allows obscure practices to set in that make no sense, or is too heavy a load for diocesan clergy, or requires better translation (and not just into English, with Vatican II also came the Neo-Vulgate Bible that replaced the Vulgate) and decides to clean house a bit. It happened in 1570, 1910, 1955, 1969, 1970, in 2011, and probably at more obscure times in between. It will continue to happen, for better or for worse, irritating the heck out of the faithful everywhere but such is life, people resist change, even changes in place for 100+ years (because there is still resentment over the Pius X reforms…)…
Frankly, in life, one must pick one’s battles, and I think this one, a desire to go back to the pre-55 Holy Week, would result in lots of expended energy for little gain. It is best left to the study of historians, and those of the faithful who enjoy reading about Church history.
Almighty and eternal God, who dost not exclude from thy mercy even Jewish faithlessness: hear our prayers, which we offer for the blindness of that people; that acknowledging the light of thy Truth, which is Christ, they may be delivered from their darkness. Through the same our Lord Jesus Christ, who liveth and reigneth with thee in the unity of the Holy Spirit, God, for ever and ever. Amen.”