Consider the words of Monsignor Gamber in The Reform of the Roman Liturgy
**“Obviously, the reformers wanted a completely new liturgy, a liturgy that differed from the traditional one in spirit as well as in form; and in no way a liturgy that represented what the Council Fathers had envisioned, i.e., a liturgy that would meet the pastoral needs of the faithful” (p. 100). **
Consider also, the fact that Cardinal Ratzinger wrote the preface to the French-language edition of The Reform of the Roman Liturgy, endorsing Monsignor Gamber’s work and commending the author to readers worldwide. It must surely be licit to hold this opinion, therefore, for otherwise the cardinal – now pope – would never have endorsed such a book or author.
Finally, consider the observations of Thomas E. Woods Jr.
Breaking with the Past
Ratzinger’s third major criticism of the liturgical reform was that whatever its virtues, the new missal, both in particular sections and in its entirety, leaves the impression of a rupture with the past, and can seem contrived. It resembles more a compilation by a committee of professors than the organic development of a truly living liturgy. “In the place of liturgy as the fruit of development came fabricated liturgy,” Ratzinger wrote. “We abandoned the organic, living process of growth and development over centuries, and replaced it – as in a manufacturing process – with a fabrication, a banal on-the-spot product.”
Again Ratzinger faulted the liturgical books themselves, and not merely their clumsy implementation. “Even the official new books, which are excellent in many ways, occasionally show far too many signs of being drawn up by academics and reinforce the notion that a liturgical book can be ‘made’ like any other book.”
The new missal "was published as if it were a book put together by professors, not a phase in a continual growth process. Such a thing never happened before. It is absolutely contrary to the laws of liturgical growth."
Ratzinger cited the reform of the liturgical calendar as an example of “the armchair strategy of academics, drawing up things on paper which, in fact, would presuppose years of organic growth.” This approach was “one of the weaknesses of the postconciliar liturgical reform.” Those responsible, he said, simply “did not realize how much the various annual feasts had influenced Christian people’s relation to time. In redistributing these established feasts throughout the year according to some historical arithmetic – inconsistently applied at that – they ignored a fundamental law of religious life.”
For decades, Catholics have been told that the new Mass is the traditional Mass – that its promulgation by Church authority made it ipso facto traditional. The chaplain at a well-known Catholic university recently rebuked traditionalist students who asked for the traditional Latin Mass with precisely this brand of legal positivism: the Novus Ordo is the traditional Mass, he insisted. Benedict (and great liturgists like Monsignor Gamber) will have none of this nonsense: The old rite is the old rite, the new rite is the new, and they are not and never have been the same.
Thomas E. Woods, Jr.
insidecatholic.com/Joomla/ind…1&limitstart=4
