Thursday, April 16, 2015

Accepting Fr. Bouyer for What He Says

And not trying to turn him into a Latin traditionalist.

John Pepino teaches at Our Lady of Guadalupe Semnary; he probably either is a Latin traditionalists or a sympathizer, but he does not use Bouyer to serve an agenda regarding what language should be used for the Roman rite, recognizing that Fr. Bouyer was not a Latin absolutist (nor a vernacular absolutist):
For Bouyer, it goes without saying that the instructional parts of the Mass (the lessons) must be proclaimed in such a way as to be understood of the people. Yet he immediately adds that one should not thereby suppose that the vernacular should be put in just anywhere, or that such an introduction would suffice to make the Mass perfectly comprehensible.In the first place there has to be a standard Latin text that can be used as it is: Luther and his Swedish followers held their services in Latin in university settings (for the benefit of candidates to the ministry in particular), and Cranmer "produced a standard edition of his prayer book in traditional Latin." Furthermore the abandonment of Latin would be a severe loss for priests as it would alienate them from all the sources of Western Christian culture. But even at the parish level, the following must be maintained in Latin according to Bouyer: first, the great Latin Eucharistic Prayer, so that we may follow the very terms used by our ancestors in the faith; secondly, the five stable parts of the ordinary, which everybody can learn by heart and sing (Kyrie, Gloria, Credo, Sanctus-Benedictus, Agnus Dei). Above all one ought not, under pretext of avoiding archaism, impose a straitjacket of linguistic contemporariness. The liturgy our Lord and the Apostles knew was in Aramaic--their vernacular--but also in Hebrew, their sacred language. This phobia of Latin seems to stem from the naive hypothesis that Latin is the only obstacle to a full understanding of the liturgy while in fact, it is ignorance of Sacred Scripture that is the greatest obstacle. For this reason the Council envisages more room for the Bible, and asks preachers to give homilies explaining its meaning.

"Cassandra's Curse: Louis Bouyer, the Liturgical Movement, and the Post-Conciliar Reform of the Mass," Antiphon, vol 18, no. 3 (2014), 288-89.

[Too lazy to look for a respectable format for the endnote.]

Professor Pepino has lectured on Fr. Bouyer in front of an audience that probably included a few Latin traditionalists. How did they receive Fr. Bouyer?

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