Ouch! I guess Luther is directly responsible for some things and indirectly for others but I had no idea that Luther was the driving force in the post-Vatican II move of the priest from the front of the altar to behind it. I guess I have a lot of things to learn...
Anyway, the little video is entertaining... and there is some truth underneath it all.
Luther did want pastors to face the congregation and not the altar. So, yes, Luther is responsible for a lot of the poor adherence to tradition in the wake of Vatican II and the Novus Ordo liturgy.
To say that Luther is "responsible" for the silly changes introduced into the Roman Rite of the Catholic Church, and preeminently versus populum celebration, is a stretch, since Luther's notions in this respect can hardly have had any influence on those that promoted the change. Rather, it was due to the now-exploded belief that "Mass facing the people" was the "primitive practice" (cf. the entry in the *Catholic Encyclopedia* of 1917, which takes this for granted), a "finding" of German scholarship which dominated the writings of liturgists from the 1890s for about 40 years (cf. Dom Gregory Dix). It began to be undercut by German scholars from the 1930s onward, and is now thoroughly discredited, but it had last-ditch defenders as late as the 1960s, and was, alas, taken for granted by the staffs of so many of those Catholic 'liturgical institutes" that did so much to prepare the way for, and even more to shape the implementation of, the liturgical "reforms" introduced in the aftermath of Vatican II. See, for example, my article on Dix:
"Rubrics are not Vatican II." LOL
ReplyDeleteLuther did want pastors to face the congregation and not the altar. So, yes, Luther is responsible for a lot of the poor adherence to tradition in the wake of Vatican II and the Novus Ordo liturgy.
ReplyDeleteTo say that Luther is "responsible" for the silly changes introduced into the Roman Rite of the Catholic Church, and preeminently versus populum celebration, is a stretch, since Luther's notions in this respect can hardly have had any influence on those that promoted the change. Rather, it was due to the now-exploded belief that "Mass facing the people" was the "primitive practice" (cf. the entry in the *Catholic Encyclopedia* of 1917, which takes this for granted), a "finding" of German scholarship which dominated the writings of liturgists from the 1890s for about 40 years (cf. Dom Gregory Dix). It began to be undercut by German scholars from the 1930s onward, and is now thoroughly discredited, but it had last-ditch defenders as late as the 1960s, and was, alas, taken for granted by the staffs of so many of those Catholic 'liturgical institutes" that did so much to prepare the way for, and even more to shape the implementation of, the liturgical "reforms" introduced in the aftermath of Vatican II. See, for example, my article on Dix:
ReplyDeletehttp://www.touchstonemag.com/archives/article.php?id=21-09-022-f
POSTSCRIPT
ReplyDeleteMsgr. Gamber's book is well worth the reading. Here is a link to the chepest online copy I have been able to find:
http://www.biblio.com/details.php?dcx=510059691&aid=bkfndr