New memoirs show how Archbishop Bugnini manipulated post-conciliar liturgical reforms

October 13, 2014

The memoirs of a noted priest show how a powerful prelate manipulated the process of liturgical reform after Vatican II.

The memoirs of Father Louis Bouyer, who died in 2004, have recently appeared in France. In them, the theologian describes the late Archbishop Annibale Bugnini as someone “as devoid of learning as he was of honesty.”

Father Bouyer served with then-Father Bugnini on Consilium, the group charged with reforming the Latin liturgy. Later Bugnini would become an archbishop and the secretary of the Congregation for Divine Worship.

Father Bouyer records that Father Bugnini would regularly insist on various changes in the liturgy, saying, “The Pope wants it so.” But the French theologian recalls that when he spoke directly with Pope Paul VI about the proposed changes, the Pontiff told him that Father Bugnini had claimed the working committee was unanimous in seeking the changes. Thus Father Bouyer concludes that Pope Paul was maneuvered into “approving without being in any way more than content with it than I was.”

In 1976, Pope Paul suddenly transferred Archbishop Bugnini out of the Vatican, sending him as apostolic nuncio to Iran, amid rumors that the prelate had been identified as a Freemason.

 

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Further information:

• The liturgical reform, as seen by one of its protagonists (CNA)