Absolutely amazing

I switched on the computer this morning to find two absolutely amazing things on the blogosphere. Firstly there is the Divinum Officium site. Thanks to the Hermeneutic and Jane Teresa for the link. (Pastor in Valle seems to have been the one who drew others` attention to it.) This gives complete texts and translations of the Roman breviary from 1570-1961. It is a fantastic resource and timely given the recent discussions about use of the 1961 breviary. It will be useful for those wanting to say the EF breviary and who are either not sure of the rubrics or the translation (maybe especially of the hymns). It is also fascinating for anyone wanting to compare the different versions and see what exactly happened to the traditional breviary in 1910 or how the various twentieth century editions compare.

Then there is an interview on Rorate Caeli, with Mgr Domenico Bartolucci, who has the title maestro perpetuo of the Sistine chapel, although in fact John Paul II retired him in 1997, somewhat controversially. He was the successor of Perosi and is now 92 years old. He has some interesting things to say about the liturgy and its music. He doesn`t seem to have much time for Perosi`s Cecilian movement and also has misgivings over the Solesmes style of chant. However it is interesting to read that he has always celebrated the extraordinary form Mass.

Here is a sample of the interview but the whole thing is worth a read:

But how could it have come to this twisting of the liturgy?

It became a kind of fashion. Everybody talked about it, everybody “was renewing”, everybody was trying to be like popes (tutti pontificavano) in the wake of sentimentalism, of eagerness to reform. And the voices that raised themselves to defend the two thousand year old Tradition of the Church, were cleverly hushed. There was the invention of a kind of “people’s liturgy” … when I heard these refrains, it came into my mind something which my professor at the Seminary used to say: “the liturgy is something given by the clerics to the people” (“la liturgia è del clero per il popolo”). It descends from God and does not come up from the bottom. I have to admit, however, that this foul-smelling appearances [sic] have made themselves a bit more rare. The young generations of priests are maybe better than those who came before them, they do not have the ideological fury of an iconoclastic ideology, they are full of good feelings, however they lack in education.

What do you mean, Maestro, when you say “they lack in education”?

It means that they need it! I am speaking of the structure that the wisdom of the Church had so delicately chiseled in course of centuries. You do not understand the importance of the seminary: a liturgy that is fully lived, the orderly articulation of the different periods of the year and all this experienced in social communion with the brothers... Advent, Lent, the big feasts that follow after Easter. All of this is educational and if you only knew how much!