Sacra Liturgia Day 4

Yesterday was the  final day of the Sacra Liturgia conference. I have included excerpts from the speakers’ talks.   There are more excerpts  on the Sacra Liturgia USA Facebook page.
I am posting separately the Corpus Christi Mass and procession which followed the talks.

Dom Alcuin Reid: “Certainly, the second half of the twentieth century saw much violence done to received liturgical tradition, officially and authoritatively (before anyone mistranslated or abused the new rites) and that is the big issue. But not everything in the reforms of the 1960’s or the 1950’s was wrong. We simply cannot exclude liturgical reform and development a priori. Reactionary intransigence does not provide a legitimate response to the grave problems of some twentieth century liturgical reform. To adopt such a position is both a-historical and is to condemn the Sacred Liturgy to become an archaic museum exhibit rambling throughout history not capable of the appropriate, proportionate, indeed organic development which is integral to the living organism that is the liturgy of the Roman rite.”

Rev. Dr.  Christopher Smith: “Refocusing the Church’s efforts from the revision of liturgical rites to suit ever-changing contemporary demands rationally considered, to entering into the mystery of the Christ of faith in the liturgy which makes that happen, re-establishes that it is the law of prayer which indeed grounds belief. The primacy of the communal worship of the Church, the primacy of Christ, reverses the anthropocentric obsession of man with his own perceived needs and gives him the space to transcend them to something infinitely greater.”

Dr. Peter Kwasniewski: “The Ordinary Form lectionary is gravely flawed because of its overall conception, its unwieldy bulk, its politically correct omissions, and its watering down of key spiritual goods emphasized in the old readings. No human mind can relate to so great a quantity of biblical text spread out over multiple years: it is out of proportion to the natural cycle of the year and its seasons; it is out of proportion to the supernatural cycle of the liturgical year.”

Intermission during the conference

Dr. Michael Foley: “One of the effects of almost every major reform to the general calendar since 1950 has been a reduction in recapitulation.”

Dom Philip Anderson: “Monks and nuns, while most of mankind sleeps, accomplish this more complete, this “professional” work of praise, as they keep watch in the night, chanting the psalms under the grace of the New Law, which, according to St. Thomas Aquinas, is the grace of the Holy Spirit. So there the monk stands, whether he is a priest or a lay brother, at his post as watchman, offering the Divine Praise at night and, at the break of day, the Holy Sacrifice of the Eucharist. He thus accomplishes as never could be done before Christ, the work of bringing back to the Father, to the Creator, the praise of all creation, grouped mystically around the Christian altar.”