The Development of the Liturgical Reform: As Seen by Cardinal Ferdinando Antonelli from 1948–1970 by Nicola Giampietro (review)

312 Antiphon 14.3 (2010) Book Reviews Nicola Giampietro The Development of the Liturgical Reform: As Seen by Cardinal Ferdinando Antonelli from 1948-1970 Fort Collins CO: Roman Catholic Books, 2009 xx + 347 pages. Paperback. $33.75 For those who wish to perpetuate, re-evaluate or even repudiate the products of the liturgical reform that followed the Second Vatican Council, indeed for much of current liturgical scholarship and debate, the history of twentieth century liturgical reform is crucial. The chronicling of that history is but young. To date we have important contributions such as Archbishop Annibale Bugnini’s The Reform of the Liturgy (1983; English edition 1990) – the second Italian edition of which, La riforma liturgica (1997), was corrected by Monsignor A. G. Martimort – and that of his disciple, Archbishop Piero Marini, A Challenging Reform (2007). Published in Italian in 1998 and French in 2004, the appearance in English of Monsignor Giampietro’s The Development of the Liturgical Reform is long overdue. It details the involvement in and contribution to liturgical reform by Father Ferdinando Antonelli, OFM – created Cardinal in 1973 – from the 1940s until 1970, publishing for the first time Antonelli’s personal writings as well as archival material from the commissions on which he served. It provides another piece of the jigsaw puzzle. As such, it is by no means complete by itself and needs to be read alongside the works mentioned above. But that is not to take away from its importance. For Antonelli was an, if not the most, influential member of the Commission for Liturgical Reform established by Pope Pius XII in 1948, and served as the Secretary for the Liturgical Commission of the Second Vatican Council. He was a member of the post-conciliar Consilium throughout and was appointed Archbishop Secretary of the Sacred Congregation for Rites in 1965. (Those who have read Bugnini and Marini will be aware of the political battle for control of the liturgical reform waged by the Consilium against the Congregation for Rites.) Giampietro’s study of Antonelli’s diaries and papers allows another voice on this, and on other issues in recent liturgical history, to be heard. Let us be clear: Antonelli was no “tweedy young traditionalist” for whom there is a given year after which liturgical reform is anathema and for whom Bugnini’s name is synonymous with the root of 313 Book Reviews all evil. The work of liturgical reform was his business for more than two decades. That is not to approve of all that he did. Indeed, it is the opinion of the present author that some of the principles of reform espoused by Pius XII’s commission, and some of their applications, require critical re-evaluation: we stand in great need of a detailed and dispassionate study of the liturgical reform of Pius XII. For Antonelli continues to refer to the need to respect “genuine,” “best,” or “original” liturgical tradition in liturgical reform (see pp. 31, 38, 47 and 52). But quite how this can be discerned is not clear. “The surest” historical research was seen as fundamental (47), though some decades later we are clear – most notably in the case of the so-called anaphora of Hippolytus – that the final word in historical research had not been uttered in the 1950s. Yet the minutes of the Pian commission (published here in a 112-page appendix, which are themselves of enormous historical worth) reveal that their reforms were largely based on such assumptions. So too they reveal the influence of a certain pastoral expediency and archaeologism – which deprecated later, especially medieval, developments and sought to reduce rites to their “severe and original lines” (62) – that may well have been injurious to received liturgical tradition. There are no simple answers to be found here, but there is plenty of primary material with which to inform further scholarship. Antonelli describes the work of pre-conciliar reform as “a kind of novitiate” for what followed (69). Due to other responsibilities, he was not involved with the liturgical preparatory commission. Although he was an official of the Congregation for Rites, it was with some surprise, then, that Antonelli was named secretary of the liturgical commission for the...