More Historical Insight On The Liturgical Reform

The New Liturgical Movement has a review of the book The Development of the Liturgical Reform: As Seen by Cardinal Ferdinando Antonelli from 1948-1970. From the sound of things, Cardinal Antonelli's diaries and papers contain a good bit of material verifying the points we've made here before regarding the hijacking of Vatican II. Check out these bits:

I am not enthusiastic about this work. I am unhappy about how much the Commission has changed. It is merely an assembly of people, many of them incompetent, and others of them well advanced on the road to novelty. The discussions are extremely hurried. Discussions are based on impressions and the voting is chaotic. What is most displeasing is that the expositive Promemorias and the relative questions are drawn up in advanced terms and often in a very suggestive form. The direction is weak.

Not exactly a ringing endorsement.

As the Consilium’s work proceeded, Antonelli’s concerns about its competence, its predilection for innovation and its consuming haste, grew. After some years’ experience of the Consilium he wrote that the liturgical reform was becoming “more chaotic and deviant” , adding:

That which is sad... however, is a fundamental datum, a mutual attitude, a pre-established position, namely, many of those who have influenced the reform...and others, have no love, and no veneration of that which has been handed down to us. They begin by despising everything that is actually there. This negative mentality is unjust and pernicious, and unfortunately, Paul VI tends a little to this side. They have all the best intentions, but with this mentality they have only been able to demolish and not to restore.

We have to ask ourselves at some point how much praise we can give to the liturgical reform without being willfully obtuse. Knowing where it came from and how, doesn't it get pretty easy at some point to just admit it was a mistake?