Vatican II liturgy in practice: "a change in the forms but no true renewal"

30 Giorni: What memories do you have of this phase of liturgical reform?

Card. Cañizares: I believe that a deepening and a renewal of the liturgy were necessary. But according to how I have experienced it, it was not a perfectly successful operation. The first part of the constitution Sacrosanctum Concilium [NLM note: dealing with the general principles and the promotion of the liturgy] has not entered the hearts of the Christian people. There has been a change in the forms, a reform, but no true renewal as requested by Sacrosanctum Concilium. Sometimes there has been change for the simple desire of change with respect to a past perceived as all negative and superseded. Sometimes the reform has been conceived as a rupture and not as an organic development of Tradition. Hence all the problems aroused by the traditionalists attached to the rite of 1962.

30 Giorni: We are talking about a reform, then, which, in fact, has not fully complied with the conciliar mandate?

Card. Cañizares: Most of all I would say that it was a reform which has been applied and above all which has been lived as an absolute change, as if there had to be created an abyss between the preconciliar and the postconciliar, in a context in which "preconciliar" was used as an insult.

-- Interview in Italian monthly 30 Giorni with Antonio Cañizares Llovera, the Prefect of the Congregation for Divine Worship and the Discipline of the Sacraments, on the implementation of the Vatican II reforms of the sacred liturgy.

(Source: Translation by Gregor Kollmorgen at The New Liturgical Movement.)