November's Fright - Just Say "Bugnini!"
  • ronkrisman
    Posts: 1,387
    That opening "Boo" scares some people more than Freddy or a Texas Chainsaw.
  • melofluentmelofluent
    Posts: 4,160
    Fr.Ron, haven't you ever attended an old Yankee's game? They're not screaming "Boo," but "Lou."
    I'm off to the Lo.....oops, nevermind.
  • Kathy
    Posts: 5,499
    I think of Bugnini as a verb, like Rossini. "Bruno Forte totally Bugnini'd that interim report." "The chairman sure did Bugnini the meeting right before the break."

    There's a good literary takedown of Bugniniing in the final book of CS Lewis' space trilogy, That Hideous Strength. It too is scary, but helpful background reading.
  • JulieCollJulieColl
    Posts: 2,465
    Well, Fr. Ron, I don't want to say "boo" prematurely, but there is certainly a reason that fair-minded Catholics have their reservations about Bugnini, and a reason why he is real bugaboo to many.

    Let us remember that Arbp. Bugnini wrote in his autobiography that Pope Paul VI fired him at the end of his work because a Cardinal had slipped a dossier into the hands of the Pope claiming that Bugnini was a Freemason.

    Now, far be it from me to cast any aspersions or make any judgments about the Archbishop, but he does say that is the reason Paul VI fired him. What's also interesting is that at the end of his decades-long work of reforming the liturgy which he, in all humility, no doubt, proclaimed "a triumph of the Catholic Church," he was "rewarded" by the Pope with a "plum" assignment as Nuncio to Ayatollah Khoemini's Iran----not exactly a Cardinal's hat and promotion to a dicastery or some major See.

    Whether he was or was not a Freemason is not the point, since, as Professor Dietrich von Hildebrand (whom Pope Pius XII called "a 20th c. Doctor of the Church", rightly pointed out, "Truly, if one of the devils in C.S. Lewis' The Screwtape Letters had been entrusted with the ruin of the liturgy he could not have done it better."
  • CharlesW
    Posts: 11,933
    Julie, the thing that puzzles me is why Paul VI did not suppress or recall Bugnini's work if it was that objectionable. Is this another case of the person in charge not doing his job?
  • francis
    Posts: 10,668
    from the other recent thread on B:

    Exit Archbishop Bugnini

    As for Archbishop Bugnini, in 1975 he fell suddenly and dramatically from power. Pope Paul VI dismissed him without any reason being given, just as Pope John had done, and he was banished to Iran as Pro Nuncio. His admirers throughout the world were outraged, and feared that the entire future of the liturgical revolution was in danger. Their fears were groundless. In the year before his downfall he had been able to announce with pride and satisfaction that the liturgical reform was "a major conquest of the Catholic Church" which had its "ecumenical dimensions." 8 I wouldn't want to quarrel with that judgment. There are grounds for believing that Archbishop Bugnini was dismissed by Pope Paul VI after the Pope had been given evidence proving that he was a Freemason. I have published the evidence for this allegation in my book, Pope Paul's New Mass. Archbishop Bugnini termed me "a calumniator" for doing so, and denied the accusation.

    In some ways I am sorry that the issue was ever raised as it makes the important question appear to be whether the Archbishop was a Mason or not. The important question is whether or not he destroyed the liturgy of the Roman Rite rather than his motive for doing so. Even if he was motivated by a sincere desire to serve the Church it does not alter the fact that, as Professor Berger expressed it, "a thoroughly malicious sociologist, bent on injuring the Catholic community as much as possible . . . could hardly have done a better job."

    Michael Davies, Author



    Key point:

    "The important question is whether or not he destroyed the liturgy of the Roman Rite rather than his motive for doing so"

    And THAT is fright associated with the man.
  • dad29
    Posts: 2,217
    Nicely formed response, Julie. Some of us are intelligent enough to know the enemy.
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