A striking omission from Archbishop Annibale Bugnini's memoir The Reform of the Liturgy 1948-1975 is any discussion of the reordering of churches. Striking because things like the demolition of the High Altar in St Patrick's Cathedral in New York, or the Rood Screen in St Chad's Cathedral in Birmingham, are precisely the sort of things that most Catholics noticed as the reform was underway, whether it gave them joy or pain.
Archbishop Bugnini does use building (and, sotto voce, demolition) as a metaphor.
Archbishop Bugnini does use building (and, sotto voce, demolition) as a metaphor.
While the intense work [of the liturgy Consilium appointed to carry out the decrees of Vatican II] of liturgical reform went on, we looked down from above, between the presbytery of St Peter's, the Camposanto Teutonico, and the stern palace of the Holy Office, on the great scaffolding for the splendid audience hall. This was the period when the old irregular buildings around the Chapel of St. Peter were being razed; pneumatic drills were thrusting sixty to seventy metres down for the mighty pillars of reinforced concrete that would support the prodigious vault of architect Nervi. Day after day for five years we watched the steel, at once slender and strong, rise into the air for this gigantic building. Here were two work-yards in close proximity: both intended for the people of God, both of them eloquent symbols and consoling realities. (Chapter 5, p. 53)And again, discussing the Missal, he writes:
But how difficult it is to take an ancient building in hand and make it functional and habitable without changing the structure! Peripheral alterations are not enough; there has to be a radical restoration. All this applied to the Ordinary. Just as the introduction of the vernacular into some parts of the Mass brought home the need of extending it to the entire rite, so the changes made in 1965 only showed up more clearly certain inconsistencies in rites, signs, and ceremonies that had become anachronistic. (Chapter 10, p.115)Fr Cassian Folsom OSB of St Meinrad Archabbey, published 'From One Eucharistic Prayer to Many: How it Happened and Why' in a series of issues of The Adoremus Bulletin in 1996. The whole essay is worth reading, but the following paragraph serves as a reply to Archbishop Bugnini's tidy-mindedness.
Whether speaking of structure or of theology, the main argument seems to be that the Roman canon is untidy. In the course of its development it spread out from the original core text, the way an old country house develops from the original building: a wing is added on here, an extra story is built there, a door is cut in the wall where a window used to be, other windows are walled up and new stairwells are necessary because of certain additions, while others are rendered useless. Decorative trim is added “just because”. Fine woodwork and stonework appear in the most hidden and out-of-the-way places. Each part of an old building has its own history, and old rambling houses like this are truly wonderful: but they are not neat. Furthermore, they were not originally equipped with modern conveniences like indoor plumbing and electricity, and so we moderns sometimes find such houses inconvenient.