sábado, 22 de outubro de 2011

Cardinal Alfons Stickler on the changes in the Mass and Vatican II...

  
http://www.fiuv.org/plaatjes/stickler02.jpg
Cardinal Alfons Stickler was prefect emeritus of the Vatican library and archives. He served as a specialist, a peritus, on the Liturgy Commission of the Second Vatican Council. He was elevated to the college of cardinals by Pope John Paul II in 1985. This essay originally appeared in Franz Breid, ed., Die heilige Liturgie (Steyr, Austria: Ennsthaler Verlag, 1997).
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My position at the Council--pardon me, please, if I begin with some personal background; it is necessary in order to understand what I have to say. I was Professor of Canon Law and Church Legal History at the Salesian University and for eight years, from 1958 until 1966, I was the university's rector. As such I worked as consultant to the Roman Congregation for Seminaries and Universities; and from the preparatory work to the implementation of Council regulations, I was a member of the Conciliar commission directed by that dicastery. In addition, I was named a peritus of the Commission for the Clergy….
Shortly before the beginning of the Council, Cardinal Laarona, whose student I had been at the Lateran, and who had been named chairman of the Conciliar Commission for the Liturgy, called to say he had suggested me as a peritus of that Commission. I objected that I was already committed to two others, above all the one for seminaries and universities, and as a Council peritus. But he insisted that a canon lawyer had to be called upon on account of the significance of canon law in the requirements of the liturgy. Through an obligation I did not seek, then, I experienced Vatican II from the very beginning.