OUR LADY OF FATIMA  CATHOLIC CHURCH

Did Bugnini Get a "Bad Rap" after all ?

August 7th 2005

THE BITTER STRUGGLE

Was Annibale Bugnini, the chief architect of the liturgical reform, a Freemason? New evidence suggests he was not, but that he was, in any case, deeply influenced by modern secular humanism

The following report deals with Annibale Bugnini, the man generally seen as the mastermind behind the unprecedented liturgical changes that followed Vatican II.

Praised by liberals for rapidly revamping centuries-old Catholic rites, criticized by moderates for exceeding the mandate for change given by the Council, and condemned by conservatives for secularizing the sacred, Bugnini's career ended under a cloud when Paul VI, in effect, fired him from his post. Here the most serious charges against Bugnini and his own responses to these charges are analyzed.

In addition, a liturgist who worked alongside Bugnini for many years offers an insider's view of what went on. For the first time, Abbot Boniface Luykx, who has recently completed a book, to be published soon, on the history of Vatican II and what it has meant for the Church, entitled Vatican II Revisited, speaks frankly on what lay behind the greatest liturgical revolution in the history of Christianity and the motivation of the architect of that change, Archbishop Bugnini.

***

What were the reasons that led the Pope to such a drastic decision, which no one expected and which lay so heavily on the Church? ...I myself never knew any of these reasons for sure, even though, understandably in the distress of the moment, I knocked on many doors at all levels. When the opportunity arose of learning the reasons, I preferred the "discretion" that the philosopher says is the outer colonnade of the temple of wisdom. God keep me, therefore, from lifting now the veil that covers this "mystery."

Archbishop Annibale Bugnini,

The Reform of the Liturgy 1948-1975 (1990), p. 90 (on Pope Paul VI's sudden and unexpected decision to suppress the Congregation for Divine Worship, of which Bugnini was the Secretary, on July 16, 1975)

BY ROBERT MOYNIHAN

One of the great unsolved puzzles in the history of the Church in the post-Vatican II period is Paul VI's precise attitude toward the reform of the liturgy, and, in particular, his attitude toward the work of the man who was arguably the "chief architect" of that reform, Archbishop Annibale Bugnini (1912-1982), General Secretary of the Consilium which drafted the Novus Ordo Missae, the so-called "New Mass" of Paul VI.

In order to approach a deeper understanding of this enigma, the starting point must be the book Bugnini himself wrote in the years before his death in 1982, which only appeared in English in 1990 as The Reform of the Liturgy 1948-1975 (Liturgical Press, Collegeville, Minnesota, USA).

In this large tome (974 pages), Bugnini (the name is pronounced with a silent "g" as "Boon-yeen-y") recounts the history of the liturgical reform from his own perspective. The book is a gold-mine of information, but it must be used in conjunction with the original documents and with other studies.

One fascinating aspect of the book is how clear it makes the centrality of Bugnini's role. Over 27 years, Bugnini was named to key post after key post as the Church planned, then implemented, the conciliar liturgical reforms.

* On May 28, 1948, Pius XII named Bugnini Secretary of the Commission for Liturgical Reform;

* On July 11, 1960, John XXIII appointed Bugnini Secretary of the Preparatory Conciliar Commission on the Liturgy set up to prepare for the Second Vatican Council;

* In October 1962, John XXIII included Bugnini among the "periti" or "experts" named to advise the Conciliar Commission on the Liturgy during the Council itself;

* On January 3, 1964, Bugnini was informed by Cardinal Amleto Cicognani, Secretary of State, that Paul VI had chosen him to be Secretary of the Consilium, the body set up to implement the Council's teaching on the liturgy; the official announcement was dated January 13, 1964, and made public on January 28, 1964;

* Finally, in the apostolic constitution Sacra Rituum Congregatio, made public on May 8, 1969, Paul VI created a new Congregation to oversee the liturgy, the Congregation for Divine Worship; Bugnini was named its Secretary.

It is evident from Bugnini's own account that he was a key figure - perhaps the key figure - in the entire process of liturgical reform over those 27 years.

Bugnini's accounts of his audiences with Paul VI are striking, as they show Bugnini attempting to persuade a hesitant Pope to accept various proposed changes put forward by the various liturgical commissions Bugnini represented over the years.

This is what makes the ultimate outcome of Bugnini's career so perplexing.

On July 16, 1975, Paul VI announced that he was suppressing the Congregation for Divine Worship only six years and two months after establishing it - a shockingly rapid change of course in the Vatican, which usually works on a time-frame of decades and centuries.

Why did Paul act in this way?

In part, obviously, because Bugnini had many bitter enemies who wanted to oust him; perhaps they thought that closing down the entire Congregation might be an effective way of doing so without the inconvenience of singling out any one individual for removal.

Bugnini himself acknowledges that the Congregation he directed was continually criticized in Rome.

"The Congregation for Divine Worship was continually accused of causing the evils that were afflicting the Church, of fostering a lack of discipline, of yielding to arrogant pressures from some circles or countries, and of being unable to put down abuses," he wrote. And he adds, "the Congregation was forced continually to justify its actions" on matters ranging from "translations" to "distribution of communion in the hand" to "the new Eucharistic Prayers."

But the precise reason for Paul VI's decision remains elusive.

Indeed, the Pope evidently continued to support Bugnini right up until the eve of his decision to suppress the Congregation.

Bugnini says his last face-to-face meeting with Paul VI came on July 29, 1974. The two men, "as so many times in the past," talked over "how the work was going and what problems were being faced." The Pope, in "another of his countless signs of friendliness and trust," Bugnini recalled, gave Bugnini an autographed copy of his latest apostolic exhortation, Marialis cultus, and wrote: "To our esteemed brother, Annibale Bugnini... with gratitude for his labors on behalf of the sacred liturgy, and praying that he and his activity will enjoy the maternal help of the Blessed Virgin Mary."

So, Bugnini suggests, he had no prior warning, no reason to suspect that the Pope had "turned against" him.

On July 8, 1975, Cardinal James Knox, Bugnini's superior, told Bugnini that the Pope was considering combining the Congregation for Divine Worship with the Congregation for Sacraments. On July 16, 1975, the plan was carried out in the apostolic constitution Constans nobis studium.

What had happened? Though in public remarks at the time the Pope emphasized his continued conviction of the importance of the liturgy and liturgical renewal, few believed the act did not represent a fundamental shift in papal policy. Bugnini writes: "Everyone had a sense that something had changed and that the fusion of the two Congregations was an attempt to rein back and to turn the work in a different direction. The facts were to show that the feeling was justified."

So, according to Bugnini's own testimony, "everyone" in Rome in 1975 took Paul's decision as a signal of his desire to take the reform of the liturgy "in a different direction."

Bugnini tells us what he then did: he went about the Vatican seeking someone who could explain to him what had persuaded Paul VI to "change direction."

What answers did he receive?

He writes: "The majority looked for the source of the change in the regular meeting of the cardinals on June 19."

At that June 19 meeting, Bugnini tells us, the atmosphere had been "heated and hostile" as charges flew that Bugnini was "authoritarian" and "almost dictatorial" in the way he managed the Congregation, "not allowing freedom of movement to his own co-workers and limiting the role even of the cardinal prefects."

Still, these supposed causes of his loss of his post did not satisfy Bugnini. "When all is said and done," he writes, "all this seems to be the stuff of ordinary administrative life."

In a footnote he tells us: "Human deficiencies are always possible, of course, but the accusation reflects a mentality that was periodically revived among the officials of the Congregation who, out of ambition or defects of character, were determined to create difficulties for the secretary." Then Bugnini adds: "There must have been something more earth-shaking" behind the Pope's decision to suppress the entire Congregation for Divine Worship.

On Bugnini's own testimony, then, the thesis that he was removed merely because he was "dictatorial" was not persuasive - there had to be another, more serious reason for such a radical action!

It is here in his memoirs that Bugnini touches on the most sensational charge: that he was a Freemason, and that Paul VI had been persuaded that the allegation could not be dismissed out of hand.

This is what Bugnini writes: "Toward the end of the summer [of 1975] a cardinal who was usually no enthusiast for liturgical reform told me of the existence of a 'dossier' which he had seen on (or brought to?) the Pope's desk and which proved that Archbishop Bugnini was a Freemason." (The parenthetic phrase is Bugnini's own, as is his characteristic way of referring to himself in the third person.)

What do we learn from these few words? A great deal:

(1) That a conservative cardinal in Rome in 1975, someone of high enough rank to have had access to Pope Paul's private desk, saw on that desk some kind of a "dossier" about Bugnini;

(2) That that same cardinal was fully persuaded that the "dossier" contained information or documents that "proved" Bugnini was a Freemason;

(3) That Bugnini, upon hearing this, thought it possible that the cardinal who was telling him of it - one of his opponents on liturgical issues - had been the very one who had brought the dossier to the Pope (and this suggests the type of Byzantine infighting and back-stabbing which some in the Curia faced, and feared, in those years);

(4) That - as it seems reasonable to deduce - Paul VI did, in fact, see and read through this dossier, although this is not stated (it seems reasonable to conclude this because it is strongly implied in the cardinal's affirmation that the dossier was "on the Pope's desk"; it would be remarkable, in fact, if the Pope had not read through a dossier of this type on his desk);

(5) That it is not clear, from what Bugnini tells us, what information the dossier contained, or how credible it was, or whether Pope Paul took it seriously, or whether he was persuaded by it;

(6) That the cardinal who told this to Bugnini (and who had a certain level of credibility because Bugnini went to him to find out the reason for Paul's action), thought that Pope Paul had been persuaded by it, as shown by the fact that he clearly intended Bugnini to understand that Paul had acted in response to this dossier.

Bugnini denied the charge that he was a Freemason, both during the summer of 1975 and in the years that followed. He maintained it was a false and calumnious charge until his dying day.

"The charge was absurd," he wrote. "A malignant calumny."

There is no doubt that the charge was made, however, and it seems clear enough that the charge played some role in the Pope's decision to suppress the Congregation for Divine Worship and, shortly thereafter, to appoint Bugnini as Papal Nuncio to Iran, which was just about to explode with the return of the Ayatollah Khomeini - a nice reward, some in Rome have noted drily, for Paul to give to an aging archbishop entering the final pre-retirement years of his career! Bugnini took up his post in Teheran on January 5, 1976.

That Paul was influenced by the allegation seems to be proven by Bugnini's own reaction: he wrote a letter to Pope Paul to refute the charge.

"I have never had any interest in Freemasonry," Bugnini wrote to Paul on October 22, 1975. "I do not know what it is, what it does, or what its purposes are. I have lived as a religious for 50 years, as a priest for 40; for 26 my life has been limited to school, home, and office, and for 11 to home and office alone. I was born poor and I live as a poor man." (Bugnini noted that "this last sentence alludes to the charge that I had been abundantly supplied with luxuries by the Freemasons.")

From this letter we learn the following facts:

(1) That Paul VI definitely knew of the allegation that Bugnini was a Freemason (Bugnini is, in fact, informing the Pope of the allegation in this letter, while this, in turn, suggests that the Pope had prior knowledge of the allegation);

(2) That Bugnini thought it necessary to defend himself against the charge.

Despite Bugnini's denials, the charges continued to be repeated. Archbishop Marcel Lefebvre, by the mid-1970s already on a collision course with Rome, told his friends and benefactors that "until 1975 the principal director of liturgical reform at the Vatican was a Freemason" (Lettre aux amis et bienfaiteurs [d'Econe], no. 10, in Itineraires, May 15, 1976). This has been the position of the Lefebvrists ever since, and it explains, in part, their complete unwillingness to accept the "New Mass" of Paul VI. (It also suggests the importance of clarifying the mystery surrounding Bugnini for there to be any possibility of a rapprochement between the Lefebvrists and Rome.)

Reports in the Roman press in the summer of 1976 picked up the trail, and by August, the Italian weekly news magazine Panorama was publishing a list of 114 supposed Freemasons in the Vatican and Church hierarchy (Panorama, no. 538, August 10, 1976).

As the years went by, other charges were added. In the May 1980 issue of the American Catholic journal Homiletic and Pastoral Review, Bugnini defended himself against charges that he did not believe in the Eucharist and that his reform had emptied the churches, saying: "(1) By the grace of God my faith in the Holy Eucharist was and is that of the Holy Catholic Church. I challenge [anyone] to find a single expression in the liturgical reform that puts in doubt faith in the Holy Eucharist. (2) As for the 'liturgical revolution,' which would have alienated 'millions' of people from the faith... the causes of the weakening of faith in our time are many and complex. The liturgical reform not only [has] not deviated from the faith, but has been the most valid factor to give the faithful a faith more convincing, strong and operative in charity."

Bugnini sums up the attacks on him this way in his book: "Those carrying on the war were trying to strike at the liturgical movement... This attack was underhanded and the fruit of ignorance... Only once did calumny wound me deeply: when I was accused of infidelity to the Church, and the accusation was backed by the authority of a fellow bishop [Editor's note: Bugnini is referring here to Lefebvre]. Then I took my pen and wrote: "Nothing in this world is dearer to me than my episcopal cross. But if my slanderers are able, in an honest way, to prove the truth of even a smidgeon of what they claim, I am ready to surrender that cross."

***

In February 1996, Inside the Vatican received a letter from a man who would cast considerable light not only on the charges against Bugnini bust also on the entire process of liturgical reform. The letter's author was Abbot Boniface Luykx, O. Praem., an 81-year-old Eastern rite monk who now is the head of a monastery in northern California.

Abbot Boniface told us he had known Bugnini personally and had worked alongside him for many years in Rome since he, too, had been a consultor to the Consilium as it prepared the reform of the Mass after the Council.

We caught up with Abbot Boniface via telephone after he had just returned from a two-week trip to Istanbul, where he had held long meetings with representatives of the Orthodox Church to discuss theological issues impeding the full reunion of the Greek and Latin Church.

***

Abbot Boniface, you knew Annibale Bugnini personally. What can you tell us about him and, in particular, what can you tell us about the allegations that he was a Freemason?

ABBOT BONIFACE: We must be very, very prudent before accusing him of Freemasonry. I personally have no evidence whatsoever of that. But there was a large group of Freemasons in the Curia in those days, so it is possible that he was one of them. There have always been Freemasons among the high-ranking prelates of the Church, since the time of Pius IX in the 19th century, and even under Pius X, the great opponent of modernism. In more recent years, a document came out of the Vatican saying that membership in Freemasonic societies was permitted for Catholics, and it is striking that one of Cardinal Ratzinger's first acts upon assuming his office as Prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith in 1982 was to counter-act that.

In many countries, Freemasonry is thought of as a relatively benign association, a type of club. Does it really present some kind of danger to the Church?

ABBOT BONIFACE: You must not underestimate the scope of Freemasonry. I have come to understand that Freemasonry is a power that is much bigger than we think. It seeks to change the nature of the Church, and in this way, to destroy her. And, from a human perspective, from a natural perspective, the Church cannot win. The Church cannot survive. The Church only endures because the power of the Holy Spirit is protecting the Church.

The Church is not a natural institution. She is a mystical reality, the Bride of Christ. And because she is not a natural reality, but a supernatural one, she cannot be destroyed by natural means, and Christ has promised to protect and preserve her by supernatural means. And that is what I see in history. The Church I have just visited in Constantinople, for example, is in great difficulty. There are only a handful of Christians left there in a city which was once the center of all Eastern Christianity. But this is less remarkable than the fact that there are Christians still there at all. Because the Church has been choked so long in Constantinople by laws forbidding the full and open practice of the faith, that her continuation there can only be attributed to the action of the Holy Spirit.

Can we go back for a moment to Archbishop Bugnini....

ABBOT BONIFACE: Archbishop Bugnini, as a private man, was extremely charming, and very capable to bring people together. He was very pleasant to work with. He always made everyone feel welcome and at home in the meetings we had. But I think that he was political as well, and mostly for himself, for personal power. That is also a fact in Rome: that some ecclesiastics long to rise up the clerical ladder, and seek to use each post they reach as a springboard to another. This is very human and understandable, but sometimes it is not very edifying.

Then there was his worldview, his view of the liturgy and of our task in reforming it. I was at the Council as a peritus ("expert") for Cardinal Joseph Malula, the archbishop of Kinshasha, Zaire, who recently passed away.

Bugnini once told Malula that the norm for the liturgy and for Church renewal is modern Western man, because he is the perfect man, and the final man, and the everlasting man, because he is the perfect and normative man. And he made clear that, for him, "acculturation" or adapting to Western culture is the great work in Church liturgical reform and renewal, and in theology, and in all other aspects of Church life.

Secularization was, for him, a necessary process, something the Church needed to accept and embrace.

But how could a priest and monsignor, whose whole life bears witness to the fact that the sacred transcends the secular, that the divine transcends the human even as it condescends to embrace human nature, and to save it - how could he have embraced secularism in this way?

ABBOT BONIFACE: He accepted and embraced secularism because he said it was reality, and it was necessary to accept reality. He held to the modern philosophical view that man is made without God, and does not need God...

Did he actually say this to you?

ABBOT BONIFACE: Say what?

That man is made without God and does not need God...

ABBOT BONIFACE: He never would have written anything like that. And even when he talked, he did not do so imprudently. He may never have spoken those words exactly, but that was his meaning, as his repeated answers to Bishop Malula revealed.

Did you know him well? Did you have many meetings with him to discuss these matters?

ABBOT BONIFACE: I did meet with him many times, and we were often together when there were official meals and snacks. And I thought he was very charming, and a very good man. And that is why he was abused, I think, and why all those charges were made against him.

You know, he had a very high opinion of himself. He wanted to reach the very highest levels, to become a cardinal, to reach the higher levels of power.

What responsibility did Paul VI have in choosing a man like Bugnini to carry forward the work of liturgical renewal? Should he not have chosen a different man?

ABBOT BONIFACE: Paul VI was a very great Pope, but he was a weak man. He had great difficulty in taking a decision. For example, he had the New Order of the Mass on his desk for three years - three years! - before promulgating it. And he took many unusual decisions to avoid that final decision. And one of his decisions was inviting in the six Protestant theologians to review the document before publication to ensure that Protestant sensibilities would not be offended. And it was this decision that caused the greatest problems.

Paul chose Bugnini and kept Bugnini at his post all those years because he liked him and trusted him, and this is understandable, because he was a likeable and competent man.

And he did not lessen this trust when he saw the Novus Ordo Mass which Bugnini's Consilium prepared?

ABBOT BONIFACE: No. Paul approved the new Mass because his advisors told him that the Protestants would come closer to the Catholic Church as a result.

That was his main reason, because it really did take on some of the aspects of a Protestant service; that is why the Anglican and Lutherans and others are so favorable to the New Mass. And that was the way Paul wanted it. He had a vision of the Church re-uniting after centuries of bloodshed and division.

Looking back on it today, from the vantage point of more than 30 years, how do you assess the liturgical work you helped produce in the 1960s?

ABBOT BONIFACE: I believe there have been three main periods in this era of Church crisis. There was first the period of distortion, when individual theologians distorted what the Council had said and intended. Then there was open rebellion against the Council.

And finally there was open rebellion against everything, from God to the central tenets of Christianity.

We are now in that third period, and it is indeed a time of terrible trial for the Church.

Still, all is not lost. As long as this Pope lives, he will certainly stick to the decrees of the Council. That will prevent some of what the radicals seek from coming to pass. And then, there are hopeful signs, like the magazines which have arisen, like yours, to fight against this radical assault on the Church. So, in my view, we are now moving slowly toward victory through the work of laymen, and that seems to be God's will. Because many Church leaders have betrayed their obligation.

I need to be nuanced here. There are many good things that have happened in the past generation. But there is really no leadership coming from the bishops. We lack spiritual leadership, which the bishops really should give.

So the Evil One, who is attacking the Church at all times, is powerful, and drawing away many to ruin, but then there is no leadership for the good ones.

So, the future of the Church is optimistic and pessimistic at the same time. Because the elements of holiness are growing everyday, but, at the same time, there is no leadership, no leadership from many bishops, although great leadership from Pope John Paul II and the Vatican.

***

In April in Rome, a book of memoirs was published in the form of a long interview between Cardinal Silvio Oddi and Italian Vaticanist Lucio Brunelli.

Oddi offers many fascinating insights and reveals many things never known before about the working of the Vatican, and we we intend to examine the book at greater length in one of our upcoming summer issues, in the conviction that our readers will find Oddi as fascinating as we do. (In a conversation with Brunelli, we agreed to publish his conversations with Oddi in English translation, and we expect to have the volume available within a few weeks.)

Oddi contends that the list of 114 alleged high-ranking Catholic Freemasons circulated in Rome in the mid-1970s is not authentic. "There was not even one so-called 'Traditionalist' prelate on the list," Oddi recalled.

When he saw that, he said to himself: "That's not possible. I don't believe it."

In other words, Oddi saw the list as a fabrication, one move in the ongoing battle between "liberals" and "conservatives" in the 1970s, and not a shocking but true document worthy of credit.

Here is Oddi's memory of Bugnini.

"I knew Bugnini very well," Oddi told Brunelli. "I can swear that he was not a Freemason. He had been beaten down. 'You won't believe it too?' he asked me in anguish, looking at me right in the eyes, when there began to be suspicions about him. He did not even want to go to Teheran as Nuncio. It was I who persuaded him.

"'It will be worse,' I said to him, 'if you don't go; everyone will think that these accusations are true.'

"I remain convinced that these accusations were made up by someone in his office, the Congregation for Divine Worship, who wanted to eliminate him."

Copyright© Our Lady of Fatima Spring Hill, 10401 Spring Hill Drive, Spring Hill, Florida, 34608, USA