The liturgical trials and tribulations of the Latin Church should, I rather think, be traced back to the Nanny of Archbishop Pietro Marini. She should have induced in him a greater respect for telling the Truth.
(Pietro Marini should not be confused with the Master of Pontifical Ceremonies, Guido Marini. If you want a handy mnemonic, remember that Guido Marini is the Good Marini. But Pietro ... no relation ...)
Pietro was ... is ... a great admirer of Hannibal Bugnini, facilitator of liturgical corruption and disaster in the decade after the Council. Bugnini was the undertaker who nailed up the Roman Rite in the three traditional papal coffins. The poor thing is still struggling to get out.
In A Challenging Reform Realizing the Vision of the Liturgical Renewal, Marini asserts (page 141) "The fact that four Eucharistic Prayers were approved was consistent with the early Roman liturgy, which actually had used several anaphoras" ['Anaphora' is a tarty Greek/Academic term for Eucharistic Prayer; what you and I would call a 'Canon']. I quoted Mgr Knox on the word 'actually' quite recently; he asserted, you may recall, that the word commonly denoted the imminence of a lie.
Perhaps it wasn't a lie. Perhaps the Early Roman Church had 2,943 Eucharistic Prayers. But if it did, then, as far as I know, no vestige, no mention of them has come down to us. Tacet Clio.
Perhaps the fib is not Marini's. Because his book, published by some institution at some place called Collegeville, was 'edited' by no fewer than three chappies. Perhaps this dear little naughtiness was their doing, and Pietro ipse is squeaky clean.
But I blame Nanny. Every time little Pietro told a Porkie, she should have given him a mighty whack and shouted ragazzo cattivo.
It's the only sort of language liturgists understand.
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In a footnote somewhere in Abp. Bugnini's 974-page memoirs, The Reform of the Liturgy, 1948-1975 (which I call "Apologia pro Liturgia Sua"), His Excellency mentions that a study group headed by Fr. Louis Bouyer was working on the adaptation of another Byzantine anaphora for use in his liturgy in the same manner as Eucharistic Prayer No. 4, but it got "lost on the cutting room floor" in the final editing of Liturgia Sua. There were also rumors that the Roman Canon was to be omitted from the new Missale Romanum but that Pope Paul VI intervened at the last moment to insist on its inclusion in the Novus Ordo missal. If such had happened, then there would still have been four eucharistic prayers, but the first one would have been the current second one (based on the supposed anaphora of anti-Pope/Saint Hippolytus) as the new Roman Canon.
"His Excellency mentions that a study group headed by Fr. Louis Bouyer was working on the adaptation of another Byzantine anaphora for use in his liturgy in the same manner as Eucharistic Prayer No. 4, but it got "lost on the cutting room floor" in the final editing of Liturgia Sua."
I read the book (nearly 25 years ago) but I don't remember that. What I do recall reading, in several works, was that Eucharistic Prayer No. 4 itself was originally intended to be a translation of the Egyptian (Coptic) Anaphora of St. Basil (a rather shorter version of the Byzantine anaphora of that name, both now widely accepted to have come from the stylus of St. Basil himself), but at the last minute objections were raised to the presence of a consecratory episclsis after the Words of Institution in it, and so the manglers and excisers went to work, producing, eventually, the present EP4.
Pedantic footnote: there are three "Anaphoras of St. Basil;" "Little Basil," the Egyptian version; "Middle Basil," an anaphora surviving only in Armenian (and not used by the Armenians for a millennium or more); and "Big Basil," the Byzantine version. There are very good reasons for believing that Middle Basil and Big Basil are successive revisions coming from the stylus of the Archbishop of Caesarea in Cappadocia himself, and some reasons for believing that of Little Basil as well; cf. The Anaphoras of St Basil and St James: An Investigation into their Common Origin, by John R. K. Fenwick (Rome, 1992: Orientalia Christiana Analecta 240). Fenwick (whilom Ecumenical Advisor to Abp. Carey of the sedes stercorata, and now Primus of the "Free Church of England") believes that the Anaphoras of St. Basil and the Anaphora of St. James of Jerusalem were adapted from a common source by their respective authors, St. Basil and (in the case of the Anaphora of St. James) St. Cyril of Jerusalem.
On the Free Church of England, see:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Free_Church_of_England
He was afraid to abolish the Canon
Was the Pope, though advised so to do.
He was upset when the Pentecost Octave
Went the way of all flesh, cried boo-hoo.
But 'twas an itsy bitsy teenie weenie fib by liturgist Marini
That he swore 'bout the old Roman Rite
Which put the theories of his meanie, freemasonic mentor mate Bugnini
In a clear and original light.
Fr Hunwicke, I think you've made a mistake with Archbishop Marini's Christian name. I believe it is Piero, not Pietro.
published by some institution at some place called Collegeville
That explains a lot.
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