The first section of my enquiry will have made you wonder why the Academic Establishment were all so sure that the Roman Institution Narrative "must" originally have contained a Which was ... clause following on from Hoc est enim Corpus meum.
If you're sitting comfortably, I'll begin.
Jungmann, no fool, explained that the Which ... clause already had appeared "in both of the older texts of the Roman Tradition".
What exactly will these two forms have been?
Hippolytus and the De Sacramentis.
Oh dear.
Seven decades after Jungmann wrote what he did, "Hippolytus" is no longer believed ... to be Hippolytus! Or to have anything to do with the early worship of the Roman Church!
And how close the de Sacramentis really was to the worship at Rome is very much an open question.
So much for "Evidence"!! As Tommy Cooper used to say, Now you see it now you don't.
In the years after the appearance of the Novus Ordo, Roman Catholic liturgical writers expected that Anglicans would be enthusiastic about what might look like a converging of modern Anglican and Roman liturgical work.
They were to be very disappointed. Here is one example.
Fr G G Willis, Vicar of the Anglo-Saxon church at Wing, was always happy to share his negative views on (particularly) "the New Eucharistic Prayers". A good example is his piece in the January 1971 number of The Heythrop Journal. Again and again he makes the point that the orientalising EPs II, III, and IV are, quite simply, not Roman. The Roman rite "is a noble and intelligible rite, well able to maintain its own against any competition from the East ... The three new canons make a fundamental doctrinal change ... imitation of an ancient Oriental custom which is new to the Roman rite ... new canons abandoned the original connexion of Preface to Canon, and substituted a new connexion ... a device which has fairly wide Eastern precedent ... It may be doubted whether this verbal connexion is as profound as the theological and logical connexion which it replaces ... all three new canons have followed Eastern precedent ... of course the ["Hippolytus"] rite does not express the Roman view ... It is often assumed, though less frequently demonstrated, by commentators on the new Canons of the Mass, that the Roman Canon is defective or disorderly ... The Roman Mass ought not to be treated as if it were the debased descendant of some Eastern rite. There is absolutely no warrant whatever for assuming that the ideal form of a liturgy is to be seen in any of the surviving Eastern rites ... this [Roman] pattern is very different from the oriental pattern, but it is hardly possible to deny that it is logical and satisfying ... more subtle, less materialistic, and much more primitive ... [some] theory may be justifiable, but it is not Roman. In all respects the new canons present an aspect very different from the classical Roman pattern ... in the new canons [we have] a hybrid form ... These novel doctrines are importations into the Roman rite, but it seems that many have welcomed them, perhaps on the principle, so popular in the twentieth century, of taking omne ignotum pro magnifico."
Professor T C Skeat (1907-2003), a codicologist, made a very good case for believing that it was the Church in Rome, around or not long after 100 A.D., which established the principle of an exclusive Gospel Canon containing our four Gospels, no more and no fewer. He argued that the preservation of S Mark (despite the fact that S Matthew includes nearly all the material in S Mark) results from the likelihood that S Mark was the distinctively Roman Gospel. This makes it particularly interesting that the Roman Institution Narrative common to both Matthew and Mark represents the Lord saying simply This is my Body, without any elaboration or addition whatsoever.
What a breach in our gracious Roman Tradition! A tradition of around 1870 years, fractured in 1970 by the confection of new and very dodgy 'canons', and the orientalising of the Verba Domini in the Eucharistic Prayer! Pure robbery!
The Novus Ordo is not the Roman Rite.
I want the Roman Rite back!
I don't want the corrupted and profoundly unRoman mishmash found in the Novus Ordo.
I have a little more to say later: Whatever happened to the Mystery of Faith?
Thankyou, Father, for posting this series on the Words of Consecration. Any open- and right-minded person can only appreciate and agree with what you here write.
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