How Bugnini Grew Up under Pius XII 

Dr. Carol Byrne, Great Britain

Fr. Annibale Bugnini, CM, was a priest of the Congregation of the Mission, an institution founded by St. Vincent de Paul (hence the epithet Vincentian) to preach the Gospel to the poor, as its motto, “evangelizare pauperibus” indicates. In 1947, a scandal arose in the residence where Bugnini and his and co-worker, Fr. Francesco Bossarelli, CM, lived in Rome at the Church of San Silvestro al Quirinale, which belonged to the Congregation of the Mission. Inside the murky world of San Silvestro: the ‘Bossarelli Case’

Bugnini and Bossarelli had been close collaborators, running the Congregation’s affairs at San Silvestro and editing its missionary publications, Edizioni Liturgiche e Missionarie.

Records from the Vincentian archives show that in 1947 Bugnini, as Secretary of the Congregation’s Provincial Council, was in charge of its administrative affairs when millions of dollars of Vatican funds went missing. 

Bugnini and Bossarelli plotted from the the Church of San Silvestro al Quirinale in Rome

A special Commission set up by Pius XII found that Fr. Francesco Bossarelli “and his associates” were guilty of embezzling $2,000,000 belonging to the Vatican in “black market financial dealings.” 

The Provincial Superior at San Silvestro was dismissed by the Holy See for covering up the affair. Bugnini must also have had confidential knowledge of these criminal activities, a situation from which he could not have emerged with clean hands.
  

Hiding behind a shield of secrecy

Unknown to Pius XII, Fr. Bugnini had been making clandestine visits to the Centre de Pastorale Liturgique (CPL), a progressivist conference centre for liturgical reform which organized national weeks for priests.

Inaugurated in Paris in 1943 on the private initiative of two Dominican priests under the presidency of Fr. Lambert Beauduin, it was a magnet for all who considered themselves in the vanguard of the Liturgical Movement. It would play host to some of the most famous names who influenced the direction of Vatican II: Frs. Beauduin, Guardini, Congar, Chenu, Daniélou, Gy, von Balthasar, de Lubac, Boyer, Gelineau etc.

Archbishop Bugnini greeted by Pope Montini, who since he was a Monsignor cleared the way for Fr. Bugnini's work of destruction

 It could, therefore, be considered as the confluence of all the forces of Progressivism, which saved and re-established Modernism condemned by Pope Pius X in Pascendi. 

According to its co-founder and director, Fr. Pie Duployé, OP, Bugnini had requested a “discreet” invitation to attend a CPL study week held near Chartres in September 1946:

“I had a visit from an Italian Lazarist, Fr. Bugnini, who had asked me to obtain an invitation for him… During our return journey to Paris, as the train was passing along the Swiss Lake at Versailles, he said to me: 'I admire what you are doing, but the greatest service I can render you is never to say a word in Rome about all that I have just heard.'” 

Much more was involved here than the issue of secrecy. The person whose heart beat as one with the interests of the reformers would return to Rome to be placed by an unsuspecting Pope in charge of his Commission for the General Reform of the Liturgy.  

The plot thickens

But someone in the Roman Curia did know about the CPL – Msgr. Giovanni Battista Montini, the acting Secretary of State and future Paul VI – who sent a telegram to the CPL dated January 3, 1947. It purported to come from the Pope with an apostolic blessing. If, in Bugnini’s estimation, the Roman authorities were to be kept in the dark about the CPL so as not to compromise its activities, a mystery remains. Was the telegram issued under false pretences, or did Pius XII really know and approve of the CPL?

What is certain is that Fr. Bugnini could not have been appointed as Secretary of the 1948 Commission without Msgr. Montini’s intervention with Pius XII, as it was the Secretary of State who, in the normal course of Vatican affairs, had the biggest say in forwarding names for papal appointments. Sow Bugnini, reap corruption

Card.. Bea, confessor of Pius XII, won the Pope to the cause of the reforms

 As history has shown, appointing Bugnini as Secretary of the Liturgical Commission was the equivalent of placing Dracula in charge of the blood bank. This monstrous figure was allowed to assume complete control of the Commission and to work against a centralized control of the liturgy vested in the Curia.

His ultimate foe was the Congregation of Rites, which had been founded by Pope Sixtus V in 1588 to safeguard the uniformity of the Roman Rite. He complained that “for centuries the Church willed that all worship in the Roman Rite should everywhere show perfect uniformity.” 

His objective was to smash “the hegemony of the Congregation of Rites.” Soon it would be reduced to a tin pot army incapable of defending the realm of the Church’s worship against his policy of “inculturation.” Then, it would be abolished by Paul VI in 1969.

Fr. Bugnini informs us in his posthumous memoirs that the Commission met in “absolute secrecy.” The result was that not even the Pope could be certain of its deliberations. The only updates he received were relayed through biased intermediaries: Msgr. Montini whose own credibility was bound up with the reforms and Fr. Augustin Bea, a member of the Commission, who had already been permitted by Pius XII to dabble in liturgical matters and break with Tradition. 

Bugnini stated: “The Commission enjoyed the full confidence of the Pope, who was kept informed by Msgr. Montini, and even more so, weekly, by Fr. Bea, the confessor of Pius XII. Thanks to this intermediary, we could arrive at remarkable results, even during the periods when the Pope's illness prevented anyone else getting near him.” 

The reason for the secrecy was not hard to find: Fr. Bugnini’s agenda included liturgical deviations condemned by Pius XII in Mediator Dei, even though he could not introduce them all immediately. In the light of this collusion, the Novus Ordo of 1969 was simply the end game of a decades-long strategy masterminded by Fr. Bugnini with Msgr. Montini acting as his personal consigliere and “Grand Vizier” to Pius XII. 

The hermeneutic of ‘Bugninuity’

 One of the most objectionable characteristics of Bugnini was his capacity for deception. He crossed his heart and swore repeatedly that he was carrying out the wishes of Pope Pius X and following the tradition of the Council of Trent in overhauling the liturgy. His self-declared aim was to return the liturgy of the Roman Rite from a “dark age” of unintelligibility to “worship in spirit and truth” in which all could actively participate.

A reform already in practice in the '50s in Portland, above, and Kansas City

 This agenda was set out as early as 1949 in the Ephemerides Liturgicae, a leading Roman review on liturgical studies of which Fr. Bugnini was Editor from 1944 to 1965.

First, he denigrated the traditional liturgy as a dilapidated building (“un vecchio edificio”), which should be condemned because it was in danger of falling to pieces (“sgretolarsi”) and, therefore, beyond repair.

Then, he criticized it for its alleged “deficiencies, incongruities and difficulties,” which rendered it spiritually “sterile” and would prevent it appealing to modern sensibilities. 

It is difficult to understand how, in the same year that he published this anti-Catholic diatribe, he was made a Professor of Liturgy in Rome’s Propaganda Fide (Propagation of the Faith) University. 

His solution was to return to the simplicity of early Christian liturgies and jettison all subsequent developments, especially traditional devotions. 

These ideas expressed in 1949 would form the foundational principles of Vatican II’s Sacrosanctum Concilium. For all practical purposes, the Roman Rite was dead in the water many years before it was officially buried by Paul VI. To be continued...

Source: TraditionInAction 

http://traditioninaction.org/HotTopics/f085_Dialogue_11.htm 

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