CHW fail altogether to address the circumstances in which the NO was composed, who composed it, and how it was promulgated. It is a very disturbing story. I wonder if they have read Yves Chiron’s meticulous biography Annibale Bugnini: Reformer of the Liturgy,¹ which well documents Bugnini’s deviousness. Chiron is cautious about accepting the claim that Bugnini was a Mason, but for CHW not to acknowledge or address that elephant in the room as well as the substantiated claims that Bugnini operated by lying both to Paul VI and to the authors of the NO, and that there was an explicit intent to downplay Catholic elements in the liturgy for the sake of ecumenism with Protestants,² is to sidestep grave concerns about the actual origins of the NO.

A shortened version of Chiron’s reporting on Bugnini’s role has been published in the Notre Dame Church Life Journal.³ Chiron shows that many members of the Commission were opposed to or very reluctant to accept the changes made. Chiron demonstrates that Bugnini manipulated Paul VI, a pope known for his habit of ambivalence, which likely made it easy for him to be manipulated.

This habit was amply shown in speeches he made in the years and months previous to the imposition of the NO. Writing in 1966 (after SC had been approved and before the NO was finalized) in a letter to religious orders that were being pressured to pray in the vernacular, Paul VI makes a strong case of the importance of Latin; what he says about Latin could be easily applied to the liturgy as a whole:

What is in question here is not only the retention within the choral office of the Latin language, though it is of course right that this should be eagerly guarded and should certainly not be lightly esteemed. For this language is, within the Latin Church, an abundant wellspring of Christian civilization and a very rich treasure-trove of devotion. But it is also the seemliness, the beauty and the native strength of these prayers and canticles which is at stake: the choral office itself, “the lovely voice of the Church in song” (Cf. St Augustine’s Confessions, Bk 9, 6). Your founders and teachers, the holy ones who are as it were so many lights within your religious families, have transmitted this to you. The traditions of the elders, your glory throughout long ages, must not be belittled. Indeed, your manner of celebrating the choral office has been one of the chief reasons why these families of yours have lasted so long, and happily increased. It is thus most surprising that under the influence of a sudden agitation, some now think that it should be given up.

In present conditions, what words or melodies could replace the forms of Catholic devotion which you have used until now? You should reflect and carefully consider whether things would not be worse, should this fine inheritance be discarded. It is to be feared that the choral office would turn into a mere bland recitation, suffering from poverty and begetting weariness, as you yourselves would perhaps be the first to experience. One can also wonder whether men would come in such numbers to your churches in quest of the sacred prayer, if its ancient and native tongue, joined to a chant full of grave beauty, resounded no more within your walls. We therefore ask all those to whom it pertains, to ponder what they wish to give up, and not to let that spring run dry from which, until the present, they have themselves drunk deep. Apostolic Letter Sacrificium Laudis, August 15, 1966, https://www.ccwatershed.org/2013/08/05/paul-vi-disturbed-and-saddened-purge-latin/

Indeed, Paul VI forbids use of the vernacular by the religious:

In any case, beloved Sons, the requests mentioned above concern such grave matters that We are unable to grant them, or to derogate now from the norms of the Council and of the Instructions noted above. Therefore we earnestly beseech you that you would consider this complex question under all its aspects. From the good will which we have toward you, and from the good opinion which we have of you, We are unwilling to allow that which could make your situation worse, and which could well bring you no slight loss, and which would certainly bring a sickness and sadness upon the whole Church of God. Allow Us to protect your interests, even against your own will. It is the same Church which has introduced the vernacular into the sacred liturgy for pastoral reasons, that is, for the sake of people who do not know Latin, which gives you the mandate of preserving the age-old solemnity, beauty and dignity of the choral office, in regard both to language, and to the chant. Apostolic Letter Sacrificium Laudis, August 15, 1966, https://www.ccwatershed.org/2013/08/05/paul-vi-disturbed-and-saddened-purge-latin/

Tragically, this letter, Sacrificium Laudis, was scuttled by the direct intervention of Rembert Weakland in Rome, as the latter details in his memoirs.⁴

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