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I sat down and read the document - line-by-line, word-by-word. It was a classic jaw-dropping experience. Anyone with a modicum of perspicuity can see (at least in retrospect) that Sacrosanctum Concilium was designed by its principal draftsman, Annibale Bugnini, to authorize a liturgical revolution, while giving the appearance of liturgical continuity.

This topic came up on another thread regarding the changes that happened to a parish in Georgia within 1 year of the opening of Vatican II and the passage of Sacrosanctum Concilium, VII's constitution on the liturgy. Within less than a year the priest had turned around, Mass was said in the vernacular, a new altar table was installed, the communion rail was removed and people received communion standing. Chris Ferrara demonstrates how all these changes were permitted and even encouraged by Sacrosanctum Concilium if you read it with the eyes of the reformers.

It seems to me Gamber is right when he suggests that the entire question of legitimacy to change a rite is open to debate. The liturgy had always evolved organically. Whether the pope or a regional council of "experts" had the authority to change this by fiat needs to be brought into question. The automatic assumption that they did have this right seems mistaken to begin with, no matter what the Council has stated so ambiguously. Ultimately, the issue is the faith itself. What has happened since Vatican II has been the systematic destruction of Catholicism, under the misguided aegis of two liberal papacies. This has already placed the deposit of faith under assault by faithless men in very high places.

"Fr. Louis Bouyer, an outstanding figure in the pre-conciliar Liturgical Movement, claims that:
in no other area is there a greater distance (and even formal opposition) between what the Council worked out and what we actually have ... I now have the impressed, and I am not alone, that those who took it upon themselves to apply (?) the Council's directives on this point have turned their backs to deliberately on what Beauduin, Casel, and Pius Parsh had set out to do, and to which I had tried vainly to add some small contribution of my own. I do not wish to vouch for the truth, or seem to, at any greater length of this denial and imposture. If any are still interested, they may read the books I wrote on the subject; there are only too many of these! Or better, they might read the books of the experts I have just mentioned, on whom they have been able to turn their backs..."

- from Pope John's Council by Michael Davies, page 224, quoting Fr. Louis Bouyer in The Decomposition of Catholicism, page 99 (London 1970). In Davies' booklet Liturgical Shipwreck 25 Years of the New Mass, he writes:

"In 1964 Father Bouyer wrote an enthusiastic appreciation of the Liturgy Constitution entitled The Liturgy Revived, which predicted the flowering of a great liturgical renewal. He had become totally disillusioned by 1968 and wrote a scathing denunciation of the manner in which the reform was developing in practice, entitled The Decomposition of Catholicism, in which he states that not only is there formal opposition between what the Council required and what we actually have, but that, in practice, the reform constitutes a repudiation of the papally approved liturgical movement to which he had contributed" (see the above quotation)

As any lawyer, including Ferrara, can tell you, a "contract" is worth exactly what BOTH parties intend to bring--that is, if one party lacks integrity, the contract is worthless, period.

But given that SC is a contract, ad arguendam, the problem w/SC was that one of the parties (Bugnini and Weakland and others...) were simply faithless in their part of the bargain.

We could say that they are also Faithless.

It has already been demonstrated to a fare-thee-well that Paul VI was too easily sold a LOT of bills-of-goods. Time to move forward, rather than looking backwards.

In this regard, we wait with great expectation the ministration of Card. Arinze and his staff.