ANY BELIEVE the post-conciliar funeral Mass (Missa in exséquiis) desperately needs revision, more than any other rite. It is well known that Hannibal Bugnini despised anything redolent of medieval spirituality. Professor Louis Bouyer described in his memoirs the shameful scheme employed by Bugnini to cause “the scuttling of the liturgy of the dead” (to use Father Bouyer’s exact phrase). Indeed, on page 773 of his enormous tome, Bugnini brags about eliminating “familiar and even beloved texts” such as the Libera me and Dies irae. According to Bugnini,1 the ancient REQUIEM MASS “smacked of a negative spirituality inherited from the Middle Ages” and “overemphasized judgment, fear, and despair.” The reformers even added an ALLELUIA which—to my knowledge—had never existed in the entire history of Church. Since it was a brand new creation, the plainsong notation was concocted and provided in the post-conciliar ORDO CANTUS MISSAE (another reminder of how prevalent ‘Neo-Gregorian’ compositions are in the post-conciliar liturgy).
Current Rubrics • But until the LITURGIA DEFUNCTORUM is patched up, Catholics are obliged to follow the current rubrics and regulations. After all, I was born in the 1980s; nobody asked my opinion about the 1960s liturgical reforms. Many have requested the following document, which governs any funerals taking place at my parish:
* PDF Download • FUNERAL REPERTOIRE—4 pages
If you find that document arresting, you’ll want to visit the flourishing feasts website and scroll down to where it says: “Funeral Regulations and Repertoire.”
1 Hannibal Bugnini seems unaware of the existence of Purgatory. Perhaps that explains why Ferdinando Giuseppe Antonelli (the Franciscan cardinal appointed by Pope Saint Paul VI as “Secretary of the Conciliar Commission on the Liturgy” on 4 October 1962) said of Bugnini’s Consilium ad exsequendam Constitutionem de Sacra Liturgia: “The most acute deficiency in the CONSILIUM is the lack of theologians. In fact, it could be said that they had been excluded altogether, which is something dangerous. In the liturgy, every word and every gesture expresses an idea which is always a theological idea.”
