Consilium
The Consilium, officially the Consilium ad exsequendam Constitutionem de Sacra Liturgia ("Council for the Implementation of the Constitution on the Sacred Liturgy"), was a body created by Pope Paul VI in January 1964 to carry out the revision of the liturgical books of the Roman Rite called for by the Second Vatican Council's constitution Sacrosanctum Concilium. Annibale Bugnini was told on 3 January 1964 that he would be its secretary, a letter from the Secretariat of State dated 13 January gave the body its name, and the motu proprio Sacram Liturgiam, dated 25 January and published in L'Osservatore Romano on 29 January, made its creation public.
Under its president, Cardinal Giacomo Lercaro, the Consilium worked through study groups (coetus) of consultors who drafted revised rites. Drafts went to a meeting of the groups' rapporteurs, then to plenary sessions of the Consilium's cardinal and bishop members, then to the pope, and were promulgated in the name of the Sacred Congregation of Rites. Its output included the instruction Inter Oecumenici (1964), three additional Eucharistic prayers in 1968, and the revised Order of Mass with its General Instruction in 1969. After the Congregation of Rites was divided on 8 May 1969 the Consilium continued as a special commission inside the new Congregation for Divine Worship; it held its last plenary meeting on 9-10 April 1970, when Paul VI told its members that it was being dismissed.
The Consilium's work drew criticism during and after its existence. An experimental rite known as the Missa normativa was presented to the 1967 Synod of Bishops and received a divided response, and the new Order of Mass was attacked in the 1969 Ottaviani Intervention. Critics alledge that Bugnini manipulated the Consilium's proceedings, and that this was one of many reasons for his removal from posts in 1962 and 1975.
Similar Artists