Notes on Eucharistic Prayer II

Every once in the while, when I was saying the Novus Ordo far more often than I do today (last Sunday was the first in several months, after the EF and before an EF baptism), why I used the Roman Canon and never Eucharistic Prayer II.

Well!

First, there’s the fact that the claimed origins of EP2 are thoroughly ridiculous.

And here’s a new wrinkle, from the great Fr. Hunwicke. He has a post at his place (with my emphases):

How to enjoy Eucharistic Prayer II

That charismatic writer and teacher of the 1950s and 1960s, the distinguished liturgist Fr Louis Bouyer, in his Memoires [published 2014; I am very gratefully indebted to a kind friend for these extracts], tells of his own involvement with the composition of Eucharistic Prayer II.

He [Bouyer] was summoned to join the sub-commission charged with inventing the new ‘Missal’; after seeing the drafting work aleady done, his instinct was to leave the group instantly … but Dom Bernard Botte persuaded him to stay, even if only to obtain a less dreadful result. He agreed. I give you my own probably inaccurate translation [corrections welcomed with a sigh of relief] of Bouyer’s vivid account of the early history of what has, so very sadly, become by far the most commonly used Eucharistic Prayer during this past half-century in the Western Church.

“You’ll have an idea of the deplorable conditions in which this indecently speedy reform (reforme a la sauvette) was pushed forward, when I have told you how the Second Eucharistic Prayer was tied up (ficelee). Between the fanatics who were archaeologising wildly and at random, who would have wanted to ban the Sanctus and the Intercessions from the EP, adopting the Eucharist of Hippolytus just as it was, and the others who didn’t give a damn about (qui se fichaient pas mal de) his pretended Apostolic Tradition but only wanted a botched (baclee) Mass, Dom Botte and I were charged with patching up the text so as to introduce these elements, which are certainly very ancient … in time for the very next morning! By chance, I discovered, in a writing perhaps by Hippolytus himself but certainly in his style, a happy formula on the Holy Spirit which could make a transition, of the Vere Sanctus type, leading into the brief epiclesis. Botte, for his part, fabricated an intercession more worthy of Paul Reboux [a belle epoque humourist and producer of witty pastiches] and his In the Style of … than of his own areas of academic competence. But I can never reread this weird (invraisemblable) composition without recalling the terrace of the bistro in the Trastevere where we had to work carefully at our allotted drudgery (pensum), so as to be in a position to present ourselves, with it in our hands, at the Bronze Gate at the time fixed by our bosses.” [Botte recalls in his memoires that the Pensionato in which he stayed was too full of red, purple, and cassocks; “my only break was to eat my meals in the little public restaurants on the nearby streets …”]

[… Here I’ve cut out a highly amusing chunk to force you to go over there and read the rest….]

The next paragraph begins with Bouyer informing us that the Novus Ordo Calendar was “oeuvre d’un trio de maniaques”. He also describes Archbishop Bugnini as meprisable and aussi depourvu de culture que de simple honnetete, all of which really does totally defeat either my schoolboy French or my plain old-style Anglo-Saxon sense of decency de mortuis; I’m not sure which. It’s such a terrible burden being an Englishman.

I’ll be heading to Rome in May for some research. I must get this book. I don’t see it yet on Amazon USA in French. It is available at Amazon UK (HERE) and at Amazon ITALY (HERE), at Amazon CANADA (HERE) and of course Amazon FRANCE (HERE).