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How are you facing up to this new post? Have you done studies in liturgy?
CAŅIZARES LLOVERA: From the very beginning of my priestly training I’ve always been passionate about the liturgy. Prior to my doctoral thesis in pastoral and catechetical theology I studied the Scriptures in the Paschal Triduum of Spanish liturgy. As priest I taught Liturgy and Catechesis. As bishop, first in Avila, then in Granada and then in Toledo, one of my main concerns was that in the dioceses that the Lord had entrusted to me the Liturgy of the Eucharist should be celebrated everywhere with sobriety and beauty, and always in compliance with the rules of Church. The mass in fact is truly the source and summit of Christian life – as we were reminded by Vatican Council II – and therefore cannot be celebrated in unworthy fashion. The Eucharist is truly the heart of the Church, and therefore Eucharistic adoration, in the liturgical celebration, but not only there, is decisive for the life of our communities.
Your priestly formation matured during the transition from pre- to post-Council...
CAŅIZARES LLOVERA: In effect I entered the diocesan seminary of Valencia in 1961, at 16, and then from 1964 to 1968 I studied at the Pontifical University of Salamanca where I took a degree in theology. In 1970 I was ordained priest and the following year I took a Ph.D. with specialization in Catechesis at the same University.
So you are the first prefect of the Congregation for Divine Worship to celebrate from the start with the post-Council Novus Ordo...
CAŅIZARES LLOVERA: Clearly so. I celebrated with the Missal of 1962 only recently, in 2007, when I ordained two priests of the Cristo Re Institute in Gricigliano, near Florence.
What memories do you have of that phase of liturgical reform?
CAŅIZARES LLOVERA: I think that a deepening and renewal of the liturgy was necessary. But in my own experience it was not a perfectly successful operation. The first part of the Sacrosanctum Concilium Constitution did not enter the hearts of the Christian people. There was a change in the forms, a reform, but not a true renewal as required by the Sacrosanctum Concilium. At times change was for the mere sake of changing from a past perceived as negative and outdated. Sometimes the reform was regarded as a break and not as an organic development of Tradition. Out of that came all the problems raised by the traditionalists attached to the rite of 1962.
So was it a reform that, in actual fact, did not fully comply with the Council decision?
CAŅIZARES LLOVERA: More than anything else I would say that it was a reform that was applied and above all was experienced as an absolute change, as if a chasm has to be created between the pre- and post-Vatican II, in a context in which “pre-Council” was used as an insult.