significant act of the post-conciliar reform has been the third typical edition of the missal of Paul VI (2002).

Behind all these changes there were some ideas or motivations that were clearly positive, developmental and resulting from real needs but not implying a deconstruction of the existing rite by itself. At the same time, however, their modus operandi more and more resembled the manipulation of the forms of worship, up to and including the rejection of their traditional shape in favor of elements (or even entire structures) taken from alien liturgical traditions or created entirely de novo. For example, Pope Pius X's reform of the breviary was aimed at restoring the Roman ancient custom of reciting the entire Psalter during the week, leveling out the displacement by other feasts of the formularies of Sunday and days of liturgical periods (especially Lent), and relieving the burden on priests who found it difficult to fulfill all the obligations imposed on them. However, this was done by deep changes in liturgical calendar31 and disorganization of the Psalter-precisely the assignment of Psalms to particular days and canonical hours-contained in Pius V's Breviarium Romanum (1568), in which "the psalmody barely differs from the oldest known evidences of the Roman office in the fifth and sixth centuries,"32 and creating a system unknown in the history of the Roman rite. Alcuin Reid writes: "It was a singular moment in liturgical history. That a pope could discard ancient liturgical Tradition by sole virtue of his own authority is found nowhere in liturgical history before Saint Pius X."33

Amen Corner: Back to the Future?," Worship 73 (1999): 60-69, at 63. If "there is no 'Roman Rite' and never has been," to say that this rite has been replaced by another is simply absurd. The problem with this kind of approach is that it is paradoxically ahistorical, that is, it does not take into account that even if it is difficult to indicate the "substantial unity of the Roman Rite" in the early stages of its development, one can speak of its consolidation in the late Middle Ages, while the post-Vatican II reform, using Baldovin's formulation, "followed centuries of relative liturgical fixity" (Reforming the Liturgy, 54). Therefore, even if one agrees with the deconstruction of "a myth of eternal liturgy" related to the Roman rite, it would be impossible to talk about the non-existence of such a rite and its long history of relative unity at the time of reform. For a thorough treatment of its unity and continuity, see Michael Fiedrowicz, The Traditional Mass: History, Form, and Theology of the Classical Roman Rite, trans. Rose Pfeifer (Brooklyn, NY: Angelico, 2020).31 See, e.g., Hemming, Worship as a Revelation, 125-27.32 See Paweł Milcarek, "Od psałterza pełnego do psałterza łatwiejszego: Z dziejów reformy Brewiarza rzymskiego w XX wieku," Christianitas 47 (2012): 193-234, at 194.33 Reid, Organic Development, 77-78.

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Tradition, the Pope, and Liturgical Reform: A Problematization of Tradition in the Catholic Church and Catholic–Orthodox Rapprochement

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