What Does The Prayer Really Say?
W D T P R S

Some time ago I reported the publication of the reissue of Ludovico Trimeboni’s Compendio di Liturgia Pratica (Milano: Marietti 1829, 2007).  If you want to know how to do something traddy, look in this book.

I said that I would from time to time share interesting points, as I did here.

I have just found out that I am in grave violation of a seriously important point when celebrating the "Tridentine Mass".  This is so huge… folks, well… what to say… I think… I just don’t know if I can go on….

In the section on "Ceremonies of Mass, ch. I, "The Read Mass", I. "The Celebrant" §1 – Ordinary Ceremonies  – 421 – "In the sacristy" ([. 397) I have just now read (my translation):

Use the footware that clerics of the place are used to wearing publicly and wear the cassock. 

Well… this part isn’t so hard, though I am not sure I can find either matching flip flops or golf shoes for my cassock.  Maybe a different color cassock… hmmm… but I digress.   What follows is what upset me so much, and, of course, it is in a footnote: the good stuff always is:

D. 3268, 3. [Cf. Naifa, Costume of the Prelates of the Catholic Church, Balitmore, 1925: "According to the Roman ceremonial, all clerics and those who serve in church, as cantors, sacristans, etc., ought to wear shoes with buckles (It. fibbie).  The buckle is of shiny steel for members of the inferior clergy and servers, in silver for priests, monks and prelates belonging to religious orders.  Gold and gilded silver are reserved for secular prelates."

All this time…. do you hear??? .... all this time I have been out of bounds, perhaps my immortal sole… er… soul in danger.

I am caught in a real aporia here.  On the one hand, how to deal with wearing shoes like clergy wear around here. I mean, how to you clip buckles on flip flops, anyway?  I guess you can work more easy with golf shoes.  But where to get silver buckles these days?

"But Father!  But Father!" ... I can hear it now … "Shouldn’t you be doing things exactly as they were in 1962 if you are going to say the 1962 Mass??!?"

It is my great hope that nobody who has ever seen me celebrate a "Tridentine" Mass will have been scandalized by my lack of buckles.

On the other hand, more seriously, while I realize that some groups who use the pre-Conciliar liturgy are also choosing

to use the fibbie I do not in the least find myself obliged to wear something specifically abolished by Pope Paul VI.  The Pope got rid of buckles in 1969.  Though that detail was still in force in 1962, it is extraneous to the Mass and pertains to the garb of priests. 

I think it can be safely dispensed with when celebrating the "Tridentine" Mass today without the slightest twinge of conscience. 

Sacristans and members of Gregorian chant scholas, altar boys and others involved, needed not run out looking for buckles.

UPDATE: Fr. Finigan puts buckles on trial.

It is amazing how sometimes you run into things that seem to be straight out of fiction.

Compliments to the blog Proceedings of the Athanasius Kircher Society for these photos of giant gypsum crystals in the Naica zinc mine in Mexico in a cave 300 meters beneath the Chihuahuan Desert: