On the blog of His Eminence Sean Card. O’Malley, we read an account of the meeting he attended in Rome concerning the Motu Proprio.  My emphases and comments.

From Cleveland I flew to Rome at the request of Cardinal Tarcisio Bertone to participate in a meeting discussing the Holy Father’s Moto Proprio about the use of the older form of the Latin Mass. [Very good!  A distinction!  Someone who understands that "Latin Mass" is any Mass in Latin, not the so-called "Tridentine" Mass.] There were about 25 bishops there, [Okay… was it 15?  Was it 30?  Was I right after all?  After correcting myself?] including the president of Ecclesia Dei Cardinal Darío Castrillón Hoyos, the prefect of Divine Worship and the Discipline of the Sacraments Cardinal Francis Arinze, several heads of bishops’ conferences as well as some cardinals [Yep… that’s Rome for ya….] and other residential bishops.

They shared with us the Moto Proprio and the Holy Father’s letter explaining it. We also had an opportunity to read the Latin document. We each commented on that, and then the Holy Father came in and shared [Ahhh… sharing….] some of his thoughts with us. The Holy Father is obviously most concerned about trying to bring about reconciliation in the Church. There are about 600,000 Catholics who are participating in the liturgies of the Society of St. Pius X, along with about 400 priest.  [I wonder where this figure came from.  Perhaps it came from the meeting.  Sometimes we hear of numbers as high as 1 million.]

The Holy Father was very clear that the ordinary form of celebrating the Mass will be the new rite, the Norvus Ordo. But by making the Latin Mass more available, the Holy Father is hoping to convince those disaffected Catholics that it is time for them to return to full union with the Catholic Church.  [But wait!  There’s more!   There are deeper reasons for this MP.]

So the Holy Father’s motivation for this decision is pastoral. He does not want this to be seen as establishing two different Roman Rites, but rather one Roman Rite celebrated with different forms. The Moto Propio is his latest attempt at reconciliation. [H.E. seems to want to limit the Holy Father’s move with a very narrow motive.]

In my comments at the meeting I told my brother bishops that in the United States the number of people who participate in the Latin Mass even with permission is very low. [Where in the USA?  It’s a big place.  Could Archbishop Burke have had a different experience?] Additionally, according to the research that I did, there are only 18 priories of the Society of St. Pius X in the entire country.  Therefore this document will not result in a great deal of change for the Catholics in the U.S. Indeed, interest in the Latin Mass is particularly low here in New England.  [Time will tell.  I have the impression that this expresses H.E.’s hope rather than his prediction.  But when you are a Cardinal Archbishop, those often coincide.]

In our archdiocese, the permission to celebrate the Latin Mass [Oooopppsss, a fumble on the 10 yrd line.] has been in place for several years, and I granted permission when I was in Fall River for a Mass down on the Cape. The archdiocesan Mass [...singular…] is now at Immaculate Mary of Lourdes Parish in Newton. It is well attended, and if the need arises for an extension of that we would, of course, address it. 

This issue of the Latin Mass [Oh my!  Another fumble at the 2!] is not urgent for our country, [I suspect it may be more urgent than H.E. may believe.] however I think they wanted us to be part of the conversation so that we would be able to understand what the situation is in countries where the numbers are very significant. [I think that the "1" for whom the shepherd described by Jesus left the "99" was "very significant".] For example, in Brazil there is an entire diocese of 30,000 people that has already been reconciled to the Church.

The solid Andrea Tornielli has a meaty piece in Il Giornale about the Motu Proprio.

Highlights:

1)  The MP will be released probably on 7 July.
2)  There will probably be no press conference to present the document.
3)  The Pope offers a letter with the document to explain his decison.
4)  The older rite was not abolished.
5)  It had been decided by a group of cardinals in 1982 that there should be more use of the 1962 Missale.
6)  The prayer about the "perfidis judeais" was already gone from that edition.
7)  When "stable groups" ("gruppi stabili") want the older Mass they can go to the parish priest (pastor).
8)  It will be the bishops role to help iron out problems, resolve difficulties.
9)  The old calendar and readings for Mass are preserved.
10) People can have not only Mass but all the sacraments in the old rite.
11) We don’t speak any longer of two rites, of Paul VI and of "Tridentine", but of one rite of the Latin church in two forms, ordinary and extraordinary.
12) The Pope explains in his letter that this is not a return to the past.
13) What happened after the Council was not supposed to be a break with the past.
14) Mass must be celebrated well in either form.
15) Card. Castrillon Hoyos explained the text.
16) The Pope came and they discused things for an hour.
17) In the last few months very few and very small changes were made to the text, as was explained on Wednesday.
18) In the last few weeks  Cardinal Lehmanand Cardinal Murphy-O’Connor brought up the point abut Jews being upset.
19) The French had expressed worry abou tht e "unity" of the Church, something they did not seem to wory about in the face of liturgical abuses in the Novus Ordo.
20) The Letter to the Chinese will be 28 pages. 
21) The Pope declares the full validity of the sacraments celebrated by both the official and clandestine Churches.

Great article!  Tornielli gets a thumbs up. 

n. 152 del 2007-06-29 pagina 17

Il Papa ai vescovi: via libera alla messa antica
di Andrea Tornielli
Per celebrare non servirà più il placet delle curie

da Roma

Benedetto XVI due giorni fa ha convocato a Roma i leader delle conferenze episcopali dei Paesi dove è più consistente la presenza dei tradizionalisti per presentare il Motu proprio che liberalizzerà la Messa preconciliare in latino e sarà pubblicato con tutta probabilità sabato 7 luglio, senza conferenza stampa di presentazione.
Il documento papale è accompagnato da una lunga lettera nella quale Papa Ratzinger spiega ai vescovi le ragioni della sua decisione. Il testo dichiara che l’antico rito romano non è mai stato abolito, come stabilì un gruppo di cardinali dell’ex Sant’Uffizio già nel 1982, e che dunque è possibile utilizzare il libro liturgico promulgato da Giovanni XXIII nel 1962, l’ultima versione dell’antica messa, già purgata della preghiera del Venerdì santo nella quale gli ebrei erano definiti «perfidis judaeis». Fino a oggi, secondo l’indulto già concesso nel 1984 da Papa Wojtyla, per ottenere questa celebrazione, i tradizionalisti dovevano chiedere un’autorizzazione al vescovo diocesano, il quale poteva concederla o meno. Dall’entrata in vigore del Motu proprio di Benedetto XVI non sarà più così: i fedeli – un «gruppo stabile» recita il testo – si rivolgeranno direttamente al parroco. Il vescovo dovrà eventualmente dirimere i problemi, stabilire come superare le difficoltà: il suo ruolo, come ha precisato il cardinale Segretario di Stato Tarcisio Bertone, rimarrà «centrale nelle disposizioni dell’ordine dele celebrazioni». Ma sia il vescovo che il parroco si muoveranno nell’ambito della nuova legge.
I tradizionalisti conserveranno il vecchio calendario e l’antica scelta di letture bibliche. Oltre alla Messa domenicale si potranno celebrare anche tutti i sacramenti con il vecchio rito. Non si parlerà più di due riti diversi, quello tridentino e il nuovo approvato da Paolo VI, ma di un unico rito della Chiesa latina in due forme: quella ordinaria, vale a dire la nuova Messa; quella straordinaria, rappresentata dalla Messa secondo l’antica tradizione.
Nella lettera di accompagnamento il Papa spiegherà ai vescovi che con questa decisione non si fa un salto nel passato. La stessa riforma liturgica voluta dal Concilio non era infatti da intendersi come una frattura. E Benedetto XVI spiegherà l’importanza che la liturgia sia ben celebrata sia nell’una che nell’altra forma.
Alla riunione hanno partecipato tra gli altri gli italiani Ruini e Bagnasco, i francesi Ricard e Barbarin, il tedesco Lehmann, l’inglese Murphy O’Connor, l’americano O’Malley, l’australiano Pell, lo svizzero Koch, l’indiano Toppo. Sono intervenuti i cardinali Bertone, per spiegare il senso dell’iniziativa, e Castrillón, presidente di «Ecclesia Dei», che ha illustrato il testo. Quindi il Papa si è unito ai presenti e ha discusso con loro per un’ora. Pochissime e poco rilevanti le modifiche apportate in questi mesi al testo, qualche precisazione è stata avanzata anche mercoledì pomeriggio. Nelle ultime settimane alcune resistenze erano arrivate in particolare dal cardinale Lehmann, che aveva parlato di un disagio delle comunità ebraiche, poi rientrato, dato che il messale autorizzato non conterrà l’abolita frase sui «perfidis judaeis», e dal cardinale inglese Murphy O’Connor. Mentre i vescovi francesi avevano in precedenza manifestato timori per «l’unità» liturgica della Chiesa: preoccupazione reale ma quasi mai evocata nel caso di abusi o frequenti stravaganze nelle celebrazioni col nuovo rito.
È infine ormai imminente la pubblicazione della lettera del Papa ai cattolici cinesi. Nelle 28 pagine di documento il Pontefice fornisce indicazioni per superare le divisioni tra le comunità clandestine e quelle ufficiali, dichiarando la piena validità dei sacramenti celebrati da entrambe.

On the website of the one of the worst, one of the most liberal newspapers in the USA, the execrable Minneapolis Star-Tribune, there is an informal poll:

Instant poll: Should the church allow wider use of the Latin Mass?

Pope Benedict has decided to relax restrictions that have existed since the 1960s.

Remember, a lot of clergy of that Archdiocese will be reading these results. 

Folks!   You have your marching orders.

CLICK HERE TO GO VOTE!

In the paper, there is a piece from the AP.  This is how the paper is shaping opinion:

Pope seeks wider use of Latin mass

Associated Press

Last update: June 28, 2007 – 9:16 PM

VATICAN CITY - Pope Benedict is proceeding with his plan to allow more churches to use the Latin mass.

The decision follows months of debate. Some cardinals, bishops and Jews have opposed any change to the current vernacular rite, voicing complaints about everything from the text of the old mass to concerns that the move will lead to further changes to the reforms approved by 1962-1965 Second Vatican Council.

To celebrate the Latin mass now, a priest must obtain permission from the local bishop. Roman Catholic leaders are anxiously awaiting the details of Benedict’s decision, to see how far he will go in easing that rule.

Cardinal Tarcisio Bertone, Vatican secretary of state, told reporters Thursday that bishops will still have a "central role"—but he didn’t elaborate. Bertone called a return to the Latin mass a "great treasure."

In a 1988 document, Pope John Paul II urged bishops to be generous in granting dispensations to allow the Tridentine rite to be celebrated. But many proponents say bishops have been stingy—for personal reasons or because not enough priests can do it.

Benedict appears wary of ignoring tradition. This week, he changed the rules for the election of a pope, reinstating the rule changed by John Paul requiring a two-thirds majority for election of the pontiff.

In the 1997 book "Salt of the Earth" Benedict said it was "downright indecent" for people who are still attached to the Latin mass to be denied it.

ASSOCIATED PRESS

There is a very piece at The Paragraph Farmer (great name!) about liturgical music. 

You have all heard rotten music in churches, music which makes even the Campbell Soup jingle or the theme from Gilligan’s Island sound like Mahler.  Then there is the contemporary group who think their Boston. 

The Paragraph Farmer gets into "praise bands".  Read the whole piece at his place, but here is an excerpt.  (my emphases and comments.

In Catholic circles, praise band relocation off the grass and onto the carpet was aided and abetted by liturgists hell-bent on democratizing and de-clericalizing everything about the Mass "in the spirit of Vatican II," and never mind what the actual architects of Vatican II (such as a Polish prelate named Karol Wojtyla who later became Pope John Paul II) had to say. Some of those liturgists worked hand-in-glove with politically correct composers—sons of Salieri, every one of them —like the irksome Marty Haugen.

Now that praise bands are indoors, they have no intention of returning to the garages, basements, parking lots, and auditoriums from which they came.

As a result of the developments I’ve sketched above, and the fact that hymnody has fallen victim to the language wars, we now have a sorry situation indeed. But Anthony Esolen understands this phenomenon better than I do. Go read his comments at the link, and the classically literate followup to those comments. In brief, Esolen says that sentimentality, although valuable in its place, is neverthless destructive of genuine feeling. And there you have the problem put in yet another way: when power ballads intrude on the liturgy of heaven (which is what the Mass is), then what Esolen calls "the necessary hypocrisy of small talk" is wrongly raised to the status of a liturgical act.  [This puts it as well as anything I have ever read.  Sometimes we use the phrase "banalization".  This, however, introduces the concept of hypocrisy.   In ancient rhetoric, what was "apt" and "beautiful" (aptum et pulchrum) played a major role in communication.  These categories were also employed for theology and, therefore, prayer.  There is no room for hypocrisy in prayer.  The Roman style of liturgical prayer, in Latin, was not "small talk"however, concise it was.  There is not a trace of hypocrisy in any Latin oration I recall ever having read.  I cannot say the same for the lame-duck ICEL versions.]

Power ballad and praise band mediocrity is sometimes justified on the grounds that people need to be met "where they are" with lyrics to which they can relate. [Sound like the translation war and the Trautman proposal, "Trautmania".] This attitude is arrogant on two counts, in that praise band directors have abrogated to themselves an outreach task that properly belongs to the Holy Spirit, while also assuming that straightforward hymnody of the kind exemplified in, for example, "We walk by faith – and not by sight – No gracious words we hear – Of Him who spoke as none e’er spoke – Yet we believe Him near" is somehow less intelligible than what you hear in pop music. Mr. Tom Petty, if you please: "All the vampires – Walking through the Valley – Move west down – Ventura Boulevard – And the bad boys – Are standing in the shadows – While the good girls – Are home with broken hearts. "

Show of hands as to how many people outside California know that Petty is singing about the San Fernando Valley? And how about those vampires, hmmm….? (Bueller? Anyone?)

Like C.S. Lewis [and Fr. Z] wrote in a related context, we need meat, not just milk. Lewis wasn’t writing specifically to Catholics at the time, but that he should have to remind Christians whose faith lives are ordered around the eucharist of this fact is testimony to our own failures and the failures of some of our pastors.

WDTPRS has soldiered for years on the side of truth and beauty in liturgical translation.  We played a not insignificant role in process whereby the accurate translation of "pro multis" in the consecration of the Precious Blood went up the ladder for the Pope’s signature.  It is now a done deal: all vernacular versions must use some form of "for many" to translation "pro multis".

With a tip of the biretta to SP   o{]:¬)    I present a story from ADISTA (my translation, emphases and comments).

"PRO MULTIS" MEANS "FOR ALL".  IN GERMANY TWO PRESBYTERAL COUNCILS REFUSE THE VATICAN TRANSLATION
(Ludovia Eugenio)

ROTTENBURG-ADISTA The voting was carried out in a democratic way and gave a clear verdict: in the litugical formula for transubstantiation: they will continue to translate the Latin formula pro multis with the expression "for all", and not with "for many" as desired by the Pope.  The "disobedience" to the Vatican prescription to change the translation, desired by Benedict XVI and "commissioned" by him from the Congregation for Divine Worship and Discipline of the Sacraments of Card. Francis Arinze, was – as the German press reports it these days – on the part of two German diocesan presbyteral councils, that of Rottenburg-Stuttgart, and of Augsburg.  Reacting to the letter which Arinze sent last October to the presidents of national episcopal conferences about this question, the Presbyteral Council of Rottenburg-Stuttgart, during a meeting which took place on 25 April last, voted in favor of maintaining the inclusive translation "for all", judging that of the Vatican, "for many", ambiguous "today being as it is". [Doesn’t this sound like the argument of H.E. Donald W. Trautman?]  "The promise of God’s salvation," according to the press release sent out by the same presbyteral council – applies to all persons.  This truth of faith is expressed in the clearest way in the formula "for all" in the prayer".  "The correct understanding" of the text does not depend on comments about it, [Again, this is the Trautmaniac line: a prayer must be easily and immediately understandable.  Thus, language must be closer to the lowest common denominator, rather than the higher, and translation must be changed often as the language shifts.  The problem is, of course, that you really can’t say anything meaningful that way.] the religious of Rottenburg affirmed: the original biblical text affirms that Christ died for all, and every man can and must decide to accept Jesus’ offer of salvation.  [A red herring: Liturgical translation is not equivalent to biblical translation.  The liturgical texts now constitute their own source and must be respected as such.  Liturgical translation focuses on what the pages of the Missale say, not the Bible, even when the liturgical text is rooted in Scripture.  This is especially important with even in the Catechism of the Council of Trent there was a specific paragraph about the "for all" question.]

A month before, the Presbyteral  Council of Augsburg expressed the same choice.  The diocesan presbyteral council asked Bishop Walter Mixa, to "promote with the Vatican and the German Episcopal Conference" the possiblity of continuing the translate the expression in the Missale Romanum "pro multis" with "for all".  Immediately after the vote, Fr. Florian Schuller, President of the Catholic Academy of Bavaria, addressed the presbyteral council, underscoring that the history of the central texts of the liturgy are "profoundly written in the conscience" and that a change such as that prescribed by Rome risks provoking polarizations and protests at the parish level: "That all priests all of a sudden go from ‘for all’ to ‘for many’ is, based on the experience of the last decades, rather unlikely".  [Since when have guys like this been worried about overnight changes that affect what people feel deeply?]

We are interested these days in accuracy of reporting on the details of the Motu Proprio.

I offer for your consideration….

...the finely crafted caption for a photo from Reuters

Pope Benedict XVI leads the Vespri’s mass at the St. Paolo’s Basilica in Rome June 28, 2007. Pope Benedict will tell Roman Catholic priests in coming days that they can say mass in Latin as a concession to traditionalists. (Alessandro Bianchi/Reuters)

The Holy Father was at St. Paul’s for Vespers, not Mass.  I am not worried about the Italian/English confusion in the caption.  Notice the description of "Latin Mass" as a "concession".