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

We haven’t yet heard much about Summorum Pontificum from Canadian sources.  However, in the Catholic Register, a Canadian paper, there is this article of interest. 

My emphases and comments.

 

Latin Mass increases diversity, says Archbishop Collins     
Written by Michael Swan, The Catholic Register  
Wednesday, 11 July 2007

TORONTO - For Toronto’s Archbishop Thomas Collins, more diversity equals less controversy [Can I believe my eyes?] in Canada’s Catholic community over liturgy.

“We celebrate Toronto as the most diverse diocese in the world. We’ve just been enriched. I think the whole church has.” Collins told The Catholic Register following the release of Pope Benedict XVI’s motu proprio, Summorum Pontificum, which declared the 1962 Latin Missal one of two approved forms of the Mass. “This is a great thing, and it solves all of this disputing and all this stuff.”

Greater availability of the old Latin Mass will mean people estranged from the church by introduction of the Novus Ordo version and its vernacular translation into English in 1970 will no longer have any reason to feel their church has taken something away from them.

In Collins’ view, rumours, gossip and controversy over Latin versus English have tied up the church for too long.

“There’s all this rumours and gossip and all these silly things. Now we have this wonderful document, and now we can move onto other things,” Collins said.

For Toronto’s 1.7 million Catholics, Mass is already regularly celebrated in 34 languages [Holy Cow!] – including five parishes where Latin Masses according to the 1962 Missal of Pope John XXIII are celebrated. As of Sept. 14, the date Summorum Pontificum comes formally into effect, priests will be able to celebrate the 1962 Latin Mass privately, with a small group of people, without obtaining an indult or special permission from the archbishop. Priests will also be permitted to use the 1962 breviary and to use old Latin formulations for Confessions, weddings, Anointing the Sick, and Baptisms. Bishops may use the 1962 Missal for Confirmations.  [And ordinations too, though I sure they won’t.]

Public Masses said on a Sunday morning in a parish at a scheduled time will still need the approval of the archbishop on the advice of his council of priests, said Collins. It will be up to bishops to decide whether there is a substantial and stable community requesting the Latin Mass in a parish, and whether the priest is capable of offering the Mass, he said.  [Actually, I believe this may be stepping across the line a little in terms of the provisions of the Motu Proprio.  For example, the M.P. does not say the group (coetus) must be "substantial" or "large".  A coetus would be at least three people, surely.  It can also include the priest himself!  And the issue really is left in the pastor’s hands, more than this statement implies. ]

“What we do in terms of anything more than individual priests and a few people coming to be with them – if you come to things like a semi, a quasi-parish – that would all have to be dealt with by the council of priests,” Collins said.  [Hmmm… it seems to me that the bishop can do this on his own.]

The archbishop said he intended to be as free as possible with granting permission, and even held out the possibility priests may begin to celebrate the Latin Mass privately with his permission before Sept. 14. All Masses throughout the world are said in the name of the local, ordinary or bishop [Hmm… I wonder if that is actually true.] who is the moderator of the liturgy and responsible for unity within the diocese.

Collins said he didn’t see a danger of liturgical elitism among enthusiasts for the older rite, or any threat to unity by offering an alternative to the Novus Ordo Mass. The 1970 vernacular Mass is the ordinary form of the Mass, and the 1962 version has been designated extraordinary.  [ARGH!  The same error keeps cropping up. LATIN is the normative language of the Novus Ordo.]

“The church assumes that a person celebrating the 1962 liturgy would not in principal object to celebrating the 1970 liturgy,” said Collins.

The archbishop believes the two forms of the Mass will enrich each other, and allow more Catholics to get in touch with the church’s rich liturgical tradition. “We can be enriched by the 1962 rite, so that’s a blessing for all of us,” Collins said.  [Excellent!]

Sunday Latin Masses are currently offered in Toronto at St. Vincent de Paul, 263 Roncesvalles Ave., Holy Family, 1372 King St. W., St. Theresa, 2559 Kingston Rd., Resurrection of Our Lord Jesus Christ, 1 Resurrection Rd., every other week, and St. Patrick’s, 91 Church St., Schomberg.  [I like that this concrete information is provided.]

Collins puts the freer use of the 1962 Missal in the context of a coming renewal of the Novo Ordo Mass [YES!  Very well said!] which should be available in a new English translation within a year.

“The liturgy will vault forward in terms of the quality of English when the new translation is put into action,” he said.   [Nicely put. How refreshing!]
Collins said he was ready to welcome back any person or group who has split off from the Catholic church over the introduction of the Missal of Pope Paul VI and the vernacular.

“If the only issue in their breaking away from the church is that they were attached to the 1962 liturgy, well they would hardly have a reason for remaining broken away from the church. If they have other reasons, well that’s another problem, but they don’t have this reason.”

In the nation’s capital, Ottawa Archbishop Terrence Prendergast, S.J., welcomed Pope Benedict’s decision.

“The Pope’s action simultaneously affirms the Second Vatican Council’s teachings on the liturgy and seeks to return to active church life those drawn to the Mass as it was celebrated in Latin prior to 1970. These include older Catholics alienated from the Church since the Mass was changed and younger Catholics seeking worship that is evidently transcendent,” [The implication here is that it is easier to discern the transcendent in the older form than the newer.]  he said in a prepared statement released July 7.

Prendergast noted that the Priestly Fraternity of St. Peter has been offering Latin Masses in the archdiocese of Ottawa since 1994. The archbishop said he hoped that this papal initiative will be “welcomed widely, studied carefully and implemented correctly in the archdiocese and elsewhere.”

What a nice article!   There were some good and refreshing comments from both those Canadian prelates.

Sr. Chittister is pretty worried.

On 10 July Sister produce what must be called an exemplary piece on the Motu Proprio and older form of Mass.  It perfectly conveys what Sister stands for.

Nearly a month later she has produce a fresh piece.  If you compare the two, you will find they are nearly identical.

I don’t need to produce here the newer version, from the National Catholic Reporter for 3 August 2007.  Just go read the the first from 10 July which has my comments with it. 

Since she first wrote about the Motu Proprio Sister has had almost a month to hone her razor sharp observations and polish the steel traps of her reasoning.

She just recycled what she wrote before, for the same publication.  Sometimes writers do that.

I suppose we can take it either that she is on vacation or this is the very best she can produce on the subject.

There is again something of interest from the Diocese of Winona on the Motu Proprio Summorum Pontificum.  You might remember the statement of His Excellency Most Reverend Bernard Harrington which you can review here.  I had also posted here a memo sent by that diocese’s liturgy office to the parish liturgists.  That memo, filled with errors, was not a little contrary to the public statement of the bishop.  The Director of Communications for the Diocese of Winona then wrote to me asking that I remove that memo from the liturgy office because it wasn’t intended to be public!  A remarkable thing that. 

The bishop made a public statement and, in the background, a memo is circulated which undermines the public statement.

I think I might need to return that memo to public view.

In any event, now we read this piece in The Courier, the newspaper of the Diocese of Winona, from that same Diocesan Director of Liturgy who produced that "private" memo. 

Take note in particular of her key insight: the two forms of Mass seem to be English and Latin.

My emphases and comments

   One Rite, Two Forms: The Mass, English and Latin

        By Peggy Lovrien,

    Diocesan Director of Liturgy

   
    Pope Benedict recently issued an apostolic letter, Summorum Pontificum, giving a parish priest permission [Not quite.  By stating that there is one Rite in two expressions, that will mean that any priest with faculties to say Mass at all has two forms to choose from, ordinary and extraordinary.  It is not really giving a separate permission.  It is more like expanding existing faculties.  The distinction is a fine one, I know.] to celebrate Mass in Latin. [WRONG!  you would think a Diocesan Director of Liturgy would no that the normal, the ordinary language of the Novus Ordo is Latin.  No priest needs permission to celebrate Mass in Latin.  Until 14 Sept. they need permission to use the older form of Mass.] Previously, a priest had to seek permission from the local bishop to celebrate Mass in Latin [again]  because the ordinary or normal [WRONG] way to celebrate Mass was in the language of the people. [The normal way to say Mass, any Mass, in the Roman Rite is in Latin. The vernacular is actually the exception to this rule.] Pope Benedict reinforced this idea referring to Mass in the vernacular [WRONG AGAIN.  He spoke about the Novus Ordo] as the ordinary form and Mass in Latin as the "other-than-ordinary" form or extra-ordinary form. The two forms are to be understood as two expressions of one rite.

    Last October, Times Online predicted the pope’s statement permitting the celebration of the Tridentine Mass saying that it might help bring followers of excommunicated Archbishop Marcel Lefebvre of France back to the Roman Catholic Church. It "would permit any priest to introduce the Tridentine Mass to his church, anywhere in the world, unless his bishop has explicitly forbidden it in writing, Use of the Tridentine Mass, was restricted by most bishops after the reforms of the Second Vatican Council (1962-65)" (Times Online, 10-11, 2006 by Ruth Gledhill, Religion Correspondent).

    We might ask what the difference is between the Tridentine Mass [an inaccurate, but useful term] and the present day Mass. [Ehem… remember.  The older form of Mass is also "the present Mass", or rather "a present Mass".  Right?]  The Tridentine Mass, written in 1570 [Oh for pit’s sake!]  after the council held in Trent, Italy, is now referred to as the Mass of the "1962 Missal" We call the Mass we celebrate daily in English the "New Mass" or the Novus Ordo. Pope Paul VI published it in 1969 after the second Vatican Council. Its goal, above all else, was the full, conscious, and active participation of the people in the liturgy. [I can hardly wait to see what this author says about active participation.] Pope John Paul II republished it in 1975 [which was really a good trick for him, seeing that he wasn’t elected Pope until 1978!] and in 2000 produced a new edition of the New Mass.

    The church writes the first text of the Mass in Latin. Then the New Mass (the present day Mass) a translation of the Latin text into the vernacular language, that is, the language of the people.  [Noooo… the Novus Ordo Missale Romanum is in Latin and there are translations of it into the vernacular.  This is so sloppy.]

    Prior to Pope Benedict’s statement, a priest could decide to celebrate the present day Mass in Latin (Novus Ordo) at any time [Okay!  This is good!]  but was restricted from using the Mass texts from the Tridentine Mass formulae. He would have to get permission from the local bishop to celebrate the Tridentine Mass. Pope Benedict has removed the requirement to get permission from the local bishop.  [Right.]

    The vernacular text evolved as the result of careful research and scholarly work by church clergy prior to the Second Vatican Council.  [WHAT!?  How could dozens of vernacular translations evolve before the Latin text existed?  What a mess.] The Constitution on the Sacred Liturgy (CSL), the first document of the council, articulated the result of their scholarly work and called for the use of the people’s language in the liturgy. [Noooo…. the text of Sacrosanctum Concilium did not call for the vernacular.  It called for Latin to be preserved as the language of the liturgy while opening the possibility that the vernacular could be used for some parts of the Mass in some occasions.]  Use of the people’s language was a value because it allowed people to knowledgeably participate in the liturgy through full, conscious, and active participation. [This is very narrow.  It suggests that people cannot participate at Mass if the Mass is not in the vernacular.]  The Constitution on the Sacred Liturgy laid the groundwork for the New Mass of 1969 (Novus Ordo).

    PRAYER TEXTS

    Since the vernacular language allowed people to understand what the Mass prayers, the Eucharistic prayers, Scripture, and music texts were saying, people internalized the sacred texts of the Mass. [sigh… whaddy gonna do?] The liturgy transformed the people into the presence of Christ [What on earth?  As if it didn’t before?] - hence, the personal need [??] to be at the liturgy every Sunday to experience this transformation. As agents of the presence of Christ in the world (mission) to non-believers, Catholics become living disciples reaching out to those in need of love, faith, compassion, and dignity.  [Correct me if I get this wrong, but is she suggesting that before there was a vernacular liturgy, the missionary mandate of the Church was not being fulfilled?]

    SCRIPTURE

    These past 38 years, the people of God have been reading the Bible in the celebration of the New Mass (Novus Ordo).  [I don’t know about that.  I think they read and listen to Scripture pericopes.  I also think that there were Scripture readings before the Council.] After the council, cardinals, bishops, and priests [?] organized the Bible into a three year reading cycle of Scriptural readings that included the Old Testament, the pastoral letters of St. Paul and the Acts of the Apostles, and the Gospels of Matthew, Mark, Luke called the synoptic gospels. The gospel of John appeared at key points during Christmas and Easter seasons. They also composed a collection of a two-year cycle of readings for weekdays. These books, called the Lectionary, gave the people the opportunity to become familiar with a bigger portion of the Bible through systematic liturgical reading. The old Mass, on the other hand, had a one-year cycle of Scripture readings.

    IN THE MASS

    In the introductory part of the New Mass, the Church Fathers [Ehem….] placed a penitential rite within the Mass, which became a dialogue of prayer between the priest and all the people. This replaced the old penitential "prayers at the foot of the altar," recited only by the priest and servers before Mass.

    In the Novus Ordo Mass of today, we speak of two parts of the Mass: the Liturgy of the Word and the Liturgy of the Eucharist often referred to as the twin tables:

    "The Mass is made up, as it were, of two parts: the Liturgy of the Word and the Liturgy of the Eucharist. These, however, are so closely interconnected that they form but one single act of worship. For in the Mass the table both of God’s word and of Christ’s Body is prepared, from which the faithful may be instructed and refreshed." (CSL, 56 and GIRM, 28)

    The Tridentine Mass called the Liturgy of the Word the Mass of the Catechumens because the catechumens could participate only in the first part of the Mass (a practice revived today through the Rites of Christian Initiation of Adults or RCIA). It included a reading of one of the New Testament letters (epistles) of St. Paul and one of the four Gospels. It labeled the Liturgy of the Eucharist the Mass of the Faithful because the catechumens were not allowed in this part of the Mass until they became one of "the faithful" through baptism. The Church also revised the old offertory prayers of the Tridentine liturgy to avoid a duplication of texts with the Eucharistic prayer texts.

    The Tridentine Mass used only one Eucharistic prayer (Eucharistic prayer I). In the New Mass, however, there are nine Eucharistic prayers: four for Sunday and weekday use, two for Masses focusing on reconciliation and three for Masses with children. Eucharistic prayer II comes from one of the early Church Fathers, Hippolytus, who wrote some of the fIrst descriptions of the liturgy in the Apostolic Traditions of 215 AD. His writings gave scholars insight into the way the early Church celebrated the Mass only 160 years after Christ.

    Today, communicants receive the Eucharist under the forms of both bread and wine, the Body and Blood of Christ. In the old Mass, due to medieval plagues and lack of public health practices, communicants could receive only the Body of Christ.  [WHAT???]

    DIALOGUE PRAYER

    The priest and people celebrated the Tridentine Mass with everyone facing the same direction; as a result, the priest had his back to the people. Some say that was because they all faced east (toward the rising sun, indicative of the Resurrection); yet, Catholics did not always build churches on an east-west floor plan.  [Simplistic.]

    In the New Mass, the priest normally faces the people setting up a physical dialogue to engage them in the prayerful dialogue of the liturgy [gag] by its prayer texts, songs, gestures, and processions. Likewise, the cantor and choir do the same in order to secure this prayerful dialogue in liturgical music. Together, the musicians, the priest, and the people pray and sing the liturgy. 

    TRANSFORMATION

    Catholics gather for the liturgy willing to be transformed into Christ. The Liturgy of the Word articulates the values and sense of justice, love, and compassion of God as taught by Christ. The Liturgy of the Eucharist transforms the people into people of thanksgiving (the Greek word, "Eucharistia" means thanksgiving) for the sacrifice of suffering, dying, and rising Christ made for us (salvation). Catholics then ingest the presence of Christ’s Body and Blood to, as St. Augustine tells us, "become what you eat." As temples of the presence of Christ in the world, the people are a different kind of people because they are the presence of Christ in the world. This holy presence draws others to Christ through these "agents" of Christ’s presence.

    The celebration of the liturgy, and in particular, the Mass, sanctifies the faithful to be Christ in the world. Let us always remember who we are, whether we celebrate in English or in Latin for:

    "Mother Church earnestly desires that all the faithful should be led to that fully conscious, and active participation in liturgical celebrations which is demanded by the very nature of the liturgy. Such participation by the Christian people as ‘a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a redeemed people’ (1 Pet. 2:9; cf. 2:4-5), is their right and duty by reason of their baptism. In the restoration and promotion of the sacred liturgy, this full and active participation by all the people is the aim to be considered before all else; for it is the primary and indispensable source from which the faithful are to derive the true Christian spirit. Therefore, pastors of souls must zealously strive to achieve it, by means of the necessary instruction, in all their pastoral work…" (Constitution on the Sacred Liturgy, 14)

Folks… I just gave up at a certain point.

I have read better essays from highschool students.

The people of God deserve better explanations than this.

In the Diocese of Orange in California, there has been some conflict over the use of the older form of Mass.  Click here, here and here for the sad background.

I now offer for your consideration the following, well, bizarre development.

At one parish where the older form of Mass has been sought by Christ’s faithful, St. Mary’s by the Sea, the pastor, Fr. Martin Tran, published a note in his parish’s bulletin concerning the older form of Mass.  Here is an image of the relevant page.

Apparently people who are not registered in the parish are not welcome to attend Holy Mass there.

I have never seen a statement like this before.

Keep in mind that the Code of Canon Law still maintains that most parishes (there are exceptions) have territorial boundaries.  The people who live in that parish are the subjects of the pastor (unless for some reason they belong to one of those other, personal parishes).  This is important for determining issues of jurisdiction for who can give and receive sacraments, etc.

However, the Code also describes a parish as a "portion" of the people of God.  Furthermore, at least in the USA, we are very mobile.  Whereas once people perhaps had to walk to Mass on Sunday, to the local parish, today people can drive anywhere they care to drive.  And they do.   People are voting with their tires.  The issue of territorial parishes is, right now, a mess.

Still, I have never heard of any priest, or bishop, insisting that people must St. Ipsidipsy in Tall Tree Circle if they live in Tall Tree Circle and that they may not go over to Black Duck for Mass at St. Fidelia.

And what does the statement "visitors are OK" mean, if people who are not registered (and are therefore "visitors" by definition are being told not to come around?

Kindly take note of the statement: "we have sufficient number of parishioners to warrant the public use of the Tridentine Mass".   I don’t know about you, but does this sound like it could mean, "we have enough and don’t want more people"?  It certainly could mean, "if the group was not big enough we couldn’t do this".  Either way, it seems to be quite, well, prickly.  The Motu Proprio doesn’t establish a minimum number of people for a "group", a coetus.  To my mind, Latin coetus can be three people. 

On the other hand, could this mean that, if you are not registered, we will not count you as numbering among the petitioners?  You can go to Mass here, but your petition does not count?

Folks, I am really trying to understand this and not just pick.

Maybe someone from that parish can help me understand.

The Washington Times has an article on the Motu Proprio.

My emphases and comments.

Old rite wins new Mass appeal

July 30, 2007

By Julia Duin – The Tridentine Mass, the Latin-only rite both loved and hated by many Catholics for its medieval qualities, [Boy, that’s sure a reason to hate something.] is roaring back into use after a July 7 papal decree loosened the rules on celebrating it.

Two traditional priestly societies dedicated to the rite report that priests from all over the country are signing up in droves for weeklong classes to learn the rituals and language of the Mass, [Sure.  They’ll learn Latin in a week.] named after the 16th-century Council of Trent.

Monsignor Michael Schmitz, vicar-general of the Florence, Italy-based Institute of Christ the King, said he has received hundreds of calls from interested clergy.

"This is a nationwide phenomenon," he said. "Many more parish priests and younger priests are interested in learning to celebrate the Latin Mass.

"Whenever the Latin rite is celebrated, you get many young people," he added. "They are looking for something that speaks to the soul, and the beauty of the liturgy is awe-inspiring. The heartfelt presence of God really affects them."

The Elmhurst, Pa.-based Priestly Fraternity of St. Peter trained 50 priests on performing the rite this summer at its Our Lady of Guadalupe seminary in Denton, Neb.

Its September session is already full and its Elmhurst bookstore got a "big upsurge" in demand for priestly training materials within two days of the announcement, said the Rev. Carl Gismondi, a Fraternity priest studying theology at the Dominican House in the District.

"It is a detailed liturgy, so there’s a lot of books and videos needed to teach a priest how to say this Mass," he said. "There’s something about it that’s very attractive to people. It’s more than nostalgia because a lot of young people are interested in it."

Until Pope Benedict XVI’s declaration, called a "motu proprio," the Tridentine Mass could be celebrated only with the approval of the local bishop. One-third of U.S. dioceses had no Tridentine Masses, and most of the others had only one or two per week. Benedict noted in his document, though, that the post-Vatican II Novus Ordo, or Mass of Paul VI, will remain the church’s usual celebration.

The Society of St. Pius X offers a "free Mass kit" along with a 120-minute instructional video for priests on its sspx.org site.

Neal Kotlarek, manager of the Catholic bookstore near the Archdiocese of Detroit headquarters, is ordering reproductions by the case. "Usually, I just carry a few copies," he said.

Maureen Williamson, a manager at the Fort Collins, Colo.-based Roman Catholic Books, said 200 copies of its $155 deluxe edition priest’s altar missal sold within two weeks of the papal announcement. [!] She typically sells 20 to 35 a month.

"We’re projecting we are going to sell more than 700 by the end of the year," she said. "Now that this Mass is able to be said by anyone at any time, priests and parishes have been ordering it." [How many diocesan statements have we seen suggest that the MP will not have much of an impact?  That’s as many as 700 new copies of the Missale Romanum.  How many priests have an old copies tucked away on a bookshelf?]

Priests from St. Mary’s Catholic Church in Alexandria and St. John’s in McLean are sending priests to Denton, Neb., in September. The Rev. Franklyn M. McAfee, pastor of St. John’s, was trained in Denton four years ago and plans to implement the Tridentine rite in early October. It will replace his parish’s noon Latin celebration of the Novus Ordo Mass.  [In a way, that is too bad.]

"The people here really want it," the priest said. "All sorts of prominent people have asked me for it. They’re not opposed to the Novus Ordo Mass, but they prefer the 1962 Missal," referring to the rules that Pope John XXIII drew up for the centuries-old Mass.

"It’s more reverent, more transcendent," Father McAfee [!] said.

In the older rite, worshippers must kneel to receive Communion on their tongues; the priest always leads the parishioners in facing east, rather than facing them; and the rite is always in Latin. There are other differences in terms of liturgy, priestly vestments and the manner in which laity take part in the service. Women communicants of the Tridentine mass customarily cover their heads, although it is not mandated.

"Logistically, I think the challenge for the next two months for priests who want to say the Mass is to get the missal, vestments and plan for working with a modern sanctuary," Father McAfee said. "Altar boys need to be trained, and men need to learn Gregorian chant. There’s a ton of work for parishes with a priest who wants a Mass."

"The solemn high Mass is a production," he added. "It’s very choreographed. Someone called it the greatest ballet in the world. It’s all very scripted."

Ann Thunder, one of his parishioners, likened altar-boy training to football diagrams.

"If you word it in terms of a sports analogy, it works," she said, "such as server A passes a cruet to server B." 

While scanning my RSS feeds this morning I noticed that Gerald at the Cafeteria found an article in a publication I nearly never pay attention to: Commonweal.   They published something by a Rite Ferrone on the Motu Proprio.

Commonweal will have other articles on the MP available.  As Commonweal puts it:

 

Editors’ note: This is a preview of our August 17 issue, which will contain four responses to Pope Benedict’s Summorum pontificum, which will make the so-called Tridentine Mass more widely available than it has been since Vatican II. The other respondents will be Peter Jeffery, Joseph Komonchak, and Bernard P. Prusak.

Gosh, I cam barely contain my excitment at what they might say.  Still, if one of you kind readers has access to the online edition, and can provide those other articles, I am sure we will all be grateful.

Let’s take a look at what they put online as a preview.

My emphases and comments. 

July 13, 2007  / Volume CXXXIV, Number 13  

A Step Backward
The Latin Mass Is Back

Rita Ferrone

Pope Benedict XVI’s Summorum pontificum gives broad permission for the celebration of the Tridentine Mass. [Broad permission is what John Paul II had called for in 1988.  Had it been done, we would have this MP now.] The motu proprio also permits use of preconciliar liturgical rites for all the sacraments, with the exception of ordination.  [WRONG!  The bishops for years could use the older Pontifical. And they can now also.] It lays the groundwork for the creation of two liturgical establishments within the Latin-rite Catholic Church-one worshiping according to rites mandated by the Council of Trent, the other according to rites mandated by the Second Vatican Council.

It was not the intention of Vatican II, or of the popes who implemented it, to create a situation in which two forms of the Roman rite would exist side by side. [Yah… well… times change, hun.]  The liturgical reform of the council was intended as a true reform, addressing genuine problems of the old liturgy for the good of the church as a whole. [Yes, and the Council also required that no change be made to the liturgy unless the true good of the faithful demanded it.  So, from the very beginning the reform desired by the Council Fathers went astray.]  Now, with the stroke of a pen, Pope Benedict has made that reform optional. [Why can’t we be pro-choice?] Individual priests may use the preconciliar rites at will, and groups of the faithful who ask for celebrations according to the preconciliar norms may not be refused them.  [Not quite.   They could certainly be refused if there were a good reason to do so.]

No one familiar with the liturgical views of the present pope will be greatly surprised by his decision. While still a cardinal, Benedict expressed displeasure with the course of liturgical reform since the council, and in various ways he supported a revival of the Tridentine liturgy. It was the support of then-Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger that encouraged Pope John Paul II to give the original indult in 1984 permitting use of Tridentine rites, despite the near-unanimous opposition of the world’s bishops. [This seems overstated.  Even the Commission of Cardinals before the original Indult recommended a wider permission than what we actually got in the Indult.]  The professed aim of the indult was to reconcile traditionalist Catholics who, under the leadership of Archbishop Marcel Lefebvre and the Society of St. Pius X he founded, were headed for schism. It did not work – the schism occurred anyway. Nevertheless, the indult was broadened in 1988-this time without any consultation of bishops [Hmmm… This is the second time "consultation" has been mentioned in such a way as to suggest that the Pope was obliged to consult, but instead violated some unwritten rule.] – and a commission was founded to tend to the needs of those who were committed to the Tridentine liturgy.

At least as important for understanding the origins of Summorum pontificum, however, is a different phenomenon that arose at the same time: A small but vocal group of Catholics began to call for a “reform of the reform” of the liturgy for the church across the board. They are not schismatics, like the Lefebvrites, but they are interested in the restoration of Tridentine liturgical forms and the marginalization of the reformed liturgy. They found a champion and supporter in the future Benedict XVI.  [The author is confused.  Those who actually adopted the phrase "reform of the reform" were not in fact advocating a return of the older form of Mass. Rather, they wanted to bring the way Mass is celebrated into conformity with what the Second Vatican Council actually mandated: which were actually very few points.  The older form of Mass had to be a starting point, but the goal was to be what the Council Father’s asked for, not what we got from the Consilium.]

The most visible proponent of this agenda was Msgr. Klaus Gamber of the liturgical institute in Regensburg, Germany. He became known outside scholarly circles when he published a popular [And thus not limited to narrow group of zealots?] book in 1984, which appeared in English in 1993 under the title The Reform of the Roman Liturgy. [Again, the author is confused.  The volume she cites is not a "book", in the sense of a work written as a unit.  This volume present two separate essays.] Gamber did not reject the council. He regarded the liturgical movement leading up to the council as a generally positive phenomenon. Nevertheless, he was highly sympathetic to the restorationist cause. Gamber believed the crusade to reestablish the preconciliar liturgy too important to be left to “a small group of fanatics” who reject the council outright. Yet his horror at the reforms that followed the council was hardly any less dramatic than theirs:

    Great is the confusion! Who can still see clearly in this darkness? Where in our church are the leaders who can show us the right path? Where are the bishops courageous enough to cut out the cancerous growth of modernist theology that has implanted itself and is festering within the celebration of even the most sacred mysteries before the cancer spreads and causes even greater damage?...We can only hope and pray that the Roman Church will return to Tradition and allow once more that liturgy of the Mass which is well over 1,000 years old.  [Gamber was not strictly advocating a complete return to the older form of Mass.  What he was trying to point out were damaging "reforms" imposed on the Roman Rite which constituted a break with the Rite and with tradition.  His Holiness in Summorum Pontificum breaks with Gamber on the point of the continuity between the older form and newer form.  Gamber thought the newer form was legitimate, but the changes made to create it (artificially) were so substantive that it was really a separate Rite.  I think one day we are going to have to have a serious debate about this question.  Benedict XVI solved the problem from the JURIDICAL point of view in Summorum Pontificum.  His elegant solution removed the need for priests to have any permission from authority to use the older form beyond the normal permission simply to say Mass at all.  That was an elegant JURIDICAL solution.  I am not, however, of the mind that that juridical solution resolved the deeper question, perhaps even for the Pope himself.  Remember: a juridical solution doesn’t mean that all historical-theological-ecclesiological questions about the Rite are thereby closed.]

Gamber also expressed a definite view about the current Mass. He wanted it not to be considered the Roman rite, but merely retained as a rite ad experimentum until it dies out. Ratzinger found these extreme [There is nothing extreme about these views.  How could a Rite in use for hundreds of years be swept aside and some new interloper of a few short years suddenly be considered as stable and a success needing no changes?] views congenial, and oddly enough, deemed them moderate.  [This would not be odd to a reasonable person.] He wrote a preface to the French edition of Gamber’s book, calling him “the one scholar who, among the army of pseudo-liturgists, truly represents the liturgical thinking of the center of the church.”  [Here is a truly important point.  Some people, usually toward the progressivist side of things but not on the extreme left, think the "center" is the majority.  ]

Another partisan of the “reform of the reform,” Alcuin Reid, OSB, of Farnborough, England, published The Organic Development of the Liturgy in 2004. In giving a positive review to Reid’s book, Ratzinger voiced some of his own views on liturgical reform. He opined that scholars and experts were heeded too much after the council, and that although pastors should have had more of a voice, pastoral insights are unreliable. “Because…people’s judgments as to what is pastorally effective are widely divergent,” Ratzinger wrote, “the ‘pastoral’ aspect has become the point at which ‘creativity’ breaks in, destroying the unity of the liturgy.” Once you’ve eliminated scholarship, expertise, and pastoral judgment, what basis remains for constructive liturgical reform? Clearly, the deck is stacked against the acceptance of any reform whatsoever. In his letter accompanying the motu proprio, Benedict chides [Does he really "chide"?  I don’t think so.] those bishops who believe that expanding the use of the Tridentine liturgy will detract from the standing of the Second Vatican Council, of which the reformed liturgy was sign and symbol. Yet surely the bishops’ concerns are justified.  [Really?  Is the based on the fabulous renewal parishes have experienced in the last 40 years?]

Indeed, the traditionalists Benedict wants to conciliate [Hang on.  This is not only about the conciliation of traditionalists.  The MP was about far more.] do not simply reject the Mass of Paul VI - they reject the conciliar theology [Not all of them, no.  Most people on that side of things simply want Mass celebrated reverently.  Certainly there are those who have theological concerns, such as questions about the Council’s document on religious liberty but these will not be the majority of the people who frequent the older Mass..] it embodies. The Society of St. Pius X published a defense of their position in 2001, The Problem of the Liturgical Reform, which showed that their opposition to the liturgical reforms of the council is profoundly theological.  [See above.] They argue, for example, that the idea of the paschal mystery is out of keeping with the true meaning of the Mass. The paschal mystery has been consistently proposed in council documents, papal pronouncements, and all the official teachings of the church since the council as the key to the whole liturgical reform. One would have to look hard to find a concept more universally accepted since the council, yet the traditionalists reject it. ["the traditionalists" cannot be painted with such a brush.  I believe this is inaccurate.]  In their view, the Mass is only about the expiation of sin.  [Again, I think this is inaccurate.  For how long have we taught and learned that prayer has many aims, including praise of God?] The Resurrection has nothing to do with it. [B as in B.  S as in S.  This is simply ridiculous.]  Their glad welcome of the pope’s motu proprio should give every Catholic pause.  [Fear monger.]

In addition to the council’s emphasis on the paschal mystery, other core values [bzzzzzz] of the council are called into question by the pope’s move to reestablish the Tridentine rites. The council emphasized the role of Scripture in the life of the church, and this value was richly reflected in the liturgical reform. The old lectionary had a one-year cycle of readings. Almost all of the Gospel passages were taken from St. Matthew. There were no Old Testament readings on Sunday. The sacraments and many of the weekdays had no readings assigned to them at all. [Yes… what a blessing that was.]  When the council fathers decreed that the Catholic faithful should have richer fare at the table of God’s Word, they were making a pastoral move of immense consequence. The three-year lectionary cycle was an outgrowth of the renaissance in Catholic Scripture scholarship in the mid-twentieth century and repeated papal urgings to dwell on the sacred texts with an avid mind and an open heart. [That came somewhat before the Council.] According to the USCCB Web site, the so-called Extraordinary Form of the Missale Romanum (1962) includes 1 percent of the Old Testament and 17 percent of the New Testament, whereas the Ordinary Form (what most Catholics use now) includes 14 percent of the Old Testament, and 71 percent of the New Testament. Benedict XVI’s motu proprio implies that none of this, in the end, is essential or even very important. [This is simply daft.  The Motu Proprio doesn’t imply anything of the kind.  The writer seems to know that the older form is the "Extraordinary Form" not the Ordinary.  This Pope has never implied that Scripture is not important or that the expanded use of Scripture in Mass was not beneficial.  What she wrote is simply mendacious.] Those who celebrate according to Tridentine rites may use the new lectionary or not, as they choose. [Not really.  But even if it were true, doesn’t that militate against what she is claiming about what the MP provides for>]  The biblical-liturgical synthesis of Vatican II is now optional.  [And Choice is bad, if it allows you to choose something I don’t agree with. Is that it?]

Before the council, women were forbidden to serve in liturgical ministries. They were kept outside the sanctuary-a very old taboo perceived by many today as sexist and out of keeping with our sense of the dignity of the baptized. This prohibition was ended after Vatican II. The third directive on the right implementation of the Constitution on the Sacred Liturgy (Liturgicae instaurationes, 1970), admitted women to various liturgical ministries which are exercised in the sanctuary-such as that of reader or musician. They now also serve in the sanctuary as extraordinary ministers of Communion, and as altar servers. 

They may not do so in the Tridentine rites. [Big deal.] Thus, each additional celebration according to Tridentine rites increases the number of occasions when women are kept out of the sanctuary. An outdated and harmful exclusion that was done away with for good reason is being encouraged.  [The MP is not anti-woman.  This is dopey.]

It is hard to credit the pope’s claim that his edict is intended for the benefit of the faithful.  [This strikes me as simply snotty. ] How can it be “for the benefit of the faithful” to return to a ritual of baptism in which the parents of infants say nothing? [How can it be for the benefit of the faithful to eliminate a rite of baptism in use for so long?  How can it benefit the faithful to have eliminated the exorcisms?  Why does talk from the parents make the newer rite better?  Do we no longer believe in mediation?  Does everything today have to be of the "serve it my way" or "I did it my way" self-centered style so characteristic of the post-Christian age? ]  In the spirit of ecumenism, the liturgy that came out of Vatican II eliminated the abjuration of heresy and schism that non-Catholics made before being admitted to Catholic communion.  [AND THAT IS BAD….WHY??  Should the Church admit people who are still heretics?  Who deny Catholic teachings?  Should it admit people who don’t submit to the Church’s authority?] How can we justify reviving such practices today? There was no catechumenate in the Tridentine church, despite a crying need around the world for this liturgical structure of evangelization and formation.  [Okay… this is getting hysterical.  The Church had amazing conversions and missionary work before the Council.] How can we deprive adult converts of the catechumenate-which canon law now requires them to have?  [The writer, again, is being stupid about this.  The Motu Proprio does not DENY a period for formation for converts.] The reform of the liturgy was not a mere matter of aesthetic preferences, of “contemporary relevance” versus “timeless mystery,” of Latin versus the vernacular. The reformed liturgy embodies the values of the council in innumerable ways.  [But I am seriously beginning to doubt that the writer actually understands what the Council meant, or what the older form of Mass (and the the pre-Conciliar period) was about. 

Given the series of concessions that have already been made to Catholic traditionalists, [The Party Line: "We’ve already done enough for these … people!"]  and the radical views [I consider her views, and those of her way of thinking, to be radical.] and program of those to whom this pope has given his approval and endorsement in the past, it is difficult to believe that with Summorum pontificum a definitive compromise has been reached and the matter will end there. A more plausible understanding of the present moment is that it marks another step toward a goal that the vast majority of Catholics would not countenance if it were openly acknowledged-namely, the gradual dismantling of the liturgical reform in its entirety.  [Does this smack of paranoia to you?]

Could such a plan ever succeed? That remains to be seen. I believe that the Second Vatican Council and its reforms were the work of the Spirit. Yet these reforms were also the work of human hands, and in this respect they are vulnerable. We do ourselves no favors by pretending otherwise.

Gasp.

What a weird rant.  

Perfectly consistent with Commonweal.

 

 

I received this from a priest in the Diocese of Steubenville where His Excellency Most Reverend Robert Daniel Conlon is Bishop.  It is a memo to "priests resident in the Diocese of Steubenville" dated 20 July 2007.

His Excellency Bishop Conlon had already issued a statement on 13 July in the Steubenville Register.

I very much would like to see a copy of this 20 July memo, perhaps even by fax, if a priest in the diocese couple contact me by e-mail.

Here is the text of the memo from the Bishop to the priests as sent to me.  My emphases.

"I would like to take some initial steps to respond to Pope Benedict’s Moto Proprio [sic], Summorum Pontificum concerning the celebration of Mass and other rites in the form prior to the Second Vatican Council.

Here in the Diocese of Steubenville we will take a positive attitude to the Moto Proprio [sic]. On the other hand, we will adhere closely to its terms (many of which require clarification, and to other existing norms regulating the liturgy.

There will be no public celebration of the pre-Vatican II rites until I am assured that they can be celebrated well and in accord with Summorum Pontificum’s terms. Any pastor who anticipates public celebration should contact our diocesan worship office prior to making any commitment to the faithful.

I advise all priests to read the English translation of the Moto Proprio [sic] that is posted on the USCCB website.

Any priest in the Diocese of Steubenville who anticipates celebrating Mass privately according to the 1962 Missal should complete the enclosed questionnaire and return it to me by August 10. If, at a later date, a priest anticipates beginning the private celebration of Mass this way, I would appreciate his letting me know."

[The questions on the questionnaire are as follows:]

Name of priest who expects to celebrate Mass privately according to the 1962 Missal after September 14, 2007
How often to you expect to do this?
Where do you expect to do this?
Do you anticipate inviting lay faithful to join you?  Who?

 

 

First, I am amazed a memorandum announcing strict adherence to norms and them recommends a close reading of the document, has "Moto" twice instead of Motu. 

Second, I very much hope that strict adherence to the terms of the document also reflects strict adherence to all terms of the Church’s legislation on the liturgy (including documents such as Sacrosanctum Concilium and Redemptionis Sacramentum) and rubrics of of the Novus Ordo.  There cannot be a double standard for the older form and the newer form.  If anything, were a double standard acceptable, you would expect the newer form to be held to the higher standard, since all priests a) know it well, and b) it is the ordinary form.

Third, I do not believe that the provisions of Summorum Pontificum require a pastor even to consult the local bishop for public Masses, much less obtain permission.  It is true that the priest must be idoneus.  The diocesan bishop could have a say in that.  However, idoeneus indicts minimum preparedness only.  The priest’s freedom regarding private Masses, all things being equal, is pretty much ironclad.  One wonders about the purpose of the questionaire. 

That final question… "Who?"  

Hmmmm.

This doesn’t strike me as very positive in attitude.  Perhaps more information will be forthcoming.

There is a revelatoryop-ed piece about the older form of Mass in Hell’s Bible, today.    It concerns my good friend Fr. Philips at St. John Cantius Church in Chicago.

My emphases and comments. 

Editorial Observer
The Pope Reopens a Portal to Eternity, via the 1950s

By LAWRENCE DOWNES
Published: July 29, 2007

CHICAGO

To a child in a Roman Catholic family, the rhythm of the Mass is absorbed into the body well before understanding reaches the brain. It becomes as lullingly familiar as a weekly drive to a relative’s house: opening prayers like quick turns though local streets, long freeway stretches of readings, homily and Eucharistic prayers, the quietude of communion and then — thanks be to God — the final blessing, a song and home to pancakes and the Sunday comics.

Last Sunday, I drove through a strange liturgical neighborhood. I attended a Tridentine Low Mass, the Latin rite that took hold in the 16th century, [mistale] was abandoned in the 1960s for Mass in the local language [mistake] and is poised for a revival now that Pope Benedict XVI has swept away the last bureaucratic obstacles to its use.

If you don’t remember L.B.J., you don’t remember the Latin Mass. At 42, [He’s 42.] I had never seen, heard or smelled one. Then a family trip took me to Chicago last weekend, and curiosity took me early Sunday morning to St. John Cantius, an old Polish parish on the Near West Side.  [I think it is the Near North Side, no?]

I went up the steps of the Renaissance-baroque church, through a stone doorway and back into my dimmest memories. Amid the grandeur of beeswax candles and golden statuary, the congregation was saying the rosary. I sat behind an older couple wearing scapulars as big as credit cards. I saw women with lace mantillas and a clutch of seminarians in the front rows, in black cassocks and crisp white surplices.

The sanctuary, behind a long communion rail, looked oddly barren because it lacked the modern altar on which a priest, facing the people, prepares the Eucharistic meal.  [GAG!] The priest entered, led by altar boys. He wore a green and gold chasuble and a biretta, a black tufted hat, that he placed on a side table. His shaved head and stately movements gave the Mass a military bearing.

I couldn’t hear a thing.

I strained to listen, waited and, finally, in my dimness, realized that there was nothing to hear.

At a Low Mass, the priest prays unamplified or silently.  [Well… no, that is a matter of style, though undoubtedly some of the prayers must be quiet.] The people do not speak or sing. [That is also a matter of style.] They watch and read.  All around me, people’s heads were buried in thick black missals. I flipped through my little red Latin-English paperback, trying to keep up. Had it been 50 years ago, I would have had every step memorized. But I didn’t know any of it.  [Okay, so go more often and you will have it memorized too.  This is Mass, not astrophysics.]

I felt sheepish, particularly because I was surrounded by far more competent flock.  [Okay, so his own ignorance seems to be the problem.   Granted it is not his fault that he doesn’t know this stuff.]

I also felt shaken and, irrationally, angry.  [Here we go!] Catholics are told that the church is the people of God, but from my silent pew, the people seemed irrelevant. [cliché] This Mass belonged to Father and his altar boys,  [cliché] and it seemed that I could submit to that arrangement or leave. [That is the way it is ANYWHERE!]  For the first time, I understood viscerally how some Catholics felt in the ’60s, when the Mass they loved went away.  [?  I am not sure what this means.  I think he is saying that people were glad it went away, but he is saying also that they loved it.  I don’t get it.  Unless… I wonder if his anger came from his sense of having been cheated out of this for so long??  Just kidding.]

I called Eugene Kennedy, professor, author and former priest, an old Chicagoan and eloquent critic of church matters. He is a scourge of the Catholic hierarchy, which he considers grasping and autocratic. But he spoke fondly of the old Mass, of the majesty to be unearthed by learning and praying it, like reading Proust in French. It contains a profound sense of mystery, he said, which is what religion is all about.  [And these are bad?]

But he said he wouldn’t want it back. [Bizzare]  Priests aren’t ready; [maybe true] it takes years to learn. [Ridiculous.] And forget about the laity, he said, which is accustomed to a half-century of liturgical participation and rudimentary parish democracy. [This from a guy who doesn’t like the hierarchy.]  He seemed certain that most Catholics would never go for it.  [Again, The Party Line: "The MP won’t make a difference!  No one wants this!  We are already doing enough for these people!]

But St. John Cantius, once given up for dead, is thriving with an influx of new parishioners. [Okay, this guy was angry, admittedly without reason, and everything even the über-liberal Kennedy said was positive.  What is really going on?]  In his homily, the pastor, the Rev. C. Frank Phillips, spoke proudly about the Latin Mass, which his parish was the first in Chicago to revive. He announced that it would soon be training priests in the old rite, which he vowed would restore the Catholic church to its place leading the world back to Christ.

Father Frank does not disparage the contemporary Mass, nor could he, lest he cast doubt on the legitimacy of the last 40 years of Catholic worship. But other traditionalists do not always share his tact. Their delight at the Latin revival can seem inseparable from their scorn for the Mass that eclipsed it, which they ridicule for its singing, handshaking and mushy modernity.

They’re right that Mass can be listless, with little solemnity and multiple sources of irritation: parents sedating children with Cheerios; priests preaching refrigerator-magnet truisms; amateur guitar strumming that was lame in 1973; teenagers slumping back after communion, hands in pockets, as if wishing they had been given gum instead.

Pope Benedict insists he is not taking the church on a nostalgia trip. He wants to re-energize it, and hopes that the Latin Mass, like an immense celestial object, will exert gravitational pull on the faithful.  [That is actually another good image to file away with "cross-pollination".]

Unless the church, which once had a problem with the law of gravity, [I think this is a slam at Church which "hates science"]  can repeal inertia, too, then silent, submissive worship won’t go over well. ["submissive"... okay… I think this fellow’s problem is with who has the power.  The older form of Mass was just a catalyst.]  Laypeople, women especially, have kept this battered institution going in a secular, distracted age. Reasserting the unchallenged authority of ordained men may fit the papal scheme for a purer church. But to hand its highest form of public worship entirely back to Father makes Latin illiterates like me irate.  [Yes, it is looking more and more like it is a question of who has Power.  This is the position of feminists.  Also, note that he says he was irrationaly angry.  During that Mass he was incompetent.  Now he says he is an illiterate, viz Latin.  The objective elements are left aside for the visceral.  The spiritual dimension matters not?  This is about how you line up with power structures.  This is all politics to him.]

It’s easy enough to see where this is going: same God, same church, but separate camps, each with an affinity for vernacular or Latin, John XXIII or Benedict XVI. Smart, devout, ambitious Catholics — ecclesial young Republicans,  [I told you so.] home-schoolers, seminarians and other shock troops of the faith [Nazi skin heads] — will have their Mass. The rest of us — a lumpy assortment of cafeteria Catholics, guilty parents, peace-’n’-justice lefties, [Commies – aging hippies] stubborn Vatican II die-hards — will have ours. We’ll have to prod our snoozing pewmates when to sit and stand; they’ll have to rein in their zealots.

And we probably won’t see one another on Sunday mornings, if ever.  [That’s a choice.  We are all about choice.]

 

In an ADNKRONOS story, we read:

The Pope: Could celebrate the Mass of St. Pius V in public

Signs point to the First Sunday of Advent – The Director of "Latinitas", at last we will have a common prayer of praise to God.

The Pope could celebrate publicly Mass in Latin according to the Rite of St. Pius V.  An official introduction of the Rite which, as far as ADNKRONOS has learned from authoritative Vatican sources, could take place on the 1st Sunday of Advent, the beginning of the liturgical year.

For a long time I have thought that a single Mass by the Holy Father, with all the necessary solenmity, would effect as much if not more than the Motu Proprio. 

However, having both would be even better!

Here is an article on the older form of Mass from The B.C. Catholic, newspaper of the Archdiocese of Vancouver. 

My emphases and comments. 

Ne timete: old Latin Mass still ‘extraordinary’

By Jeff Graham

Ne timete: be not afraid, is the response for some Catholics fearful they may have to learn Latin.  [He leads with fear and something silly.]

Pope Benedict XVI’s recent apostolic letter regarding the celebration of the older form of Mass is all about helping the faithful discover the treasures of the Church.  [Close… pretty good.  It is more than that, but this is a good statement.]

However, after the letter was released, one of the first questions Father Tien Tran heard was, "Father, is it true we going to be celebrating Mass in Latin instead of English from now on?"

The All Saints pastor and Chairman of the Vancouver Archdiocese’s Liturgy Com-mission replied that the current form of Mass will remain the most commonly used, while the older form of the Latin Mass will be used in extraordinary circumstances.

"It’s not getting back to the Latin, it’s just making Latin more available," said Father Tran. "The Latin form will be called the extraordinary form, and we have to be aware of what we call it. Right now, what we have is the ordinary form, and the Latin would be the extraordinary form."  [Ehem… Reverend Father… this is not about the language, it is about the older form of Mass, which is in Latin… as is the Novus Ordo.]

Simply put, in his recent apostolic letter in the form of a Motu Proprio, which signifies the Pope’s personal interest in the subject, the Holy Father told the faithful that Mass should ordinarily be celebrated in its current form, but that if a stable community of Catholics wish to participate in the older form of the Mass, they may if they can find a priest capable of following the older form.

In the Archdiocese of Van-couver, with the permission of Archbishop Raymond Roussin, SM, Father Charles Ryan, FSSP, has been regularly offering the Mass in the older form of the Roman rite at a number of churches.

As Msgr. Stephen Jensen pointed out, the older form goes beyond the language used.  [At last!]

"The Pope’s letter called for a wider availability of the older form of Mass, specifically the 1962 edition of the Roman Missal, which is a separate issue from using Latin in the liturgy."

He said that some fail to recognize the difference between using Latin in Mass, and celebrating the older (extraordinary) form of the Mass.  [Exactly!]

"The difference is more than the language used. The form of Mass we’re most familiar with, according to the three successive editions of the Roman Missal published since the Second Vatican Council (what Pope Benedict calls the ordinary form), has always been celebrated in either Latin or the vernacular languages. Some parishes already use Latin for the common parts of the Mass, like the Gloria and the Sanctus (the Holy, Holy)."

"The older form (the 1962 edition of the Missal) was always in Latin, of course, but beyond that, it looks very different from our current Mass celebrated in Latin."

Father Tran pointed out that both forms bring richness to the Church.  [A good positive statement.]

"We should [!] be using both forms, with the form we are using right now remaining as the common and ordinary form," said Father Tran. "We need to be open to both and allow people to be more open to the treasures of the Church. What earlier generations held sacred, we hold sacred too."  [Very good.]

As head of the liturgy commission for the Archdiocese of Vancouver, Father Tran will no doubt be fielding a number of questions regarding the use of the older form.

"We should welcome this apostolic letter with open arms and with the intention to work toward the unity of the Church. It is the Holy Father’s work; we should welcome it and support it, and it should not be a cause of division, because it is the liturgy of Christ, not anyone’s liturgy."  [I like this guy!]

Father Tran also stressed that the Pope’s decision to foster an increased use of the older form is intended to be a unifying force in the Church, and should not be something that causes division between those who prefer the older form or the newer form. Father Tran said he is particularly hopeful that the Pope’s message will help change the hearts of Catholics who prefer the older form, but have disdain for the newer.

"Some people think the vernacular Mass is nonsense, [Well…. given our terrible translations presently in use, perhaps this is not too far from the truth.]  but that is not the mind or intention of the Church. The intention of the Church is unity; we have to be unified."

While the older form of Mass may become more available, Father Tran points out that it may take a while before celebrating Mass in Latin is common.

"In principle it is available. In practice, it may have to be more regional and limited. Perhaps more parishes will be able to make it available."

An obvious factor that will limit the celebration of the Latin Mass is that most Catholics, both priests and laity, are not familiar enough with the older form to either offer it or participate in it.

For now, those interested in attending the older form can go to Divine Mercy Quasi-Parish, which has Mass on Sunday at 9 a.m. at Aldergrove Elks Hall, and at 12:30 at Holy Spirit Church in New Wesminster. From Monday to Friday it is offered at St. Michael’s in Burnaby at 8 a.m., on Saturday at 7:45 a.m., and on first Fridays at 7 p.m. at St. Anthony’s in Vancouver.  [I like this.  Locations and schedules!]

Vatican spokesman Father Federico Lombardi, SJ, has clarified the Pope’s personal usage. Claims that the Pope offers the Mass privately using the Roman Missal of 1962 are incorrect, he said. They spring from photos which show the Pope offering the Mass in his private chapel at an altar against a wall with his back to a tiny congregation.  [I wonder if the editor of CWN is reading.]

The fact that the Pope’s two private secretaries concelebrate the Mass with him each morning "obviously means he is using the new Missal," since the old missal strictly limits concelebration, he pointed out.  [Of course, no one is in a position really to know about this, are they?]

At public Masses with an international congregation, Pope Benedict uses the post-Vatican II Mass with most of the prayers in Latin. However, on occasions such as the feast of the Body and Blood of Christ, which is considered a Rome diocesan celebration, although there is an international congregation, the Pope recites the prayers in Italian.  [The writer was well coached on this.  This is insider ball.]

Last week I presented the Archbishop of Portland, His Excellency, Most Reverend John Vlanzy’s comments from a 2006 article about the older form of Mass.  Click here for that entry.

Now His Excellency has presented his view of the Motu Proprio in the diocesan newspaper The Catholic Sentinel.

My emphases and comments.

 Liturgical growth and progress in the Roman Missal
07/27/2007 Archbishop John Vlazny

Earlier this month Pope Benedict XVI published an Apostolic Letter under the title Summorum Pontificum. In so doing he was both allowing for and promoting a wider use of the liturgical books that were in force back in 1962. Some folks are fearful that the document takes away from the authority of the Second Vatican Council since one of its essential decisions, namely, the liturgical reform, seems to be called into question.  [He begins with fear.]

The Holy Father says such a fear is unfounded. He reminds us that the missal published after the Council by Pope Paul VI and also republished in two subsequent editions by Pope John Paul II remains the normal form of the Eucharistic liturgy. The last version of the Roman Missal before the Council, published with the authority of Pope John XXIII in 1962, may also be used as an extraordinary form of the liturgy. The Holy Father states that it’s not correct to speak of these two versions of the Roman Missal as if they were “two rites.” He describes the situation as “a matter of a two-fold use of one and the same rite.”

Many people today are completely unfamiliar with the extraordinary form. Others for some time now have been insisting on their preference of the extraordinary form and bemoaning its relative unavailability in Catholic churches the world over. Frankly in our own country this has not been a major problem. But it has been a concern in some of the European nations like France, Germany and Switzerland.  [This seems to be The Party Line.  It’s only a few people.  They are complainers.  It really isn’t a problem in these here parts.]

Many of you recall that after the Council a movement away from Rome was led by a French prelate, Archbishop Marcel Lefebvre. One of his churches is located here in our own archdiocese in Veneta. Fidelity to the old missal became for this group an external mark of identity. But, as one of the Lefebvrite bishops pointed out shortly after the publication of Pope Benedict’s letter, the reasons for the break were at a deeper level, theological and even political. [Yes.  This is a good reminder.]  But the Lefebvrites were not the only ones  [Yes, this is a very important point.] who remained attached to the earlier Roman missal of Pope John XXIII. The Pope’s intervention at this time is a genuine plea for the restoration of unity and a greater spirit of generosity on the part of all involved in making accommodations for those who see things differently.  [The sort of spirit which John Paul II had called for in 1988 with his Motu Proprio "Ecclesia Dei adflicta".]

The new directives of the Holy Father take effect on September 14 of this year, the feast of the Exaltation of the Holy Cross. Prior to that date priests were [still are!] required to seek the permission of the local bishop to use the extraordinary form, that is, the missal of Pope John XXIII. But from that day forward any priest of the Latin Church may celebrate the extraordinary form in a Mass without the people at any time except during the sacred Triduum. Pastors will decide when the extraordinary form will be used publicly in parishes where a stable group of the faithful gives evidence of their attachment to the preconciliar form.  [YES!   Excellent!  He got this perfectly, without hedging.  Pastors are the point men.]

Unfortunately, very few of our priests are suitably qualified for the celebration of the Mass according to the 1962 Roman Missal. That liturgical expression requires the use of Latin. Many of our younger clergy were not schooled in this beautiful language [YAY!] during their priestly formation as were those of us ordained in preconciliar times. Interestingly, one of my first assignments was to pursue a graduate degree in Latin  [!!] so that I could teach the language to young seminarians. By the time I earned my degree, Latin was on the decline in the seminary curriculum.  [Contrary, I believe to the norms for formation.]

Some days ago I received an inquiry from a parishioner about special directives for the use of the extraordinary form here in the Archdiocese of Portland. I see no need for further clarification since the papal document is quite explicit. [EXCELLENT!   I think this may be the only N. American bishop who has stated this so clearly.  Well done!]  But the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops’ Committee on the Liturgy is holding a special meeting next month in order to offer bishops around the country some guidance in their responsibility of supervising the sacred liturgy now that there is to be a more generous availability of both forms.  [Oh boy… do I smell trouble.]

Every bishop is the moderator of the liturgy in his own diocese. In that capacity he is required both to implement the universal norms of the church and to intervene to prevent abuses from arising with regard to liturgical celebrations in his diocese. That can be a ticklish situation at times because nowadays hierarchical directives are often suspect.  [I like this fellow’s candor.] Fortunately here in our local church we have a wonderful liturgical commission and good pastors who collaborate faithfully with me in overseeing the full, conscious and active participation of our people in the sacred rites, as they are to be celebrated according to the liturgical norms.  [So, there are probably no liturgical abuses in the Archdiocese of Portland.]

Two of my serious concerns about the pre-conciliar form were the more limited use of texts from Sacred Scripture, particularly the exclusion of Old Testament readings on Sundays, and the perception that the active participation of the people should remain internal and not external.  [This is very interesting.  The internal participation, or as I usually put it, "interior" participation, is the key to everything else.  Ideally, interior participation come to fruition in outward, externalized participation.  The ultimate expression of outward, external participation is the reception of Holy Communion.  So, receptivity remains the fundamental dimension of both the interior and ourwardly expressed active participation of the faithful.  The Archbishop is more than likely addressing the problem of nearly total silence on the part of many congregations at celebrations of the older form of Mass.  Sometimes the hard core of the "silence school" will stare, or rather, glare down people who do make the responses.  Making responses is good and proper and also one’s RIGHT,   This is going to be a big issue after 14 September when the provisions of Summorum Pontificum kick in.] The Pope’s letter opens the door to the amelioration of these and other matters of concern.

Some will be worried about possible divisions and tensions that will occur in our parishes as a result of the call for a more generous response to the use of both forms. [Maybe I am missing something, but this probably means "more generous response to use the older form".]  For all practical purposes, given the limited number of priests who could even respond to such requests, this is quite unlikely. The Roman missal of Paul VI remains the ordinary form of the Roman rite, not only because that is the directive of the church, but also because it has been widely received and greatly appreciated in Catholic parishes across the world.

The Pope was hopeful that eventually new saints and some of the new prayers from the post-conciliar missal could be integrated into the 1962 missal by his commission in Rome.  [Yes, I am looking forward to directives on this point.] He acknowledges what many pastors have heard, namely, that the pre-conciliar form is attractive to many people because of its sacred nature. He offers this challenge with respect to the ordinary form: “the most sure guarantee that the Missal of Paul VI can unite parish communities and be loved by them consists in its being celebrated with great reverence and in harmony with the liturgical directives.”

We pastors shall do our best to heed the Holy Father’s plea for generosity and unity in our liturgical celebrations. But a challenge far greater than providing Eucharistic celebrations in the extraordinary form is simply providing any Sunday Eucharistic celebration in every parish and mission each and every weekend, given the growth and diversity of our Catholic population.  [I am sure the priest shortage is a major fact here.  However, I notice he brings up "diversity".  I am wondering if these means celebrating Masses in many different languages, give that Portland is such a mixed city.  If that is the case, would not the Novus Ordo in LATIN be a great help to reduce the sheer number Masses in so many languages?  People could have their own translations, but pray in common.] Please join the Holy Father and all his brother bishops in praying for “charity and pastoral prudence” in the implementation of his Apostolic Letter. 

At the beginning of this article, I was afraid we were going to get just a warmed over version of His Excellency’s previous views (from 2006) and The Party Line, as I call it.

I was very pleasantly put at ease, and pleased as I read.  

Frankly, I like the candor.  He very clearly is accepting the Motu Proprio with the proper spirit and is communicating his wishes about it, without diminishing the practical problems.

The English lefty tabloid The Tablet (28 July) has a somewhat more balanced piece than the usual hysteria we can expect from the ranks of their writers.  Today we read a contribution by a man who back int he day was the chairman of the Latin Mass Association.  He is now a lay minister in prisons, which certain harks to Rule 4.

My emphases and comments. 

A Moment of Recollection

On 7 July I went to Mass in what we must now call the “Ordinary” rite, though it was not celebrated in ordinary circumstances. There were bars on the windows of the chapel, the congregation was searched before being allowed in, and the door was locked behind us. In the world outside, 7 July was a Saturday, but for the prisoners of the Young Offenders Institution in which I work it was a Sunday, the day on which our chaplain comes in to say weekly Mass.

They look forward to it, and so does he. The atmosphere is upliftingly prayerful. That Saturday, like every other Saturday, 15 young men slipped easily into the spirit of a simple, worshipful liturgy in which they participated with unaffected fervour and commitment. When the lad who read the first reading stumbled over a word, someone in the front row helped him out. At the sign of peace, they shook hands not only with each other, but also with the officer appointed to watch over them from the back. During the period of thanksgiving after Communion, there was a stillness that ran deeper than silence. Those young men were serving all kinds of sentences, but for that hour, every one of them was free.

It’s a real gift to be able to go to a Mass like that, though I never thought I’d find myself saying so. For most of my adult life, I attended the old Tridentine Mass whenever it was practically possible, going to the new rite only when I had no other choice. Three decades ago, I was chairman of the Latin Mass Society. Today, I am an extraordinary minister of the Eucharist.  [of "Holy Communion", unless he is an instituted Acolyte, which he could very well be.] If anyone had predicted that, even a couple of years ago, I’d have told them they were daft. But I haven’t abandoned my devotion to the old liturgy, and I would love to be able to teach the prisoners I serve how to appreciate it. I am sure they would rise to it. On Saturday 7 July, the time that might happen came significantly nearer with the publication of the Pope’s motu proprio on the use of the 1962 Missal. When I got home I immediately logged on to the internet. I wanted to find out what Benedict XVI had written.

What I read filled me with unqualified [cf. Rule Five] delight. For years, there has been a standoff between “traditional” and “progressive” elements within Roman Catholicism, though our Christian vocation (and the documents of the Second Vatican Council) requires us to embrace both. “Summorum Pontificum” points this out clearly. With one legislative act, the Pope has shown that to reject our liturgical inheritance is as unacceptable as to deny the possibility of liturgical development.  [Development!  YES!  This guy really gets it, doesn’t he!]

This document permits freely; it imposes nothing, except tolerance.  [Nice. Heh heh,  "impose tolerance".] The only thing it takes away is the right for anyone to claim that a person or a community that declares an attachment to the former liturgy is ipso facto out of step with the Church – though “priests of the communities adhering to the former usage cannot, as a matter of principle, exclude celebrating according to the new books”.

There will, alas, be some devotees of the older use who find that condition unacceptable;  but after “Summorum Pontificum”, there can only be fewer than before, because  the document declares that there is only one Roman Rite and that the 1962 and 1970 Missals are both expressions of it. For anyone wishing to remain loyal to the Holy See, it is now impossible to argue that the Church’s traditional eucharistic doctrines have been extinguished by the latter, if the former is acknowledged as having equal standing.  [Repetita iuvant!] Responses to the motu proprio have, of course, been mixed. Some bishops have welcomed it in the generous spirit in which it was issued; others have attempted to neutralise its impact by the cynical use of spin.  [This is what I refer to as The Party Line, which has several verses in the mantra: "It won’t make much difference… Very few are want this… We’re already doing enough."]

Only time will tell what this act will bring and what chance of reconciliation there will be. I hope and pray that the motu proprio will bless us all with better liturgy, [Yes, he truly get’s it.] which is one of its intentions, for much of what has been done in the name of liturgical renewal seems to me off-beam and deeply damaging. The Pope makes the point unambiguously in the letter to the bishops that accompanied “Summorum Pontificum”: “ … in many places celebrations were not faithful to the prescriptions of the new Missal, but the latter actually was understood as authorising or even requiring creativity, which frequently led to deformations of the liturgy which were hard to bear. I am speaking from experience, since I too lived through that period with all its hopes and its confusion. And I have seen how arbitrary deformations of the liturgy caused deep pain to individuals totally rooted in the faith of the Church.”

That pain and those deformations continue, but this thoroughly modern Pope sees that the way to achieve healing now and maintain unity in the future is to honour the past. [Well put!]  In that same letter he gives the “positive reason” that motivated his decision to issue it:

“It is a matter of coming to an interior reconciliation in the heart of the Church. Looking back over the past, to the divisions which in the course of the centuries have rent the Body of Christ, one continually has the impression that, at critical moments when divisions were coming about, not enough was done by the Church’s leaders to maintain or regain reconciliation and unity. One has the impression that omissions on the part of the Church have had their share of blame for the fact that these divisions were able to harden. This glance at the past imposes an obligation on us today: to make every effort to enable for all those who truly desire unity to remain in that unity or to attain it anew.” Reading that paragraph reminded me of one of the most beautiful prayers the prisoners and I hear at Mass every Saturday: “Lord Jesus Christ, you said to your apostles: I leave you peace, my peace I give you. Look not on our sins, but on the faith of your Church, and grant us the peace and unity of your kingdom where you live for ever and ever.” The same prayer occurs in the Missal of 1962.

â–  Michael McMahon is a lay chaplain in a provincial prison.

 I am delighted with this letter.  Here is a fellow who maintains his dedication to the older form, but participates in very fruitful celebrations of the newer form in a serious environment.  He sees the fruits of both.  He understands that there need not be a negative competition, one being pitted against the other.  He sees that the the one with influence the celebrations of the other.

Meanwhile….

In the same issue of the lefty tabloid The Tablet is a letter which shows that sour narrows minded attitude so typical of those who are negatively spinning the provisions of the Motu Proprio.  This cleric sets out to defend and extend the comments of the execrable Fr. Mark Francis, the multi-cultural liturgist, who excoriated Summorum Pontificum in the same publication.

Perpend:

Reform undermined

Fr Mark Francis (“Beyond language”, 14 July) drew attention to significant differences between the pre-conciliar version of the liturgy of the Roman Rite and the renewed and reformed version of it in use since 1969. But he touched only lightly upon the one, huge difference between the two. The central axiom that underpinned the great majority of the major reforms the Council required [which regarding the liturgy were very few thigs indeed!] was the development of the participation of the faithful in all our liturgical celebrations. [Here is yet another fellow who doesn’t understand what the Church really means by "active participation".] It was the driving principle in the development of a vernacular liturgy, [Which the Council said could be permitted occasionally, but that Latin was to remain the language of the liturgy] and has shaped profoundly the way we now operate as Church [don’t you love how they turn "Church" into a buzz-word by omiting an article?] with the involvement of the lay faithful in virtually every aspect of its life.

The earlier version of the Mass was composed for a priest-celebrant and a single server. [Noooo…. it wasn’t.  Quite the opposite.  It was really a much greater, sung liturgy, closer to the Divine Liturgy.  A smaller version developed later.]  It gave no part whatever to the lay faithful; [B as in B, S as in S.] indeed, it did not even acknowledge their presence. [Other than all those prayers for and about the people, and other than those moments where the priests invites responses (whether people answered them or not) and those moments when people participated in the most perfect form of "active participation", the reception of Holy Communion, and… well… you get it.]  Most canon lawyers would read the final paragraph of Pope Paul VI’s apostolic constitution of 3 April 1969 as a categorical abrogation of everything in the previous editions of the Roman Missal that was not enshrined in the new one. [Then most canon lawyers would be wrong, wouldn’t they!  Paul VI did not abrogate the older Mass.  He immediately extended permission for older priests to use it and gave an indult to the UK.  Had he meant to abrogate it, he would have said so.] To read now in the motu proprio that it was “never abrogated” is quite puzzling, to say the least: who so advised Pope Benedict?  [ROFL!  The Holy Father is just a babe in the woods, surrounded by canonists who either don’t know their biretta from their bum or who are whispering traditionalist propaganda in his ear.  Poor Pope Benedict, as innocent as a lamb, who knew nothing about this issue before he became Pope.  Riiiiight….  In any event.  It isn’t "puzzling" any more. The Legislator has spoken.] The motu proprio compromises many of the principles of renewal and reform enshrined in the Liturgy Constitution of Vatican II.  [About which Benedict knows nothing, right?] One wonders whether it is ever wise to seek to resolve by compromise rather than on principle  [Okay, I think he just suggested that the Pope lacks principles.  Am I wrong?  Also, I would say that the MP is not a compromise.  In its provisions the LAW is laid down, which this chap will have to obey, without compromise, like it or not.] an issue raised by those who resist change. Compromise is slippery ground.  Once a compromise position is adopted, that new position becomes the new battleground until a further compromise is gained, and that in turn becomes a new battleground.  Principles are further and further eroded until the original renewal and reform is completely undermined.  [This is what I call "creeping incrementalism" and it has been the tool of dissenters for decades.  They always seek to bump the paradigm on a degree or so at a time.  But after 40 years, the paradigm has shifted so far that someone who once seemed like a freaky liberal now looks like a hardened traditionalist.  The Holy Father didn’t do what is suggested.]

(Mgr) Anthony B. Boylan
Bentham, North Yorkshire

This letter, by the Reverend Monsignor, of the Diocese of Leeds, is an icon of the attitude of the left.

 

 In today’s PODCAzT, we hear from St. Augustine of Hippo (+430) who contributes to the second reading in today’s Office of Readings.  The selection is from Bk 10 of the Confessions. 

I use that as a spring board into a look at the issue of the fruits of Christ’s Sacrifice.  Were they "for all" or "for many"?  When the new translation for Holy Mass is released we will no longer hear "for all" but "for many", which is more accurate.  Still, we need to understand what is at the heart of the debate.  Joseph Ratzinger will help us figure this out along with a paragraph from the Roman Catechism of the Council of Trent.

This PODCAzT was a bit of an experiment.  I changed a couple of my recording techniques and also just "winged it" with many notes for my comments, just to see if I could speed up the production time.

038 07-07-25 Ratzinger on “active participation”; The Sabine Farm; Merry del Val’s music
037 07-07-18 The position of the altar and the priest’s “back to the people”
036 07-06-24 St. Augustine on John the Baptist; Ut queant laxis
035 07-06-17 Cyprian on the Our Father; MP Rules of Engagement
034 07-06-09 St. Thomas Aquinas on the Eucharist; Mass in heaven? No!