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

This just in from Reuters.

Pius XII sainthood process not stalled – Vatican
Mon Feb 18, 2008 11:47pm IST

By Phil Stewart

VATICAN CITY (Reuters) – The Vatican’s top saint-maker [What a ghastly phrase.] said on Monday he was moving ahead with the cause of wartime Pope Pius XII, and defended him against accusations he was silent about the Holocaust.

Some critics accuse Pius, who reigned from 1939 to 1958, of being indifferent to the Holocaust and not speaking out against Hitler. His supporters consider him a holy man who worked behind the scenes to help Jews throughout Europe.

Cardinal Jose Saraiva Martins denied that the sainthood process had been halted over the controversy, as a newspaper report last year suggested.

"It has not been staggered, much less stopped," Martins, who heads the Vatican department that oversees the sainthood process, told reporters.

But he left the timing of any progress on the case unclear, and confirmed there would be renewed research into the late Pope on the 50th anniversary of his death.

Last May, the Vatican’s saint-making department [What a ghastly phrase.]  voted in favour of a decree recognising Pius’s "heroic virtues", a major hurdle in a long process toward sainthood that began in 1967.

But Pope Benedict has so far not approved the decree, meaning that the process is effectively stalled and that Pius cannot move on to beatification, or the last step before sainthood.

Martins said people should not read too much into that.

"Some people [Like writers for Reuters…] talk about problems that in reality don’t exist, I believe. Many say: ‘It’s not going forward because he is famous for his silence in condemning Nazism, that he didn’t condemn Nazism," he said.

"This is not historically accurate. Instead of silence, I would speak of ‘prudence’. There was not silence."

The Vatican maintains Pius did not speak out more forcefully against the Holocaust because he was afraid of provoking Nazi reprisals and worsening the fate of Catholics and Jews.

Supporters say Pius ordered churches and convents in Rome to take in Jews after the Germans occupied the city in 1943.

Various Jewish groups, foremost among them the U.S.-based Anti-Defamation League, have often asked the Vatican to suspend the entire sainthood process until the Vatican declassifies all of its World War Two-era archives. [Right.  Because they should have a say!]

James Carroll of The Boston Globe seeks to enlighten us about Pope Benedict’s Good Friday prayer for Jews.

My emphases and comments.

JAMES CARROLL
Reviving an old insult to the Jews

By James Carroll  |  February 18, 2008

AS THE priest began his sermon, he had trouble with the sound system, and muttered, "There’s something wrong with this microphone." To which the congregation automatically replied, "And also with you." 

That joke, told to me by a priest, takes off from the ritual exchange between priest and Mass-goers: "The Lord be with you," answered by "And also with you." It assumes a certain level of communication between clergy and congregation – the use of a common language.  [Use of a badly translation, you mean.  "Et cvm spiritu tuo" does not mean in English "And also with you"... but the joke was good.]

The second most important change to take place in the Catholic Church in my lifetime was the substitution of vernacular tongues for Latin in the Mass. When it is the whole people saying, "And also with you," instead of a solitary altar boy reciting "Et cum spiritu tuo," nothing less than the democratic principle is being affirmed.  [No.  This has nothing to do with "democratic principles".  The liturgy is about the worship of God.] The liturgy is not the private property of the clergy, with the laity mere observers. [This man does not have the slightest idea of what "active participation" really means.] Instead, this worship is an action of the entire community, one of whom is the priest, who serves as its facilitator. [Rubbish… the priest is NOT a "facilitator", the priest is a priest.  A "facilitator" makes it sound a) as if he is not essential for Mass and b) might be sort of a protestant minister, whose presence is needful because of what he does rather than who he is.]  From a seemingly incidental shift in language followed profound theological adjustments, as well as the start of a new structure of authority.  [This is what P. Marini’s book exposes.  The real reason why they fought for vernacular translations was really about getting power into the hands of local bishops conferences.  So, it was ecclesiological.]

The Latin Mass is at issue again, with the Vatican having last week formally reauthorized  [So… Mr. Carroll obvious failed to do any homework before indulging in this word-flux.] the so-called Tridentine Mass, a Latin ritual the rubrics of which were set by the Council of Trent in the 16th century. [Noo… the Tridentine reform of the liturgy occured after the Council was over.] Any open-minded person can affirm a diversity of practices in a worldwide organization [Umm… it is a little more than that.   Again, you can see that this is at root an ecclesiological problem.  Christ is not in this man’s view of the Church.] like the Catholic Church, and, as the classic musical compositions show, there was a stark beauty to the ancient liturgy. [For this guy, the Church’s liturgical tradition is rather like a show, or concert, or museum piece.]  But more is at stake in this return of Latin than mere aesthetics. [True.] Those pushing for a reauthorization of the Tridentine Mass [EXcuse me, but that is already done now.] want to roll back the whole Catholic reform, from nascent democracy to the theological affirmation of Judaism.  [This beggers belief.  I wonder if this fellow has actually read the documents of the Second Vatican Council or ever spoken to someone who desires the older form of Mass.]

The first significant vote that the fathers of the reforming Second Vatican Council (1962-1965) took concerned the use of Latin. [What a laugh!  The first significant vote the Council Fathers was to cut the Church’s moorings by rejecting the Schemata.  The first mention of the Latin language by the Council was to say that the use of the Latin language was to be preserved in the Latin rites (SC 36,1).] The Council of Trent had emphasized Latin precisely because the Protestants had repudiated it, especially in biblical texts.  [I seem to remember that the Bible is mainly in Hebrew and Greek.  Also, the Council of Trent, in the acta not the decrees, foresaw the possibility of vernacular liturgy but knew the time wasn’t right.] The Reformation was defined by nothing so much as the capture of sacred texts and worship by the vernacular [Is there something wrong with that sentence?] - Luther’s German, Tyndale’s English. [I think the Reformation was nothing so much as the assertion of private judment (like Carroll?) over that of the Church.] So conservatives at Vatican II knew what was at stake in the proposal to abandon Latin. But when the document on the liturgy was put before the council, including approval of the use of the vernacular, the vote in favor was 1,922 to 11.  [See above.   Latin was to be preserved.  That is what the Council Father’s voted for.] One theologian said, "This day will go down in history as the end of the Counter-Reformation." Pope John XXIII, watching the proceedings in his apartment on closed-circuit television, said simply, "Now begins my council."  [IF that happened, if the Pope who wrote Veterum sapientiae said that, I believe he may have been happy that a document passed by a vote, rather than one detail of a document was passed.]

And so it did. The Eucharist was no longer understood only as a "sacrifice," enacted on an altar by the priest, with the laity present as mere spectators. [IT NEVER WAS UNDESTOOD ONLY AS THAT!] It was a meal, like the Last Supper, to be shared in by all. [Let’s consult St. Thomas Aquinas’s hymn on Holy Thursday in which Eucharist is described also as a meal, at which many of those who consume the Eucharist will be damned for lack of discernment.  No doubt St. Thomas (+1274) was pleased to have the insights of the Mr. Carol’s version of the Council Fathers.] The altar was refashioned as a banquet table and moved away from the far wall of the church, into the center of the community – "facing the people."  [Find that in the Second Vatican documents, please?]

Great questions were at stake. Could any thing in Catholic life or belief change, or was the Church changeless? Historical consciousness itself was at issue. It was as if Jesus were remembered by conservatives as speaking Latin, when, of course, he spoke Aramaic.  [So?]

The most important change in Catholic belief involved recovering the memory that Jesus was a Jew, and that his preaching was an affirmation, not a repudiation, of Jewish belief. Vatican II’s high point was the declaration "Nostra Aetate,"  [Perhaps the most moronic thing he has written so far… a not inconsiderable accomplishment.  Nostra aetate was merely a Decree, having really far less authority than an Apostolic Constitution.  It is a side show.] which condemned the idea that Jews could be blamed for the murder of Jesus, and affirmed the permanence of God’s Covenant with Israel. The "replacement" theology by which the church was understood as "superseding" Judaism was no more. [B as in B, S as in S.] Corollary to this was a rejection of the traditional Christian goal of converting Jews to Jesus. The new liturgy of Vatican II dropped all such prayers.  [Are we seriously to believe, because this man writes this in the Globe… owned, if I am not mistaken by the New York Times, that Jews are saved apart from Christ and that the mission Christ gave the Church no longer applies today?  Let us not forget that the Good Friday prayer for the Jews (both the old and the new) come straight out of St. Paul to the Romans, which I think is still a part of the New Testament.]

But the Latin Mass published by the Vatican last year [last year… if this year is 1963…] resuscitated the conversion insult, praying on Good Friday that God "lift the veil" from "Jewish blindness." Catholics [very few] and Jews both objected. In last week’s formal promulgation of the Latin Mass, [Incredible.] the Vatican stepped back from that extreme language, but Catholics are still to pray that God "enlighten" the hearts of Jews "so that they recognize Jesus Christ, Savior of all mankind." This is a drastic retreat from the most important theological development of the modern era. [HA HA HA!]  Something is wrong with that development, now say Vatican reactionaries. To which the people reply, "No. What’s wrong is you."

James Carroll’s column appears regularly in the Globe. 

What a dreadful person.

The National Catholic Register has an article on the growth of the so-called "Tridentine Mass", or the "Extraordinary Use" of the Roman Rite, on Catholic college campuses.

Here is the piece with my emphases and comments.

Ite, Missa Est

Interest in ‘Extraordinary Form’ of the Mass Growing on Campus

BY VALERIE SCHMALZ

February 17-23, 2008 Issue | Posted 2/12/08 at 12:02 PM


When Pope Benedict XVI loosened restrictions on celebration of the pre-Vatican II Latin Mass last July, Notre Dame University’s campus ministry immediately began planning how to implement the change.

Notre Dame is just one of a number of Catholic colleges and universities that viewed the Pope’s July 7, 2007, Apostolic Letter Summorum Pontificum as a signal that the form of the Mass dating to 1570 should be available on their campuses. Others, such as Jesuit-run Fordham University in New York, began offering the Mass of Blessed John XXIII at the behest of students.

“It’s actually been a lot of fun to work with,” [See?  It doesn’t have to be a scary pain!] said Brett Perkins, Notre Dame’s campus ministry coordinator of the Mass of Blessed John XXIII, as the older liturgy is now also known. Campus ministry staff spent the summer ordering English-Latin missalettes, buying vestments, and training priests in the rubrics and language of the traditional Mass.

“The Mass is the Mass, but the traditional Latin Mass seems more sacred,” said Leah Turner, a junior at St. Vincent College in Latrobe, Pa. “It seems to capture the tradition of the Church more.”  [I wonder if the retired Archbp. Weakland is helping out?]

Notre Dame, Thomas Aquinas College in Santa Paula, Calif., Christendom College in Front Royal, Va., and St. Vincent College are among the colleges that began to offer the Mass of Blessed John XXIII shortly after the Summorum Pontificum’s effective date of Sep. 14. Ave Maria University in Naples, Fla., plans to offer it soon and Franciscan University of Steubenville will offer its first such Mass on March 30. [And I think WDTPRSers know how that happened!]

Summorum Pontificum, which the Pope issued on his own initiative or motu proprio, said that the Mass according to the Missal of 1962 must be offered as long as a “stable” group of the faithful requests it. [We need to get away from that translation.] The only exception is during the Easter Triduum.  [Well… not if the place in question has use of the older form of Mass exclusively.]

The Pope referred to this Mass as the extraordinary form of the Roman Rite. “It is not appropriate to speak of these two versions of the Roman Missal as if they were ‘two rites,’” he wrote. “Rather, it is a matter of a twofold use of one and the same rite.”  [I don’t think this accurately describes the situation.  What Pope Benedict did in Summorum Pontificum was supply a juridical solution to a problem.  So, juridically there are two uses of one Roman Rite.  That doesn’t not remove the question if there are really two rites or not from the liturgical and historical point of view.  I think there are indeed two different rites, liturgically if not juridically.  As a matter of fact, I suspect Pope Benedict thinks so too.  But His Holiness’s solution was brilliant.]

Pope Benedict wrote in an accompanying letter to the bishops that the 1970 Missal of Pope Paul VI, regularly called the Novus Ordo (new order of the Mass) “obviously is and continues to be the normal form.”  [I think we also need to consider what "ordinary" and "extraordinary" mean.  After all, there are some ways in which "extraordinary" has become very common indeed.   Just think about "extraordinary" ministers of Communion, who in some places are so numerous as to constitute a liturgical abuse.]

‘Preserve the Riches’

The older form of the Mass had never been juridically abrogated, although since 1988, express permission had been required from the bishop. [For public Masses.  The Holy See gave permission for private Masses.] That is no longer required.

In a letter to bishops accompanying the motu proprio, Pope Benedict wrote: “It behooves all of us to preserve the riches which have developed in the Church’s faith and prayer.”

“For a Catholic university, it’s almost imperative to preserve these treasures of civilization,” said Notre Dame sophomore John Gerardi, who was part of a group of students who asked for the traditional Mass, parts of which date back more than 1,000 years to Pope Gregory the Great.

Msgr. R. Michael Schmitz is vicar general of the Institute of Christ the King, with North American headquarters in Chicago. “Many of the students tell us that it is simply inspiring very strongly the presence of the divinity, the presence of Christ,” Msgr. Schmitz said. “It is inspiring awe.”  [He got it right.  As I have been saying for a while now, liturgy must bring us to an experience of mystery, awe at transcendence.]

He believes the reverence the older form inspires will increase its popularity over time. [So do I.] He noted the extraordinary form is being celebrated around the country with little fanfare, including recently at the Newman Center at the University of Kansas in Lawrence.

Said Michael Bertotti, a senior at Thomas Aquinas: “I think both forms of the Mass are valid and very good. The old Mass makes more clear the splendor and majesty of the Mass.”

There is more ritual, more Signs of the Cross, kissing of the altar and quiet prayers, with the priest facing ad orientem (toward the East) [Along with the silent canon, this is the most important thing that could be reintroduced in the newer form of Mass.] with the people and toward the altar for much of the Mass, noted Jesuit Father Joseph Fessio, editor-in-chief of Ignatius Press. Ignatius Press is the primary English-language publisher of the works of Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, now Benedict XVI.

The Scripture readings are on a one-year cycle, and only an Old Testament or Epistle is read in addition to the Gospel. The Gospel is largely drawn from the Gospel of Matthew.  [Which is still a lot of Scripture, by the way.  Don’t let people trick yo into thinking that there is "not enough" Scripture in the older Mass. In fact, there is probably too much in the newer form!]

In contrast, the newer form has a three-year Scripture cycle for Sundays and solemnities, and a two-year cycle for weekdays. The readings are drawn more extensively from the Old Testament and the Gospels of John, Luke and Mark.  [If it is true that there is more Scripture in the Novus Ordo, it is also true that having less in the older Mass made it easier to integrate into one’s memory.  Also, the increase of texts to be read during the Novus Ordo gives the impression to some people that Mass is about incessant talking.  This is also why a silent Canon could be very helpful.]

Growing Together?

Notre Dame offers the extraordinary form at 8 a.m. on Sundays in a chapel located at the center of the campus and attendance hovers around 100, Perkins said. The resurgence of Notre Dame’s Catholic identity, with 75% of the Catholic students attending Mass at least on Sunday, is enriched by the extraordinary form, he said.

Thomas Aquinas College offers both the extraordinary form and the Mass of Paul VI in Latin and in English. Jesuit Father Cornelius Buckley, chaplain, said some students have embraced the traditional Latin Mass, but others just don’t like it.

“You’re not as involved because there are so few responses. A lot of the prayers are said quietly by the priest so it is harder to follow what is going on,” said Theresa O’Reilly, a senior at Thomas Aquinas.

O’Reilly said she prefers the newer form. “It seems to me when the priest faces everyone you have kind of a circle around Christ. When he holds up the host, everyone is centered on Christ,” she said.

On the East Coast, at Fordham, Jesuit Father Joseph Currie, director of campus ministry, said the university offers the Mass once a month in deference to the Pope and the desire of students who formed a Facebook group to request it. “We are giving it a chance to catch on,” Father Currie said. “If it is of God, it will last. If it is not of God, it will go on its way.”

Pope Benedict’s desire is to heal the polarizing divisions of liturgy that resulted from the almost wholesale discarding of the 1962 Missal, Father Fessio said. In his July statements, the Holy Father stressed his goal was to make room for those who feel closer to the older Mass and to continue the organic development of the liturgy of the Roman Rite, particularly the Mass.  [It is also about rebuilding Catholic identity in a highly relativisitic and secularized world.]

Aspects of the extraordinary and ordinary forms may change for both, with what could be a growing together of the two forms of the Roman Rite, Father Fessio said.  [Yes.  This is surely what Pope Benedict is also aiming at in the long term.]

“I think the Holy Father is trying to make possible the kind of gradual and organic growth that should have taken place and did not,” said Father Fessio, adding that the Pope “wants to reconcile the Mass as it was celebrated for centuries with the Mass as it is celebrated today.”  [Continuity.]

Valerie Schmalz is based in San Francisco.

Someone sent this to me by e-mail, which I have edited and added my emphases.

Today, I went to mass at my neighborhood parish in the ordinary form.  It was conducted in the typical form:  uninspiring hymns, applause, prayer for a newly installed extraordinary minister—the priest asked everyone to put their hands outstretched forward during the prayer, there were about 8 extraordinary ministers, etc. etc. 

After mass, I boldly (but pleasantly) asked father (who is the pastor) when we will have a mass here according to the 1962 missal.  He basically said never, and was highly negative.  He said that some time ago the parish had a mass in latin, and said that parishoners were angry about it. 

I was so taken aback by his demeanor—he said that I was only the second person who has asked him about this. 

Anyway, I’m just feeling really down about this.  I am feeling hopeless, actually.  How should I approach him—or should I just let it go (letting something like this go is not me….).  What do you advise? 

My first thought is that these parishoners probably don’t even know about the motu proprio.  I would bet it has never been discussed here.  And along those lines, shouldn’t they know?  Should I let them know, like by passing out flyers or something?  Or have I gone over the edge?  Anyway, I would appreciate your advise and I will remember you in my prayers. 

First, of all, people do have the right to a) to express their rightful aspirations to their pastors and b) to organize themselves according to their rightful aspirations.

If you were able to consolidate a group of people interested in having the older form of Mass, you would, as a group, have the right to express your desires to the pastor. 

According to the provisions of Summorum Pontificum the pastor may not ignore you.  It may be that he is incapable for one reason or another to respond to your desires himself, but he cannot ignore you.  If he can’t or won’t celebrate Mass for you with the older books, then you get the bishop involved.

If you do something, make sure that it is very peaceful and respectful of everyone concerned.

Above all, be patient.

At this point, I would open this up for comments by people who have been working to get the older Mass in their parishes.   Perhaps they can share their experiences, especially the positive experiences of getting the MP implemented in their parishes.  Perhaps there are techiniques or pointers they can share.

I do not want this thread to become a whine session.   So don’t go there.

Let’s keep this practical and helpful.

Would someone be willing to nominate WDTPRS for the Catholic Blog Award this year?

I can’t tell who has been nominated.



Last WDTPRS did fairly well, I would say.  It would be nice to have a strong showing this year, if you readers think I’ve kept up my end as well as you have kept up yours!