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

A very fine article appeared in Il Timone, a good Italian publication intended for lay people, especially families.  It is slowly but surely taking the place that the entirely squishy Famiglia Cristiana hold.  The later is distributed through the bishops conference to all parish churches for people to take home, but Il Timone is by subscription as is growing quickly in popularity.  The author of the piece, Fr. Piero Cantoni, had many years ago been a member of the SSPX before the 1988 debacle, though he broke with them and it in communion with Rome.  He is the brother of the founder of highly intelligent Alleanza Cattolica.

This piece is probably originally a talk that was given: the Italian original is oral in quality.  Cantoni also speaks to many of the things I have been thinking about and writing for a long time now about the Motu Proprio Summorum Pontificum, its reception and implementation.

He has a couple very good insights which you will want to pay close attention to.

Here is the piece in my rapid translation from the Italian original, with my emphases and comments.

Dossier: You can have that Mass

Summorum Pontificum

Fr. Pietro Cantoni

The content and outlook of a highly awaited document.  What does it say and how can it be applied in parish life?  Some considerations and a few pointers about the Motu Proprio of Pope Benedict XVI.

The historical and doctrinal context

It was often presented as an improvised act, pulled arbitrarily from thin air, the fruit of an entirely personal decision of Pope Benedict XVI, motivated – in the best hypothesis – from the desire to foster the return into fullness of Catholic communion the Fraternity of Saint Pius X, founded by the French Archbishop Marcel Lefebvre (1905-1991).  But that is not how things went.  The Motu Proprio Summorum Pontificum had a long previous history which, in many ways, transcends the Lefebvre affair.  When the liturgical reform was carried out it wasn’t thought that the preceding liturgy had to be abrogated.  It was pretty much thought that the matter would take care of itself.  The new liturgy would imperceptibly and inexorably substitute the old, as often happened in the long history of the Church.

But instead, events took an decisively different direction.  It wasn’t taken into account that the reform happened, or at least, perceived, as something "from a worktable" of a group of experts and not like the mature fruit of an imperceptible historical evolution.

Moreover, it was not fully appreciated that what was going on was the most imposing liturgical reform of the entire history of Christianity.  Toward the end of the 17th century, the Patriarch of Moscow Nikita Miniè Nikon (1605-1681) initiated a reform of the Slavic Byzantine Rite celebrated by the Russian Church.  The reform consisted substantially in conforming the Russian liturgical books to the Greek liturgical books used in those days by Constantinople.  In concrete terms the scope of the changes were truly limited: the most significant is the sign of the Cross and the blessing with three fingers instead of two.  The result was a schism of terrible proportions (shattering right away into different branches) which endures in our times for millions of adherents. 

Touching the liturgy is always very risky!  Just so, the liturgical reform did not in any way wind up being "painless".  On the one hand, it gave rise to a series of scandalous abuses, where the principle abuse – the creeping abuse – was the idea that liturgy could be something to be continuously reinvented, to "do" rather than be welcomed and the celebration of a gift and the action of God in man’s midst: "As often as the commemoration of this sacrifice is celebrated, the work of our redemption is carried on" (Prayer over the gifts of the 2nd Sunday of Ordinary time).

On the other hand, it aroused a reaction, sometimes violent and sometimes hidden, but nevertheless real and annoying, so as to generate a climate of unease that wound up rendering problematic its undeniable positive effects where it was applied and lived in obedience to the norms and, above all, in conformity with liturgical theology that the Conciliar Constitution Sacrosanctum Concilium so profoundly delineated.

This critical reaction had gotten to the point, in some cases, even to call into question the orthodoxy of the reform.  Something absurd and theologically very weak, above all if examined from the point of view of a correct ecclesiology, but that was made very credible by so many liturgical abuses that ended up grieving and trying the patience of the faithful.

This is the indispensable context of in which the document must be read.

Above all, then, it must be taken into consideration that the old rite was not ever abrogated.  Though it’s true that, at a certain point, given the unexpected reaction to the reform, the President of the Pontifical Council for the Implementation of the Reform, Mons. Annibale Bugnini (1912-1982) did the utmost to obtain that, but without success. It was quickly clear that this involved a very problematic action.

Canonists had hypothesized the possibility of obrogation, that is the de facto elimination due to the total reordering of the matter: still, this would have concerned something completely unheard of, namely, the abolition through a juridical act of an orthodox and immemorial rite.

Here one must from obligation refer to canon 21 of the Code of Canon Law: "In doubt, the revocation of a previous law is not presumed; rather, later laws are to be related to earlier ones and, as far as possible, harmonized with them."

The Motu Proprio therefore did nothing other than sanction this de facto situation: "this Missal was never juridically abrogated and, consequently, in principle, was always permitted" (Benedict XVI, Accompanying Letter).

The Church, in the face of the old rite, came to recognize, as in other analogous cases (for example, the ordination of women to the ministerial priesthood), it wasn’t certain that it had the faculty to proceed.  [Cantoni seems to be working from the point of view that the continuing use of the older form of liturgy goes beyond mere discipline even to doctrinal significance.  And so, he doesn’t seem to want to consider the question that I raise from time to time here, namely, that the MP provides a juridical but not a theological solution to the issue of whether the two different books really do in fact contain two different rites which we must now consider, juridically, as two uses of one rite only.] This does not indicate in any way an undue limitation on the power of the Church, but only the recognition that liturgical custom, orthodox and immemorial, constitutes one of the expressions of its very sacra potestas.

The legitimate existence of a rite, which must always be understood as an extraordinary form of the one Roman rite, establishes a corresponding right for the faithful.

For which, if a priest decides to celebrate it in a form "sine populo" (that is, outside the schedule of parish Masses or publicly) any member of the faithful can attend its celebration, without either the priest or the faithful needing to ask authorization from anyone. (Cf. Summorum Pontificum 2 and 4).

For parish Masses it is necessary that the faithful constitute a stable group and that they make a request to the pastor.  If the faithful attached to the traditional liturgy belong to different parishes, there is also foreseen the possibility, according to the prudent judgment of the Ordinary, of a personal parish (art. 10).

All this, together with other norms that can be read in the document, help us to understand that if a right for the faithful is established, it must be lived not in a climate of "trade union demand" but in the view of the common good of the Church and of the order that intrinsically belongs to it (cf 1 Cor 14,40; 11,16).

It is therefore reductive to read the document only in the perspective of reconciliation with the SSPX.  If it is true that ecumenical charity is not credible if it is not manifested first and foremost with one’s closest neighbor, nevertheless one mustn’t misunderstand that the points of friction with these brethren can’t be reduced to a liturgical problem, but they involved other, more delicate points: religious liberty, interreligious dialogue, ecumenism.  All in all, the Church herself and her Magisterium, with the connecting theme of Tradition and development of doctrine.  [Exactly.  This has also been my great concern all along.  The question of V2 on religious liberty is a far greater harder point to resolve than that of liturgical discipline.]

"We all know that, in the movement led by Archbishop Lefebvre, fidelity to the old Missal became an external mark of identity; the reasons for the break which arose over this, however, were at a deeper level" (Benedict XVI, Accompanying Letter).

The faithful directly interested in the Motu Proprio, therefore, cannot be reduced in their overwhelming majority to that movement and we are in no way dealing with old people bound to their past, but very often young people captivated by the hieratic and sacral tone of the old liturgy.

A document in view of continuity and of reconciliation

It seems entirely clear to me there is in the document a visible repudiation, I would say even "vexillar", of the hermeneutic of rupture.  ["vessilare" – "pertaining to an ancient Roman legion’s standard, banner.  What he is getting at is the image of a rallying point, a reference for a line of battle or a march.  I talk about how Pope Benedict sees liturgy as the "tip of the spear" in his wider vision for the Church.  Cantoni is using the image of the Roman standard, which even a poorly educated Italian would grasp instantly for what it is.]

The remote "in principio" is found in the Discourse to the Roman Curia given by Benedict XVI on 22 December 2005, in which the Pope identified the principle cause of the present crisis in the Church in the wayward interpretation of the Second Vatican Council: "two contrary hermeneutics came face to face and quarreled with each other".  Two, and not three… With that Discourse we have finally exited from the trinary model of conservative-progressive-moderate which itself reflected de facto an ideological reading of the life of the Church.  The binary model of Benedict XVI is, as it should be, purely theological.  [This is really good, very helpful.  Kudos!  I am reminded of how John Henry Newman eventually came to reject the media via and grasped onto what can only be called a hermeneutic of continuity.]

The Motu Proprio in this context has a meaning that goes far beyond an act of ecumenical charity toward a minority, even if certainly it is also that.  It is far broader: it means, in an exemplary way, with that exemplariness that by its nature pertains to liturgy, the repudiation of the hermenutic of rupture.

This fact furnishes to all those who want to go along with the Magisterium in its work of "reform" a precious interpretive criterion: the Motu Proprio must be interpreted – and then applied and lived, in an optic of continuity and not of rupture.  It is not an "act of vindication" but of going deeper.

All that puts into conflict the two forms of that which the Pope defines as the one unique Roman rite is just grist for the mill of the hermeneutic of rupture and it does not correspond to the profound intentio of the magisterial act.  [I think he would mean ethe suggestion that Summorum Pontificum provides mainly a juridical resolution to the thorny problem without really seeking to whether or not on a more theological level the two books really are part of the same rite.] Certainly it is legitimate – of its nature – to make a comparison. I can express an opinion about the fact that, for example, the Syro-Occidental liturgy better expresses the idea of adoration in respect to the Coptic-Alexandrian.  Or vice versa.  In that case, however, considerations of that sort, even if they are legitimate, turn out to be inopportune.  [You see?  This is what he is addressing!  Maybe that question can be asked, but at least right now, it is not helpful to do so.]  Certainly they don’t have and can’t have any value that goes beyond that of a purely legitimate theological opinion.  Just as the Imitatio Christi warmly warns against making a comparision between saints, I believe that it is not the time or moment to launch into debates about which is the better liturgy.  [A slightly different question, but the one which is usually brought up by most people who have anything to say about the issue.] This takes nothing away from the fact that – to stick to the example – someone can have his preferred devotions.  Nor that a coexistence of ritual