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

It is one thing to make a mistake, that’s human.  But to persist in error over a long a period of time,... that is harder to grasp.

I got an e-mail from a reader including a scan of a letter received from H.E. Most Rev. Roger L. Schweitz, Archbishop of Anchorage.

It seems His Excellency is still laboring under the false impression that Summorum Pontificum requires certain things, or that the 1962 Missale Romanum must not be used except when certain criteria are met.  To wit…

1. The 1962 Roman Missal must be celebrated will all of the rubrics in place; These would include a sanctuary that has 3 steps, an altar rail, and an altar that does not face the people and is permanently attached to a wall;

2. The priest must use all of the approximately 400 rubrics required for a licit and valid celebration of the Mass;

3. The priest must be able to use the Latin language in the appropriate fashion;

4. All of the vestments must be those approved for the 1962 Roman Missal;

5. There must be a stable community that desires and will benefit from the celebration of the 1962 Rite.

Incredible, no?

The thing is, His Excellency wrote this before and on 25 February WDTPRS wrote about him writing it.

I am sure that many of you readers can pick this apart and show, perhaps better I, how simply wrong are the impressions of the person who wrote this for the Archbishop.

However, we can have a couple brief comments.

1) Of course the rubrics must be observed!  That applies to the 2002 Missale Romanum also!  I wonder how stringently that is being observed?   But neither 3 steps nor an altar fixed to the wall are obligatory for the celebration of the older Mass. 

2) 400 rubrics?  Big deal!  The Novus Ordo has rubrics too.  Priests could learn them before.  They can learn them now.  

3) I should hope the priest wouldn’t use Latin in an inappropriate fashion!  Quod Deus avertat!

4) Approved vestments… so?  Again, big deal.  But, who would say that if you don’t follow all the rubrics the Mass is invalid?  If, for example, I forget to say a Gloria on the day of a saint that should have a Gloria, will the Mass be invalid?  If I forget to omit blessing the water during a Requiem, the Mass is invalid?  What if I omit a geneflection or two because I have a broken leg? 

5) The "stable community" issue must not be so strictly interpreted so that nobody can have it.
 

Please visit Order of Preachers for a view of the sacristy before Papal Vespers the other day in Washington, DC.

Here are samples.

 

 

 

 

 

Here is the text of the Holy Father’s address to the United Nations with my emphases and comments.   [The English voice over from the UN was slightly different in a few minor places than what was released by the Holy See.]

Mr President,
Ladies and Gentlemen,

As I begin my address to this Assembly, I would like first of all to express to you, Mr President, my sincere gratitude for your kind words. My thanks go also to the Secretary-General, Mr Ban Ki-moon, for inviting me to visit the headquarters of this Organization and for the welcome that he has extended to me. I greet the Ambassadors and Diplomats from the Member States, and all those present. Through you, I greet the peoples who are represented here. They look to this institution to carry forward the founding inspiration to establish a "centre for harmonizing the actions of nations in the attainment of these common ends" of peace and development (cf. Charter of the United Nations, article 1.2-1.4). As Pope John Paul II expressed it in 1995, the Organization should be "a moral centre where all the nations of the world feel at home and develop a shared awareness of being, as it were, a ‘family of nations’" (Address to the General Assembly of the United Nations on the 50^th Anniversary of its Foundation, New York, 5 October 1995, 14).

Through the United Nations, States have established universal objectives which, even if they do not coincide with the total common good of the human family [Note well this distinction] , undoubtedly represent a fundamental part of that good. [It isn’t perfect, but it is useful.] The founding principles of the Organization – the desire for peace, the quest for justice, respect for the dignity of the person, humanitarian cooperation and assistance – express the just aspirations of the human spirit, and constitute the ideals which should underpin international relations. As my predecessors Paul VI and John Paul II have observed from this very podium, all this is something that the Catholic Church and the Holy See follow attentively and with interest, seeing in your activity an example of how issues and conflicts concerning the world community can be subject to common regulation. [subject to common regulation] The United Nations embodies the aspiration for a "greater degree of international ordering" (John Paul II, Sollicitudo Rei Socialis, 43), inspired and governed by the principle of subsidiarity, [I think this mightbe one of the key issues – to what level should issues be handled at the level of the UN: in other words butt out, UN, when you don’t need to get involved.] and therefore capable of responding to the demands of the human family through binding international rules and through structures capable of harmonizing the day-to-day unfolding of the lives of peoples. This is all the more necessary at a time when we experience the obvious paradox of a multilateral consensus that continues to be in crisis because it is still subordinated to the decisions of a few, whereas the world’s problems call for interventions in the form of collective action by the international community.

Indeed, questions of security, development goals, reduction of local and global inequalities, protection of the environment, of resources and of the climate, require all international leaders to act jointly and to show a readiness to work in good faith, respecting the law, [which means there has to be a body of international law – the Holy Father is really talking about a certain measure of formalized globalization, it seems.] and promoting solidarity with the weakest regions of the planet. I am thinking especially of those countries in Africa and other parts of the world which remain on the margins of authentic integral development, and are therefore at risk of experiencing only the negative effects of globalization. [Here is a negative result of globalization.] In the context of international relations, it is necessary to recognize the higher role played by rules and structures that are intrinsically ordered [natural law, at least] to promote the common good, and therefore to safeguard human freedom.  [Read this comment against the backdrop of what the E.U. did, in rejecting, explicitly, any mention of GOD in their constitution.] These regulations do not limit freedom. On the contrary, they promote it when they prohibit behaviour and actions