Italian liturgist Manlio Sodi fears Summorum Pontificum

Manilio Sodi, SDB, is virulently opposed to Pope Benedict.

The Italian blog Messa in latino reports that Sodi has been on Italian radio a couple times recently running down Pope Benedict’s Motu Proprio Summorum Pontificum.

The good news is that its August and virtually no one heard him talk.  It hardly makes much of a difference what he said.

Sodi – editor of an influential liberal liturgical journal – is over the top in his comments.  He demonstrates how uninterested in he is being as thoughtful or objective about an important liturgical issue as a scholar ought. 

In tortured Italian, Sodi remarked in the radio:

The Pope’s Motu Proprio published three years ago was intended to enable some groups of people who were attached to the previous rite to celebrate with the necessary peace and serenity according the the Missale published in 1962.  What was underscored in the ambit of the Motu Proprio was the fact of rapprochement with stable communities, that is communities which remained faithful and always attached to this form of celebration.

There is another radio spot as well, rather more condescending but pretty much more of the same.

This is Sodi’s line and the line most liberals adhere to: Summorum Pontificum, just like Ecclesia Dei adflicta before it, was intended strictly for those who cannot make the transition to a more enlightened liturgy.  The Motu Proprio does not intend to expanded the use of the older form or expose to the traditional forms anyone except those who are either old, and therefore nostalgic, or who are already trapped in rigid groups of regressivists.

Sodi is afraid of the growth in numbers of younger people who are interested in traditional liturgical worship.  His worst nightmare.

I am sure you readers can post in the combox below the evidence to the contrary.  It might be a good exercise to review this, in light of the upcoming 3rd anniversary of Summorum Pontificum.

The bottom line is that Sodi doesn’t like the Pope and what he is doing.  He fears the effects of Summorum Pontificum.  He perceives the Pope’s Motu Proprio to be an attack on his life’s work.

What Sodi is doing is a perfect example of what the Brit’s call "special pleading".

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38 Comments

  1. fmhmatrix says:

    I no longer fit in to the category of “younger people” (eheu!), but Summorum Pontificum created opportunities here in England that have had a radical effect on the way I say Mass (whichever form of the Roman Rite I am using). Indeed, I would go so far as saying that it has deepened my understanding of priesthood. God bless our Pope.

  2. dahveed says:

    As a 47 year-old, I’m hardly younger people. I do know that I finally had the opportunity to attend my first TLM since age 6, about a month ago. Word cannot properly convey the depth of feeling. It is likewise difficult to find the words to fit for Manilio Sodi. When it seems that one’s behavior is openly contemptuous toward the Holy Father, that is inappropriate. If he feels that way, then he has my pity, for his misgivings. Not for his spouting off. If his concern is truly for his perceived legacy, I completely, utterly fall on the side of our Holy Father. And honestly, without meaning any offense to anyone, I love the Tridentine Latin Mass. And I will be at one whenever I can, always.

  3. Jack Hughes says:

    Sodi be afraid be very afraid, young people such as myself are rising and loving the TLM.

  4. Vince K says:

    I’m 23 and I love the TLM! The depth of the prayers, the focus on God, not man, and the necessary solemnity all bring me closer to God and help me to appreciate the supreme gift of the Eucharist all the more. And I am not alone in this regard, as there are many young people in Louisville that feel the same way about the Old Mass and would love to attend it if there were more options other than a 12:30 (often Low Mass) at only one parish in downtown Louisville. But we are working on it, as we are in the process of forming an Una Voce group to present our needs to the Archbishop. Please pray for our success!

  5. EXCHIEF says:

    Sodi, some sound advice. Do not stand on the railroad tracks. The freight train is coming, and very fast!

  6. C.Lasch says:

    I’m 30. Went to first-ever TLM a few weeks after Summorum Pontificum, and now it’s pretty much all I go to.

  7. janek3615 says:

    “Sodi is afraid of the growth in numbers of younger people who are interested in traditional liturgical worship.”

    He would be well to worry as I see more and more young individuals and families at Saint John Cantius every Sunday for their quite traditional masses done with beauty and reverence. My own children experienced a normal 1980s/1990s Catholic education (sic), but once having gone to traditional masses, they find the usual suburban Sunday mass with all of its horrid music cavalier approaches difficult to take.

    Sodi has seen the future and it causes him to have panic attacks.

  8. wchoag says:

    Fr. Z wrote: “The bottom line is that Sodi doesn’t like the Pope and what he is doing. He fears the effects of Summorum Pontificum. He perceives the Pope’s Motu Proprio to be an attack on his life’s work.”

    Ha! The motu proprio is an attack on the life’s work of Sodi because that work has been noxious and corrupt.

    I don’t think Sodi will be very comfortable in the Roman rite that will exist about 10-15 years from now! Perhaps Canterbury (what will be left of it) will have some place for him.

  9. Ceile De says:

    I have noticed many priests fear the EF. I have also noticed quite a few priests belittle transubstantiation, redefining the Real Presence as the gathered community. No wonder they set their sights on the Tabernacle, altar rails, genuflection, and kneeling for Communion on the tongue – they don’t believe in it. Summorum Pontificum (SP) brought my wife into the Church – she was baptised this year and we had our marriage convalidated in the usus antiquior. SP also brought me back to the Church – the lack of ambiguous wording and options makes it hard for priests celebrating it to be slippery on transubstantiation. Thanks heavens for HH BXVI!

  10. Jon says:

    Some good news for our friend Sodi.

    In preparation for that third anniversary, apparently the request went out to dioceses early this spring to prepare a dossier on the results/implementation of SP.

    I’m blessed to live in a diocese with two FSSP apostolates, two regular Sunday diocesan TLM’s, one regular weekday TLM, and an assortment of sporadic celebrations. The priest who is the diocesan Director of Divine Worship has, I’m told, already completed his report, and sent it to Rome.

    It is, I understand, very favorable indeed.

  11. doanli says:

    As I wrote somewhere not too long ago, I feel that I was robbed of my Catholic heritage by reformers such as this man.

    At every TLM I have attended, I have gotten lost at some point, but it’s like I didn’t need the book to follow along…it elevates my soul and has brought me to tears. I feel like I’ve gotten a taste of Heaven.

  12. momravet says:

    Vince K. said it all. I’m almost 59 and like everything else old that is new again, now have a greater appreciation for the EF than before Vatican II. Of course, being a kid then you didn’t realize that things could change so drastically as happened after Vatican II, so you didn’t appreciate what you had. The EF is all about God and not about man.

  13. YadaYada says:

    EXCHIEF: A train of bricks.

  14. wmeyer says:

    I am 61, and a catechumen, but I was raised with the Latin Mass. I can deal with the Novus Ordo, though I am tired beyond expression of variations and abuses. However, I crave the Latin Mass, for the solemnity of its celebration, in contrast to the (sometimes) block party feel of the NO at my parish.

    My uncle recently told me that in his parish the newly assigned priest there has dispensed with the ablutions prior to consecrating the Host. “My hands are always clean for Mass”, he said. How sad that a man with a substantially deeper education in the faith than my own can so totally fail to understand the liturgy.

  15. Henry says:

    I recently spoke with a seminarian at a mainstream seminary, who knows diocesan seminarians attending several other seminaries as well. He thinks about half of today’s seminarians plan to celebrate the TLM when ordained, and that many or most of the others aren’t particularly against it, just not at the front of the burner for them right now. This–the handwriting already on the wall–is what ought to worry Sodi most.

  16. Fabrizio says:

    Poor Sodi can’t get over it. Maybe I’ll be so mean as to send him some pics of my boy’s First Communion at SS. Trinità dei Pellegrini, and God willing next year we’ll have Confirmations of boys and girls. Btw Sodi’s Italian is REALLY tortured. But then again language articulates thought…

  17. TJerome says:

    I guess Sodi should have peddled a better “product” since it’s clear the “competition” is giving him fits.

  18. chironomo says:

    I recently spoke with a seminarian at a mainstream seminary, who knows diocesan seminarians attending several other seminaries as well. He thinks about half of today’s seminarians plan to celebrate the TLM when ordained, and that many or most of the others aren’t particularly against it, just not at the front of the burner for them right now. This—the handwriting already on the wall—is what ought to worry Sodi most.

    Henry;

    This has been my experience with our seminarians as well. They are not “anti novus ordo”, but they have gotten past the “anti Latin-Mass” attitude of their predecessors. They are looking forward to practicing both Rites once ordained. Although this may not be possible while the Bishops and Pastors are from the former attitude, give it ten years or so. It will be a very different Church. You’re right…. that’s what Sodi fears most.

  19. Every time I’ve gone to an EF Mass (except the ones at conventions), there’s been a higher per capita number of young families with babies and children than at the average parish Mass. (The Mass that’s best for those attending Religious Education doesn’t count as the average Mass, because all the kids in the parish of the proper age are constrained to attend. It’s possible that, since many EF Masses are the only Mass also, this also tends to constrain parents with kids to attend a particular one.) At any rate, there’s no shortage of young people who have attached themselves to the EF; indeed, they seem to outnumber the old and the middle-aged.

    I’m not EF-attached myself (I’m glad we have it, but that doesn’t mean I feel driven to go to it), so this is a disinterested comment.

  20. He’s got great reason to fear, me being 24, and in a religious order, we’re TLM friendly and desiring to offer the Holy Mass with the utmost reverence and dedication to the rubrics, be very afraid.

  21. JosephMary says:

    “Special Pleading”? Another name for disobedience.

    We have lost our local TLM. Nearest one is 75 miles away. Some priests are indicating interest but the bishop is not a fan.

  22. Rob Cartusciello says:

    Our Nuptial Mass last year was probably a greater threat to Fr. Sodi: Ordinary Form, ad orientam, with the Canon in Latin.

    Such cross-fertilization of the two forms would likely have made his left arm go numb.

  23. irishgirl says:

    I’ll be 56 later this week, and I LOVE the EF Mass! It’s the only one I go to now-and I grew up with it!

    A train of bricks is coming, Sodi-so leave, follow, or get out of the way!

  24. I’ll be 40 in three weeks, and I attended my first TLM in March. I’ve been to quite a few since (up to 3 times a week), though I have to travel 50 miles to get to it. I’d go every day if I could.

  25. Magpie says:

    I am a 28 year old Irishman and I like the Extraordinary Form of the Mass. I quite like the New Mass in Latin as well, ad orientem, but that is very rare indeed. I wish Irish bishops and priests were totally behind the Pope. There is evidence of that being the case among a relative few. Come back to me in 20 years…

  26. GirlCanChant says:

    I’m 26, and I went to Novus Ordo Latin Mass my entire senior year of college. I went to my first TLM in December last year, and started attending regularly in mid-February. It would take an emergency of some sort to get me into a Novus Ordo Mass on a Sunday.

  27. ssoldie says:

    I am 74 and have been waiting for the Church to finally tell the Catholic world the truth that the immorial Mass” has never been abrogated, and could/should have been prayed all these years,”what was sacred then is sacred now”, does that mean that what was “fabricated then is fabricated now”? This is according to then Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger,now our Holy Father Pope Benedict XVI. St. John Eudes;
    The most evident mark of God’s anger, and the most terrible castigation He can inflict upon the world, is manifest when He permits His people to fall into the hands of a clergy who are more in name then in deed pries’s who practice the cruelty of ravening wolves rather then charity and affection of devoted shepherds. They abandon the things of God to devote themselves to the things of the world and, in their santly calling of holiness,they spend their time in profane and wordly pursuits. When God permits such things, it is a very positive proff that He is thourly angry with his people, and is visiting His most dreadful wrath upon them. I believe when we embraced ‘modernism’ at Vatican II the pastoral council, we brought on what St. Eudes was telling us. Remember all Bishops, Cardinals, and Pope’s were priest’s first.

  28. Stephen Anthony Gregory says:

    I went to a Missa Cantata Sunday in a North-Central Indiana town. There were several folks age 14-24 some through their 50’s and very few older than 70. The mean age was probably 35-40. Just sayin’.

  29. Rob Cartusciello says:

    Not only are those attending the EF younger, but they are better catechized and more likely to contribute their time to the parish.

  30. JPIIfan says:

    I am 31, and have been going to the TLM often at Holy Trinity Church in Gainesville, VA (Diocese of Arlington), since last spring. It is overflowing with young people and large families, none of whom could be there for nostalgic reasons since they weren’t alive before Vatican II. The numbers seem to get larger each week. At any given weekend Mass at that church (including the TLM), there are typically 12-15 altar boys – no, seriously. Since only boys serve on the altar here, who knows how many priestly vocations are being fostered! Check out the parish at http://www.holytrinityparish.net.

    In any case, “Mi dispiace, Signore Sodi!”

  31. BenFischer says:

    Maybe Sodi can move to Dallas. He’d be as happy as a clam with our implementation of SP, or the lack thereof, and we don’ta speaka so gooda Italiano either.

  32. Mitchell NY says:

    I wish other Bishops and Cardinals who support our Holy Father would be a little more vocal about it and slap down this type of rubbish from Sodi. At 41, never having attended a TLM growing up, I was neutral going into it 3 years ago. Now I would rather watch EWTN than go to my local NO parish, which is a beautiful Gothic Church across the street. Inherently, the NO will always be subject to abuse and that will forever remain its’ fatal flaw. The abuses have come to be what identifies the NO. And that is not the laities fault. It is the “Masters of Ceremony” who have tarnished it. I did not grow up with the distraction of comparing one Mass to the other as many unfortunately have. I have done that later in life. It is sad to go to Church and wonder what you will find each week in the way of abuse. That does not cross my mind when going to the Tridentine Mass. That speaks volumes. It is not nostalgia for many, but a new/old way of living the Catholic Faith. Pray for that clarification letter people, and pray for the Holy Father and his Pontificate.

  33. muckemdanno says:

    Of course, it was against the law of the Church, or rather, the perceived law of the Church, to both “remain faithful” and also remain “attached to the old liturgy” in a stable group, since it was said that the old liturgy was illegal.

    We know now that Archbishop Lefebvre, for whatever he did that was wrong, was correct and right in insisting that the old liturgy was never (per Summorum Pontificum) “juridically abrogated” and was therefore “always permitted” and that therefore, all priests had the right to use the old liturgy.

  34. ssoldie says:

    God bless Archbishop M. Lefebvre, ‘he passed on what he had been taught.’

  35. Aaron says:

    To be fair, what he’s saying is what Summorum Pontificum says, as far as I can tell. From Article 5:

    In parishes, where there is a stable group of faithful who adhere to the earlier liturgical tradition, the pastor should willingly accept their requests to celebrate the Mass according to the rite of the Roman Missal published in 1962…

    And in the introduction, it talks more about what it means by a “stable group of faithful who adhere,” after outlining the introduction of the new form in 1970:

    But in some regions, no small numbers of faithful adhered and continue to adhere with great love and affection to the earlier liturgical forms. These had so deeply marked their culture and their spirit that in 1984 the Supreme Pontiff John Paul II, moved by a concern for the pastoral care of these faithful….

    It sure looks to me like it was written specifically for people who stayed attached to the old form, which would obviously leave out anyone who wasn’t born before 1965 or so.

    Don’t get me wrong, I’m glad the use of the old form has expanded much more than that, and I’m tickled to see all the young (and large) families at our TLM. I’m convinced that the TLM must become the ordinary form of the Mass for the Church to survive as promised. But he appears to be correct as far as the letter of the law. I guess the question is whether Pope Benedict intended it as it’s literally written: just to provide some solace to those old folks who couldn’t stomach the new form. Or did he suspect that young people would flock to it too, and that the limited uses outlined in SP would just be a starting point?

  36. robtbrown says:

    To be fair, what he’s saying is what Summorum Pontificum says, as far as I can tell. From Article 5:

    In parishes, where there is a stable group of faithful who adhere to the earlier liturgical tradition, the pastor should willingly accept their requests to celebrate the Mass according to the rite of the Roman Missal published in 1962…

    And in the introduction, it talks more about what it means by a “stable group of faithful who adhere,” after outlining the introduction of the new form in 1970:

    But in some regions, no small numbers of faithful adhered and continue to adhere with great love and affection to the earlier liturgical forms. These had so deeply marked their culture and their spirit that in 1984 the Supreme Pontiff John Paul II, moved by a concern for the pastoral care of these faithful….

    It sure looks to me like it was written specifically for people who stayed attached to the old form, which would obviously leave out anyone who wasn’t born before 1965 or so.
    Comment by Aaron.

    I don’t read it that way. The second text, which is prior, refers to the reasons why JPII promulgated Quattor Abhinc Annos in 1988.

    The second text is referring to why BXVI is promulgating SP, which goes beyond QAA.

  37. The Cobbler says:

    I know one or two dozen TLM enthusiasts personally. I don’t think any of them are over thirty years of age.

    And I’m not even well connected. Heck, I met most of these people at Steubenville, not exactly a raging storm of Traditionalism. I would be very, very surprised to find out that my experience is a living statistical anomaly; it just isn’t probable that of a terribly small minority so many would be encountered by a single individual, let alone at a place one of them once referred to, whether tongue-in-cheek or not, as “behind enemy lines”.

    Hey, throw in another one: a friend of mine who never went to Steubie (at least not for college) got married in the EF just the other week. Where her husband’s from I don’t even know, though I think they both went to Thomas Aquinas the great books school in California (that is, I know the one of them went there, I suspect the other did too). This couple isn’t even halfway through their twenties.

    Of course, we know that this will generally be dismissed unless the New York Times funds a survey by some scientific group that discovers my hunches are right. Maybe we can offer them a challenge?

  38. amsjj1002 says:

    Dear doanli,

    Amen, amen. You speak exactly how I feel — I was robbed of the Mass so many of my saints knew. Sometimes it makes me sad and angry, but I just keep praying, praying, praying that more priests will offer the EF in our diocese (so far only three). But the future seems to promise hope.

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