EXHORTATION!!

From the Sala Stampa:

The Post-Synodal Exhortation is being released on 13 March.  Be sure that I will be at the Press Conference.

AVVISO DI CONFERENZA STAMPA

Si informano i giornalisti accreditati che martedì 13 marzo 2007, alle ore 11.30, nell’Aula Giovanni Paolo II della Sala Stampa della Santa Sede, avrà luogo la Conferenza Stampa di presentazione dell’Esortazione Apostolica Postsinodale del Santo Padre Benedetto XVI "Sacramentum Caritatis" sull’Eucaristia fonte e culmine della vita e della missione della Chiesa.

Interverranno:

 Em.mo Card. Angelo Scola, Patriarca di Venezia, Relatore Generale all’XI Assemblea Generale Ordinaria del Sinodo dei Vescovi;

 S.E. Mons. Nikola Eterović, Segretario Generale del Sinodo dei Vescovi.

(Il Documento è da considerarsi sotto embargo fino alle ore 12.00 di martedì 13 marzo 2007.

About Fr. John Zuhlsdorf

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38 Comments

  1. whosebob says:

    That’s great news, Father! Thanks for keeping us so well informed.

    So now it’s time for rumors to begin flying around as to whether the MP on the classical rite will be included as part of the release of the PSE …

  2. GCC Catholic says:

    I’m going to take a guess that the MP won’t be a part of this; however, this would put it about on pace to be released sometime like Holy Thursday, which as described in a previous post, would be fitting. It gives us about a month to digest the PSE; if the MP came now, it would probably eclipse the PSE, if for no other reason other than “Church throws out reforms” makes a good headline to sell news.

    Thanks Father for the info.

  3. Ultra traditionalist says:

    Can you help me understand why this is such a big deal?
    One more document from Rome?

  4. Alex says:

    Could you please ask – as you are a journalist in e-news too – at the Press Conference when the Motu-Proprio granting the universal indult for the Tridentine Rite is published
    and scheduled? They will have to answer you, I guess.

    If they answer: we do not know, then things are clear. Then it will not come anymore.

  5. Leguleius Magnus says:

    I agree that it is highly unlikely that the Holy Father will release the motu proprio at the same time as the exhortation. The motu proprio is all the press would talk about.

  6. whosebob says:

    From CatholicCulture.org: Before the reform of the General Roman Calendar today was the feast of St. Benedict [of Nursia] which is now celebrated on July 11.

    That makes a whole lot of sense!!!

  7. whosebob says:

    Whoops, substitute “March 13” for “today” when you read my previous comment and the point I’m making will be clearer.

  8. Dan Hunter says:

    Do Apostolic Exhortations,by their nature,hold the position of establishing a law?
    In other words,does anyone know if this statement will have teeth to it and demand compliance to its precepts?
    God bless you.

  9. John Polhamus says:

    Bravo Padre, both for keeping your ear to the ground, and for duly reporting that snipped of real life reported in the last post. The ’60’s are truly dying, and the day that decade and its cultural influence dies utterly, the better for Catholicism and for the world. Let us hope this apostolic exhortation is one more nail in that coffin!

    A little story about the Oratory and table altars. The Oratory of St. Philip Neri in London experimented with a table altar for about a month in the early ’70’s. It disappeared very quickly. I like to think that it wound up increasing the supply of matchwood on the English market.

  10. Ultra: Can you help me understand why this is such a big deal? One more document from Rome?

    Foolish. This will be a document from the Vicar of Christ. That is enough to make it important.

  11. Alex: If they answer: we do not know, then things are clear. Then it will not come anymore.

    That is from your vantage as an expert in these things, I suppose. The fact is that the Pope decides when documents are to be released. When he wants to release the M.P., he will. And since the M.P. won’t be the topic of the Press Conference, no one will be obliged to answer anything about it, nor will they necessarily be in a position to know.

  12. Dan: Do Apostolic Exhortations,by their nature,hold the position of establishing a law?
    In other words,does anyone know if this statement will have teeth to it and demand compliance to its precepts?

    Those are really different questions. First, the Pope can use any type of document to teach or legislate. Second, it can’t be the Pope’s job to “enforce” things everywhere. For this sort of discipline he must depend on the local bishops. I suppose we can wonder about how the Pope disciplines bishops, but that goes WAY BEYOND anything I will allow to be discussed here below. That is a matter for a different topic.

  13. Dan Hunter says:

    Father Zuhlsdorf,
    Thank you.Good Lord willing all the bishops will obey the Holy Father’s exhortation.
    Father,as pertaining to your comment on how the Pontiff keeps the bishops in check:In previous decades,did not the Holy Father discipline wayward bishops in a more immediate and direct fashion.
    For instance I heard of a teacher at Fordham University,espousing heterodoxy in his classroom.Pope Pius XII got wind of this and ordered His Excellency Cardinal Cooke to remove that professor.He was gone within a week.
    God bless you

  14. Dan Hunter says:

    I am sorry it was His Eminence Cardinal Spellman who was the Bishop of the Ny archdiocese.
    Sorry Cardinal Spellman.

  15. Christine says:

    If Pius XII ordered Cardinal Cooke to remove someone from Fordam, it would advance both their causes.

  16. David says:

    The ‘60’s are truly dying, and the day that decade and its cultural influence dies utterly, the better for Catholicism and for the world.

    Whilst I agree that liturgy and ethical teaching took a nose-dive that decade surely you can’t dimiss “Strawberry Fields Forever” as deserving extinction! :-(

  17. Jon says:

    Father,

    Without freeing the cat from the bag, if, in fact, the cat’s in there, have you heard any RELIABLE details as to what the AE contains? And will those contents make us do the hoped for back-flips from our chairs?

    A simple “yes” and “yes” would work for me!

  18. Sean says:

    I would not like to see the 60s dismissed. In my limited experience it was only in the 90s that things started to go wrong. I have fond memories of the new mass in the 70s with ad populum/vernacular/wide rubrics/etc but somehow informed by the old mass in terms of vestments/altar/reverence. I hope the exhortation and motu proprio will create the conditions in which this ground can somehow be recovered.

  19. Sean says:

    …I guess I am indicating a timelag between the introduction of all the nonsense in the 60s and its wide diffusion in the 90s. So it looks like 2037 before normality is restored!

  20. TJM says:

    Sean, I’m afraid I disagree with your observations.
    To trade the “Te Deum” or “Ave Verum” for such drivel as “They’ll
    We are Christians By Our Love” was hardly an advancement
    Only in the 1990s have we begun to see roots of a long
    overdue corrective to the looney 1960s. I was there, it
    was awful. If is was so great why did Mass attendence
    begun to plunge following the “reforms.” And I’m not
    buying the lefty nonsense from Father Greeley that it
    was all about Humanae Vitae because by 1968 the folks were
    already voting with their feet. Tom

  21. John Polhamus says:

    Sean, maybe you’re kidding me about the ’60’s and ’70’s and the lag before things “started to go wrong.” I don’t know where you live, but where I live in San Diego, California, the liturgical abandonment was both complete and immediate. Maybe you live in a part of the “old world” where some priests tried to adhere to some liturgical form for a time, but that didn’t happen in the United State. My family is bi-coastal AND southern, so I got around alot in the early ’70’s and remember what I saw, and I can tell you that ALOT had already gone wrong just as soon as the zeitgeist influenced clergy of the day could make it go that way. Sorry to authoritatively disagree, but I was there; I saw; I suffered it.

  22. RBrown says:

    Father Zuhlsdorf,
    Thank you.Good Lord willing all the bishops will obey the Holy Father’s exhortation.
    Father,as pertaining to your comment on how the Pontiff keeps the bishops in check:In previous decades,did not the Holy Father discipline wayward bishops in a more immediate and direct fashion.
    For instance I heard of a teacher at Fordham University,espousing heterodoxy in his classroom.Pope Pius XII got wind of this and ordered His Excellency Cardinal Cooke to remove that professor.He was gone within a week.

    Generally, pontifical documents, especially exhortations, don’t contain a list of items to be “obeyed”. For implementation of a policy the pope has his chain of command–through the Sec of State to an Apostolic nunzio and/or a particular Congregation in the Curia. And of course, there are also the ad limina visits.

  23. Sean says:

    TJM and John. My experience of several home, neighbouring and holiday parishes in England and Ireland:

    50s unborn.
    60s vaguely aware of an upheaval.
    70s guitars and cumbya but largely confined to ‘prayer meetings’.
    80s puzzling renovations.
    90s creeping irreverence and banality.

    After the quantitative changes of the 60s (new forms) the natural turnover of priests would seem to have produced a qualitative change (less sacredness).

  24. PMcGrath says:

    Mr. Polhemus brings up an important point: “but where I live… the liturgical abandonment was both complete and immediate. … I can tell you that A LOT had already gone wrong just as soon as the zeitgeist influenced clergy of the day could make it go that way.”

    In other words, the decision-making levers in the church in this country were infected with modernists before the Council. And let’s suppose that the Council and Sacrosanctum Concilium had never happened — Would we be in better shape today? I put it to you that we would have been worse off — they may have still been wearing birettas, but they would have been closet Modernists, and the holding back would have corrupted them.

    Unless Sacramentum Caritatis has some real teeth in it, it’s going to be completely ignored. Look at the track record of Ex Corde Ecclesiae. Have the American bishops enforced the mandatum requirement? No.

    If Sacramentum Caritatis has a “Schedule of Songs Suppressed from Liturgical Use,” and if that Schedule has the Haugen/Haas ouvre in it, then we’re getting somewhere.

  25. Geri says:

    Thank you, WhoseBob, (incidentally, Bob is Whose I myself am…. though a different Bob, of course.)

    That was one of my first questions (http://scelata.blogspot.com/)

    At choir rehearsal, it is our wont to offer intercessory prayers, through our patronal saints, and St Cecilia, St Gregory… you know, the usual suspects. I had introduced St Benedict into the mix — my prayers will be doubly fervent this Thursday!

    Geri

    (Save the Liturgy, Save the World!)

  26. TJM says:

    PMcGrath, the lefty loon professors who still remain at the University of Notre Dame would disagree with you. Although not getting much media coverage, Notre Dame is now (because of Ex Corde Ecclesiae) requiring that a plurality of its faculty be Roman Catholic, Father McBrien is no longer chairMAN of the The Theology Department, and the Vagina Monologues no longer have a home on campus. Bishop John D’Arcy, the diocesan bishop, has been very instrumental in this change. Moreover, at the Basilica, the Ordinary at the Main Mass was in Latin last Sunday for the first time in decades. The Chant was splendid. Moreover, you have young priests and bishops, who were unaffected by the liturgical wars, who are very traditional and anxious to follow Benedict’s lead. Virtually no liberals are entering the Catholic priesthood, because they are now members of the Global Warming religion which has much stricter dogma. Tom

  27. Fr. John P says:

    TJM,
    I wholly agree with your statement. The fact is that many bishops are worried about the fact that all of their seminarians are conservative, in some places if they rejected all of the solid ones they would have no one in formation. This shift is a significant difference. I suggest that we will see change (in the right direction) in the smaller dioceses (in the south for instance) first, since younger priests become pastors more quickly than in larger Archdioceses. Once more and more of the newer generation of priests enter into positions of responsibility and authority I think we will see more changes occur as there is safety in numbers and confidence will be gained.

  28. Tony says:

    I have been a seminarian for four years and would like to say that the new zeitgeist is one of rock solid orthodoxy. The seminarian of today loves the Church and her traditions (yes, even the small t’s). The evil rampant in western society must be fought by men who are not only holy, but who are also willing to call out those who preach a different Gospel. Yes, seminaries are changing, and the seminarians are the ones who are changing them.

  29. Fr. John P says:

    Tony,

    Being ordained in 2002 I wholly agree, the seminarians are changing the seminaries to a far more orthodox footing. Like him or not the influence of Pope John Paul II has caused a sea change among those who grew up under his guidance, he inspired many young Catholics to love the faith whole and entire. This influence coupled with the fact that this generation is not weighed down with the cultural garbage of the self absorbed generation of the late 60’s and 70’s. We are not interested in making the Church into something She has never been.

  30. Melody says:

    Father John P-
    Amen to that. I grew up in a very liberal parish(the pastor even discourages the rosary)and as a teen I was generally apathetic about religion and dabbling in New Age stuff. Then one day I picked up “Crossing the Theshold of Hope”. I thought at the time that it was unique for an important figure like the Pope would write a book to the people to answer their questions (because of the way I viewed the hierarchy then).
    I’ve thanked God on my knees–with tears in my eyes–for that book. It made me put away apathetic relativism and start seeking God in prayer and through the Church. His later writings taught me about the real presence (I had recieved but had not been properly catechized), about Our Blessed Mother and the rosary, as well as many other things. Iowe dear(not yet called “blessed” but dear to me) John Paul II for so much.

  31. ed says:

    Father have you seen Rocco’s blog today? What’s he talking about?

  32. Leguleius Magnus says:

    ed, I believe that Rocco is referring to a rumor reported in the Daily Telegraph blog, which basically quotes stuff that has already been reported. The reporter for the Daily Telegraph did say, however, that he ran it past some independent sources and that they largely confirm the content.

  33. gravitas says:

    I just saw this. Don’t want to put it all in here but will provide a link. It’s from Bishop Fellay regarding
    the Motu Proprio and it’s a little depressing in ways. But hopefully this skepticism will work in a good way
    and get the MP out a little sooner:

    http://sspx.org/superior_generals_ltrs/supgen_70.htm

  34. Leguleius Magnus says:

    I have heard that the bishops are warning of liturgical chaos if the Old Mass is unleashed. Has anyone seen the closing litugy at the Religious Education Conference in Los Angeles? It’s on You Tube and at Roman Catholic Blog. Absolutely unbelievable.

  35. gravitas says:

    wow, i’m actually depressed after watching that. i don’t say this often or without care or thought, but there
    was nothing catholic about that service he’s performing. Anyone with two eyes can see that it’s not Catholic
    and not valid. this has nothing to do — well, i guess it does in a bigger picture — with NO Mass versus traditional
    Mass. This simply isn’t valid in form, matter or intention.

  36. Dan Hunter says:

    I just vomited.Jesus blood was in Kool-Aid pitchers.
    Isn’t there something that the Holy Father can do about this outrage.
    He only has to place a call to Cardinal Mahony to end this horrendous profanity to the Holy Sacrifice of the mass.
    This is a black and white problem,just like all moral issues.What is needed now is plain black and white discipline,”Stop or you are out.
    God bless you

  37. He only has to place a call to Cardinal Mahony to end this horrendous profanity to the Holy Sacrifice of the mass.

    Think so?

    Actually, if the Holy Father really wanted to place a phone call to Cardinal Mahony, I could suggest an alternative message for him to convey.

  38. The interesting thing is that there are many people who were born more or less in the middle of this whole mess and have no baseline, so to speak.

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