At LifeSite Bp. Scheider has commented. Bp..Scheider (and I) were at the Augustinianum in Rome, the Patristic Institute. He knows something about the ancient Church (and so do I).
Bishop Schneider: ‘Nothing more dangerous for religion’ than liturgical ‘interference’
The Church’s ‘apostolic rule’ is that ‘antiquity was retained, novelty was rejected,’ according to Bishop Schneider.
A couple of excerpts:
[…]
“True piety admits no other rule than that only those things which have been (faithfully) received from our fathers, those same are to be (faithfully) consigned to our children,” said Schneider.
“It is our duty not to lead religion wherever we would, but rather to follow religion where it leads, and that it is the path of Christian modesty not to hand down our own beliefs or observances,” he continued. We must “preserve and keep what we have received from those who went before us.”
Apparently commenting on the current “liturgy wars,” Schneider affirmed that “public worship is inherently traditional,” stressing that this involves praying the liturgy as it exists “according to the norms already established by divine authority and handed over by the ancestors.”
[…]
In a further commentary on the ongoing suppression of the TLM, enabled by Pope Francis’ Traditionis Custodes and continued now with the sanction of Pope Leo XIV, Schneider said “history has proved a thousand times that there is nothing more dangerous for a religion, nothing more likely to result in discontent, uncertainty, division and apostasy than interference with the liturgy and consequently with religious sensibility.”
“Preserving the precious treasure of the traditional liturgy is part of preserving the depositum fidei,” he continued, adding that the Church has for centuries ensured that “antiquity was retained, novelty was rejected – this is the apostolic rule.”
[…]
A couple of comments.
First, liturgy is doctrine. Also, we are our rites.
If you suppress the traditional rites of the Church in favor of those which did not grow organically from the Church’s lived experience in harmony with what was handed down, then you also persecute the people who desire the traditional rites because you strike at the core of their identity, rooted in the relationship of the depositum fidei and the sacred liturgical rites.
When Bp. Schneider says that there is “nothing more dangerous for a religion, nothing more likely to result in discontent, uncertainty, division and apostasy than interference with the liturgy and consequently with religious sensibility”, he is not exaggerating. Our sacred liturgical worship, at the summit of which is the celebration of the Eucharist, is the principle means through which we fulfill our obligation toward the virtue of Religion, giving God what is owed to God. If we do not, cannot, properly fulfill that obligation, then everything else is going to be enervated and eroded.
How many of these comments by Bishop Schneider, Cardinal Sarah, Cardinal Burke, and others, does the Pope read of or hear of? Are we all just flapping our gums. It is almost an issue of “what’s the use”? Obviously, to me anyway, there are major issues that need some type of action but there is nothing but crickets…all it would take is something from the Pope like “I hear you and we are working on a resolution” but nothing. Are we being heard is the question I guess I am asking?
Sed ego illud breviter te admonendum puto, traditiones Ecclesiasticas ita observandas, ut a majoribus traditae sunt; nec aliorum consuetudinem, aliorum contrario more subverti.
Sanctus Hieronymus: Epistola 71 Ad Lucinium
@TraditionalOFS:
I have many of the same questions. I grew up in the 60s and 70s, and then it was my parents asking these questions – sometimes to the pastor, sometimes to the bishop. Mostly, it’s been…crickets. For the past 40 years, I have been asking these questions, sometimes to my bishop, and once even a letter to the Vatican, but I have read hundreds of comments by orthodox, solid bishops, to which the answers have usually been…crickets. The sole exception I can recall clearly was when the 4 Dubia Cardinals asked Francis for a clarification, where at first there was no response, and eventually the Vatican (through side channels) let it be known that the pope was unhappy with the questions, and no answer would be given. Yes, THEY were heard, but the problem they raised was not answered. That’s itself a kind of response: we reject your position.
More generally, those who love tradition, and even those who simply want (even a NO) mass said according to the rubrics, reverently and nobly, and clarity of doctrine, have NOT had any positive, direct answer. It is impossible that the bishops have not heard the pleas. The natural conclusion would appear to be that the bishops (in the main) don’t want what we want, and (a) most of the time don’t care to say that explicitly (perhaps because they don’t want to alienate all their people and lose the money); (b) probably one of the reasons that sinodality was pushed forward is that it disguises the rejection of past teaching and allows its replacement with new teachings under the guise of “what the people want” when the mechanisms are all in the hands of the organizers and they can pull any result they want out of the magic hat, and (c) on occasion they let slip mention of their true ends, but typically in a deniable form “oh, that’s just one person talking, he doesn’t speak for ‘the pope’ or ‘the Church’ ”
I don’t assume that the pope is the same as these bishops. However, I don’t see how to insulate him from either a charge of being incompetent, or being like them and wanting bishops that have just those characteristics. Maybe there is a way to do it, I just don’t see how. But God is in charge and won’t let us down.
Bishop Schneider hits the nail on the head. But is anyone listening to him? It’s less about liturgy than it is about doctrine, touching on the heart of the faith.
BTW, isn’t it “principal” rather than “principle”, in “Our sacred liturgical worship . . . is the principle means . . . . ” Just sayin’.
Father Malachi Martin told a large group of us that the Vatican loves when Catholics complain about our Church leaders. priest, Bishops, Archbishops.
They really love when it is presented in a nice expensive folder.
They hold it up, comment on the presentation and do nothing.