Cardinal Says Pope is Launching Liturgical Reform Movement
Surprising news, or at least surprisingly blunt news, from CNS:
Pope's 'reform of the reform' in liturgy to continue, cardinal says
Catholic News Service
By John Thavis
VATICAN CITY (CNS) -- Pope Benedict XVI's easing of restrictions on use of the 1962 Roman Missal, known as the Tridentine rite, is just the first step in a "reform of the reform" in liturgy, the Vatican's top ecumenist said.
The pope's long-term aim is not simply to allow the old and new rites to coexist, but to move toward a "common rite" that is shaped by the mutual enrichment of the two Mass forms, Cardinal Kurt Koch, president of the Pontifical Council for Promoting Christian Unity, said May 14.
In effect, the pope is launching a new liturgical reform movement, the cardinal said. Those who resist it, including "rigid" progressives, mistakenly view the Second Vatican Council as a rupture with the church's liturgical tradition, he said.
Cardinal Koch made the remarks at a Rome conference on "Summorum Pontificum," Pope Benedict's 2007 apostolic letter that offered wider latitude for use of the Tridentine rite. The cardinal's text was published the same day by L'Osservatore Romano, the Vatican newspaper.
Cardinal Koch said Pope Benedict thinks the post-Vatican II liturgical changes have brought "many positive fruits" but also problems, including a focus on purely practical matters and a neglect of the paschal mystery in the Eucharistic celebration. The cardinal said it was legitimate to ask whether liturgical innovators had intentionally gone beyond the council's stated intentions.
He said this explains why Pope Benedict has introduced a new reform movement, beginning with "Summorum Pontificum." The aim, he said, is to revisit Vatican II's teachings in liturgy and strengthen certain elements, including the Christological and sacrificial dimensions of the Mass.
Cardinal Koch said "Summorum Pontificum" is "only the beginning of this new liturgical movement."
"In fact, Pope Benedict knows well that, in the long term, we cannot stop at a coexistence between the ordinary form and the extraordinary form of the Roman rite, but that in the future the church naturally will once again need a common rite," he said.
"However, because a new liturgical reform cannot be decided theoretically, but requires a process of growth and purification, the pope for the moment is underlining above all that the two forms of the Roman rite can and should enrich each other," he said.
Cardinal Koch said those who oppose this new reform movement and see it as a step back from Vatican II lack a proper understanding of the post-Vatican II liturgical changes. As the pope has emphasized, Vatican II was not a break or rupture with tradition but part of an organic process of growth, he said.
On the final day of the conference, participants attended a Mass celebrated according to the Tridentine rite at the Altar of the Chair in St. Peter's Basilica. Cardinal Walter Brandmuller presided over the liturgy. It was the first time in several decades that the old rite was celebrated at the altar. --CNS
MY COMMENT: NOW I ASK YOU, AM I A PROPHET OR WHAT?
3 comments:
If this is indeed the Pope's goal, to meld the two Rites together, then I pray with all my heart that his efforts fail.
When you try to mix something manifestly superior with something manifestly inferior you end up with a tasteless, flavorless concoction. I really hope this is yet another of Cardinal Koch's preemptive fantasies but if it isn't then we are heading for even more troubled times. This constant need to tamper with something holy, something that served God and His Church well for nearly 2,000 years, is beginning to look downright sinister. The New Mass of 1969/70 was an unmitigated disaster for the Church, and the New New Mass of 2011 doesn't seem a whole lot better. But tamper they must. Fiddle they must. This weird desire to imprint their views and the confusing doctrinal ideas of their time on the liturgy is almost obscene.
Wouldn't you think that surveying the carnage that has been inflicted on the Faith since their last attempt at "updating" the Mass would give them pause? Do the empty seminaries and convents, the homosexual infestation, the stupid and ugly architecture of modern churches, the abysmal musical concoctions of the past several generations even register on the brains of those in the Vatican? Have they taken leave of their senses?
May their New Mass, their New New Mass and this possible New New New Mass all be relegated to the trash can of history, where they so obviously belong.
Dom Gueranger must be turning over in his grave.
Dan, I tend to agree. I guess we will all wait with bated breath to see what the new cut-and-paste looks like. *sigh* I have a sudden urge to go and re-read the Tower of Babel story...
The new Missal might look like this:
http://reformedromanmissal.blogspot.com/
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