POPE FRANCIS EXHORTATION ON THE LITURGY AND HIS DESIRE FOR THE LATIN RITE TO RETURN EXCLUSIVELY TO UNITY OF THE REFORMED ROMAN MISSAL OF POPES/SAINTS PAUL VI AND JOHN PAUL II

 

MY COMMENTS FIRST: This is not a horrible document and it certainly gives some good pointers towards improving the celebration of the Modern Roman Missal. But not enough words are said about that and how simply following what is prescribed for this Roman Missal and options that can be chosen, while others eliminated or ignored, could enhance this form of the Mass which would lead to the astonishment we all should have for what God has accomplished for us through His Most Beloved Son, Jesus Christ and the Paschal Mystery. 

I do believe that not only priests need to be reoriented on how to celebrate the Mass as an art, not a toy, but so too the assembly/congregation. We must make it possible for them to actively participate both interiorly and exteriorly. 

One of the things that has distressed me about the recovery of the older Missal is that no one has taken seriously the need for the congregation to take the parts of the servers and the schola. Often the laity are quite content to zone out at the older form of the Mass and simply be swept up by what others are doing. 

Many carry no missal for the vernacular translations of the changing parts of the Mass as they don’t care to know what is being prayed on their behalf in Latin by the priest or schola. 

In this, I recognize it is not either/or but both/and. Sometimes we listen, something we join and speak together or sing together. But how many actually try to chant the Kyrie, Gloria, Credo, Sanctus, Pater Noster, Agnus Dei? Sometimes some of the different forms of Gregorian Chant are impossible to join and only a trained schola can do it. What is wrong with simply using versions most people can sing?

Finally, this document makes abundantly clear the the older form of the Mass is to disappear over time. 

For those who will grieve this fact, the only hope is that bishops will allow the Modern Missal to be celebrated with the same dignity and consistency  that the older Missal is celebrated.

These communities need a modern Mass that is consistent and beautiful and reverent. Latin must be allowed. The Proper Chants must be chanted Ad orientem must be encouraged and kneeling for Holy Communion must be the unified method of receiving Holy Communion with standing seen as a pastoral exception. 

Is that too much to ask? It does not seem to me that this exhortation forbids this. 

PRESS HERE FOR THE POPE’S EXHORTATION

Here are important paragraphs of this exhortation:

 

 

23. Let us be clear here: every aspect of the celebration must be carefully tended to (space, time, gestures, words, objects, vestments, song, music…) and every rubric must be observed. Such attention would be enough to prevent robbing from the assembly what is owed to it; namely, the paschal mystery celebrated according to the ritual that the Church sets down. But even if the quality and the proper action of the celebration were guaranteed, that would not be enough to make our participation full. 

31. In this letter I cannot dwell with you on the richness of this passage’s various expressions, which I recommend to your own meditation. If the liturgy is “the summit toward which the activity of the Church is directed, and at the same time the font from which all her power flows,” (Sacrosanctum Concilium, n. 10), well then, we can understand what is at stake in the liturgical question. It would be trivial to read the tensions, unfortunately present around the celebration, as a simple divergence between different tastes concerning a particular ritual form. The problematic is primarily ecclesiological. I do not see how it is possible to say that one recognizes the validity of the Council — though it amazes me that a Catholic might presume not to do so — and at the same time not accept the liturgical reform born out of Sacrosanctum Concilium, a document that expresses the reality of the Liturgy intimately joined to the vision of Church so admirably described in Lumen gentium. For this reason, as I already expressed in my letter to all the bishops, I have felt it my duty to affirm that “The liturgical books promulgated by Saint Paul VI and Saint John Paul II, in conformity with the decrees of Vatican Council II, are the unique expression of the lex orandi of the Roman Rite.” (Motu Proprio Traditionis custodes, art 1) 

The non-acceptance of the liturgical reform, as also a superficial understanding of it, distracts us from the obligation of finding responses to the question that I come back to repeating: how can we grow in our capacity to live in full the liturgical action? How do we continue to let ourselves be amazed at what happens in the celebration under our very eyes? We are in need of a serious and dynamic liturgical formation. 

54. If it is true that the ars celebrandi is required of the entire assembly that celebrates, it is likewise true that ordained ministers must have a very particular concern for it. In visiting Christian communities, I have noticed that their way of living the liturgical celebration is conditioned — for better or, unfortunately, for worse — by the way in which their pastor presides in the assembly. We could say that there are different “models” of presiding. Here is a possible list of approaches, which even though opposed to each other, characterize a way of presiding that is certainly inadequate: rigid austerity or an exasperating creativity, a spiritualizing mysticism or a practical functionalism, a rushed briskness or an overemphasized slowness, a sloppy carelessness or an excessive finickiness, a superabundant friendliness or priestly impassibility. Granted the wide range of these examples, I think that the inadequacy of these models of presiding have a common root: a heightened personalism of the celebrating style which at times expresses a poorly concealed mania to be the centre of attention. Often this becomes more evident when our celebrations are transmitted over the air or online, something not always opportune and that needs further reflection. Be sure you understand me: these are not the most widespread behaviours, but still, not infrequently assemblies suffer from being thus abused. 

61. In this letter I have wanted simply to share some reflections which most certainly do not exhaust the immense treasure of the celebration of the holy mysteries. I ask all the bishops, priests, and deacons, the formators in seminaries, the instructors in theological faculties and schools of theology, and all catechists to help the holy people of God to draw from what is the first wellspring of Christian spirituality. We are called continually to rediscover the richness of the general principles exposed in the first numbers of Sacrosanctum Concilium,grasping the intimate bond between this first of the Council’s constitutions and all the others. For this reason we cannot go back to that ritual form which the Council fathers, cum Petro et sub Petro, felt the need to reform, approving, under the guidance of the Holy Spirit and following their conscience as pastors, the principles from which was born the reform. The holy pontiffs St. Paul VI and St. John Paul II, approving the reformed liturgical books ex decreto Sacrosancti Œcumenici Concilii Vaticani II, have guaranteed the fidelity of the reform of the Council. For this reason I wrote Traditionis custodes, so that the Church may lift up, in the variety of so many languages, one and the same prayer capable of expressing her unity.[23] 

As I have already written, I intend that this unity be re-established in the whole Church of the Roman Rite.