EXCERPTS OF THE SOLEMN SUNG CHRISTMAS MASS IN 1948’S NOTRE DAME AND WHY POPE FRANCIS DID NOT FURTHER RESTRICT THIS AWE INSPIRING MASS…

 Please note how this form of the TLM has such close cultural connections, an ethos, with the Byzantine forms of the Liturgy!

There is a recent report as to why Pope Francis’ did not sign a document on his desk further restricting the TLM. It is because a Russian Orthodox friend of Robert Moynihan interceded on behalf of preserving the TLM. Moynihan arranged for this person to meet with the pope. He told Pope Francis that the TM has many things in common with the Byzantine Liturgy and many young people are attracted to this form of the Liturgy. 

It is clear by watching the 1948 Christmas Mass at Notre Dame the cultural connection and heritage that the TLM of the West has in common with the Byzantine Liturgies of the East going back to the 6th century if not before.

The Modern Mass is sterile and has more in common with the sterility of the iconoclasm of the liturgies of the Protestant Reformation especially in its puritanical forms.

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Speaking in a November 7 podcast, Robert Moynihan stated:

I’ve a friend who is Russian Orthodox, I introduced him to Pope Francis some years ago more than ten years ago. They exchanged numbers.

I’ve always told him that we are very desirous of keeping a space in the church … for the old liturgy, which was similar in many ways to the Byzantine liturgy. He has appreciated this because he too is [Russian] Orthodox.

I said “tell the Pope that when you’re communicating with him because there are rumors that he may want to actually abolish the old liturgy, in a way that Joseph Ratzinger suggested was not even possible to do.”

He said he communicated with the Pope this past summer and told him that there were so many good, young people in America and other countries who love the old liturgy and they didn’t love it as a kind of sign of their anger against him, but simply because they love Jesus. They wanted to draw close to Him and the liturgy did that. And it was very similar to the way that simple people in Russia drew to the liturgy in the 1600’s, when the Old Believers were condemned because they wanted to keep the same, old liturgy and not the reformed liturgy in the 1660’s in Russia.

So this Russian told the Pope these things and the Pope said to him “I’ve got the text on my desk. They’ve told me that I should sign, but since you’ve told me all this, I won’t sign.”