Why are some so wiling to make an idol out of Vatican II? Why are so many opposed to the EF Mass?
Here's a silly diatribe revealing a serious insecurity:
The Traditional Latin Mass in the New York Times
“Catholics attached to the Latin Mass have suffered a great deal since the introduction of the vernacular liturgy after Vatican II,” Matthew Schmitz complains in an odd piece that appeared today in the New York Times,“The Latin Mass, Thriving in Southeastern Nigeria.”
For Schmitz, senior editor of First Things, the 2007 document of Pope Benedict XVI Summorum Pontificum, which gave universal permission for the celebration of the unreformed pre-Vatican II liturgy, is “a sublime vindication.” Schmitz quotes approving the statement of Benedict XVI, “What earlier generations held as sacred, remains sacred and great for us too.”
Actually, no. It’s the kind of statement that has the ring of truth and sounds right at first, but does not withstand critical scrutiny.
Sorry, Pope Benedict. I do not contest the Pope’s authority to readmit the preconciliar Mass or the canonical authority of Summorum Pontificum. But as a theologian I claim my right to examine the arguments offered in support of that papal decree. I don’t believe they entirely hold up.
19 comments:
Perhaps, through the intercession of the saints, this blind priest of God, will be made to see.
Fr. McDonald,
My browser refused to open the PrayTell article you reference, because it apparently classifies PrayTell as a "potentially dangerous site". Knows better than you? Who serially exposes yourself to the moral dangers implicit in reading Ruff's stuff.
Sorry, Fr Ruff. I do not contest your right to examine the arguments offered in support of Summorum Pontificum. If you believe that they don't entirely hold up, that's fine. If this gets you high-fives from the likes of 'mad' Bill and Rita Ferrone, all well and good.
It makes not a ha'p'orth of difference.
Fr Ruff may speak of an unreformed liturgy, but what came after the Council was certainly a deformed liturgy for the wealthy.
More important than Fr Ruff's comments is the original article cited in the New York Times:
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/09/30/opinion/sunday/catholics-nigeria-traditional-mass.html?action=click&pgtype=Homepage&clickSource=story-heading&module=opinion-c-col-left-region®ion=opinion-c-col-left-region&WT.nav=opinion-c-col-left-region
There is an important comment in that article: "Liturgical change was a kind of class war." It was mostly the poor who left the Church after the liturgical changes. The new liturgy is typical of "turning the faith into an airy set of bourgeois ethical commitments." I wonder if the fat cats at rich monasteries can fathom this issue.
This idea deserves much more consideration than has been given to it. Here is more from the Herald published earlier this year:
http://www.catholicherald.co.uk/issues/february-24th-2017/a-beautiful-church-for-the-poor/
Father Anthony Ruff tries to make himself sound much more moderate than he really is. It's almost as though he doesn't realize that the internet stores his previous comments on this issue and so can't mask his agenda. He writes here as though the main issue were using a past edition of the Roman Missal which never happened before (which isn't the case actually since the Dominicans adopted the Roman Missal of the day as their rite in the 13th century which was then immune from future modifications of the Roman rite and continues to this day. You'd think that someone who addresses Benedict XVI in such a condescending tone would do his homework.), and that the modifications to the Roman Missal done after Vatican II just happen to be more drastic than those before.
Whereas in the past, Fr. Anthony made the following claims:
1. The Pre-Vatican II liturgy taught errors about the nature of the church.
2. There was no authentic liturgy before Vatican II, only "clerical sacred drama".
3. The 1962 and 1969 roman missals actually contradict one another.
He loves to hide behind Paul VI but the truth is that Paul VI would never have agreed to the above 3 propositions, nor would Francis for that matter, nor any document on the liturgy that has come out of Rome in the past 50 years. Summorum Pontificum is a direct repudiation of those three propositions, and so actually stands in line with post-Vatican II teaching on liturgical reform.
I read and printed out the original NY Times article. It is one of the best and most insightful articles on the EF Latin Mass that I have read--especially the part about the Latin Mass and the poor. As Victor has already pointed out, isn't it ironic that the Mass used before and during the Second Vatican Council seems to have been the Mass preferred by many of the poor? Yet, in the post-Conciliar era of the "preferential option for the poor" we typically use the Mass (OF) that, according to this article, is the preference of the bourgeois and the wealthy?
I also liked the 86 year old Nigerian bishop's observation that the New Mass tends to the "jamboree."
I read and printed out the original NY Times article. It is one of the best and most insightful articles on the EF Latin Mass that I have read--especially the part about the Latin Mass and the poor. As Victor has already pointed out, isn't it ironic that the Mass used before and during the Second Vatican Council seems to have been the Mass preferred by many of the poor? Yet, in the post-Conciliar era of the "preferential option for the poor" we typically use the Mass (OF) that, according to this article, is the preference of the bourgeois and the wealthy?
I also liked the 86 year old Nigerian bishop's observation that the New Mass tends to the "jamboree."
I read and printed out the original NY Times article. It is one of the best and most insightful articles on the EF Latin Mass that I have read--especially the part about the Latin Mass and the poor. As Victor has already pointed out, isn't it ironic that the Mass used before and during the Second Vatican Council seems to have been the Mass preferred by many of the poor? Yet, in the post-Conciliar era of the "preferential option for the poor" we typically use the Mass (OF) that, according to this article, is the preference of the bourgeois and the wealthy?
I also liked the 86 year old Nigerian bishop's observation that the New Mass tends to the "jamboree."
Oh, can I call myself a theologian too ! I like that a TLM can still ruffle a liberal feather
I meant to add, I didn't bother to read what Fr. Ruff had to say, given his record. I could care less what "progressive" theologians and liturgists have to say on this subject. They have had their day. A large part of the reason the Church is in the mess it is in today is due to bishops and priests buying into their bulls___.
Liberal "Catholics" = braindead and meanspirited Know Nothings!
This is what seems to be going on:
The Evil One has designed a strategic program that aims to saw conflict among believers. So far, the program seems to be working very well. For example, in the Catholic Church he managed to get its leadership class (bishops and theologian) to work against each other. The current state is a fight about who will exercises power? The bishops have the historical advantage but theologians claim special knowledge -thus prestige- to counter the bishops' leadership roles. Many of the theologians are out and out heretics. Yet, some bishops will make common cause with them to secure their own albeit heretical ideas. The entire situation gives an impression of political maneuverings. Nothing really new here if one reads St. Paul's letters to the various Christian communities of his time.
After Vatican I we thought the Church fixed this problem by declaring the infallibility of the Pope in matters of Faith and Morals. But of course the Devil is no slouch in matters of intrigue. Now we are faced with the situation where the Pope himself has proposed hitherto unheard of arguments in favor of tolerating sinful ways of living and calling it mercy. It is enough to make tradition loving Catholics head's to explode. It is not possible to see where we will end up.
The Holy Father could end this mess by simply saying yes or no to the dubia of the four (now only 2)Cardinals.
Anon-1
Fr Ruff is one of those liberals who falls back on legal positivism when it suits his agenda. The idea that one Missal supersedes another is a relatively modern concept, depending as it does on the invention of printing. Pius V was faced with a situation where Protestants were devising their own (heretical) liturgies; hence the Missal of 1570 and Quo Primum. Yet he exempted those rites with a provenance of a mere 200 years.
Ruff claims that he cannot go to the library of his monastery and take out a former Missal and use it. Strictly speaking he is right. Yet if he were to do so, what harm would result? Surely a liberal would be all in favour of it. He accepts, though apparently deplores, the widespread abuses of the Paul VI Missal.
Paul himself allowed the continued use of the Rite of Milan, although it has subsequently been vernacularized and Novo Ordo-ized, to its detriment. Yet the older and authentic Rite is still celebrated.
There is a Youtube video of a Mass as it would have been celebrated in 15th century Sweden. The congregation is dressed in period style. Yet the celebrant, a professor of Lund University, is an ordained priest, and so this Mass was entirely valid.
The Visigothic Rite is still celebrated in Toledo, although this too has been altered recently. It is further from the Roman Rite than is the Milanese (it does not use the Roman Canon, for example).
It would be a good idea to celebrate all the older Rites and Uses. They have never been abrogated since the Church NEVER suppresses an orthodox and valid Rite. If we are going to have liturgical pluralism, why not go the whole hog? This makes me far more 'liberal' in the true sense than is Fr Ruff, who peddles a narrow-minded legalistic rigorism.
Actually, Fr. Ruff makes (perhaps unwittingly) one good point:
“And as an aside, just why is it the 1962 missal that is permitted, but not the 1911 or 1957? Are the earlier editions not sacred and great?”
One that some young diocesan TLM celebrants I know apparently agree with. Although it may have been necessary--for canonical clarity in establishing two juridically equal forms of the Roman rite--for Pope Benedict to define they by reference to two specific Roman missals (1962 for the EF and 1970 for the OF), who indeed could argue sensibly that previous Roman missals which sanctified so many millions in earlier centuries (and inspired so many heroic sacrifices for Church and Faith) are not still sacred and great?
So it is that with apparent Vatican acquiesce we see increasing use of pre-1962 liturgical practices in TLM celebrations—for instance, the second Confiteor and absolution before the people’s communion. And use of rites predating the “massively reformed 1955 Holy Week” which may look--especially in the elimination of Good Friday’s Mass of the Presanctified—like a first cut of the same fabric from which the Novus Ordo Missae was stitched 15 years later.
Perhaps may be considered a wholesome “Francis effect” that these young recently ordained priests no longer feel bound—like the proverbially rigid “doctors of the law”—in slavish obedience to rubrical rules and regulations that restrict continuity in practice with the Church’s rich heritage of liturgical worship.
If you want narrow mindedness and antipathy, just read the comments above. Boy, you people are sad, sad, sad.
JM,
Nowhere near the narrow minded and antipathy displeased by CBS' attorney and big-time Hillary supporter who got fired today because she stated she had no sympathy for those killed in Las Vegas because they were Republicans anyway. Chew on that one.
What old missals and Mass forms could be allowed? Seems like it would be quite a few. Our small town priest used to enjoy going to various Masses around the country and world. He had interesting stories about them. Many obviously predated Vatican II.
Chew on this: No CBS lawyer has posted anything here.
JM,
Nice deflection which has nothing to do with the substance. Chew on that!
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