.- Cardinal Robert Sarah, prefect of the Congregation for Divine Worship, revealed in a letter sent to a liturgical conference this week that when he was appointed to his post, Pope Francis indicated a desire to continue the liturgical work done by his predecessor as Bishop of Rome.
“When the Holy Father, Pope Francis, asked me to accept the ministry of Prefect of the Congregation for Divine Worship and Discipline of the Sacraments, I asked: ‘Your Holiness, how do you want me to exercise this ministry? What do you want me to do as Prefect of this Congregation?’
The Holy Father's reply was clear. ‘I want you to continue to implement the liturgical reform of the Second Vatican Council,’ he said, ‘and I want you to continue the good work in the liturgy begun by Pope Benedict XVI,'” in November 2014, asked that Sacra Liturgia “continue to work towards achieving the liturgical aims of the Second Vatican Council and to work to continue the liturgical renewal promoted by Pope Benedict XVI.”
2 comments:
I do not think that Francis, like most Modernists, understands that part of this implementation of reform is to also correct the errors of the reforms done until now. The liturgists of the Consilium were gods who made no mistakes, and for that reason, the reforms up to now are irreversible in his mind. Cardinal Sarah sees that differently, and continues to push the actual text on the liturgy of the Council, rather than what the Consilium thought of it, and this is what Benedict had in mind too.
In this respect, you will constantly hear Modernist liturgists talk about liturgical history and how things done in the past are valid, indeed, justifying their use for today. The further you go back into history the more important by their claimed purity the liturgical practices are for today. But of course you have to pick and choose, for a lot of practices are not suitable for the Modernist view of the world. So it is about pushing ideas, not about purifying the liturgy. If these ideas fit into the Modernist world view, then they are acceptable, otherwise no.
Of course, everyone knows that the further back you go into history, the less we know about the history. History becomes mostly theory and speculation. So when I hear Cardinal Sarah being accused of ignorance of liturgical history, we are no longer talking about facts, but ideology. What concerns Cardinal Sarah as it did Benedict is spirituality, not the ivory tower postulations that make the liturgy an idol for worship, detached from the lives of the average Catholic. The liturgy first and foremost is about personal union with God, not the community which can obtain only as the result of the former, and Sarah understands that, while the Modernists do not because they value the intellect more than the Silence of the heart that welcomes the wordless voice of God in each person.
I wonder if the Holy Father has ever even read anything written by his predecessor.
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