A very sad chapter in Pope Francis papal history is that he called for dialogue and inclusivity but shut it down when it didn’t go his way.
Two areas that are a disgrace are the way that Pope Francis treated the dubia cardinals. I presume the four cardinals who presented the five dubia, Cardinals Burke, Brandmuller, Caffarra and Meisner attempted a private answer to their questions but were ignored by the pope who would not engage in a dialogue with them and thus they made their dubia public.
Cardinal Burke suffered the most for his prophetic complaints against the lack of clarity and coherence coming from some of the things Pope Francis said and did as well as wrote.
Thanks be to God, that Pope Leo isn’t talking about dialogue but doing it.
The other area where great concern has been raised is how Pope Francis treated and marginalized not only cardinals who questioned him but those who embraced Pope Benedict’s liturgical magisterium and genius, not only reform in continuity but also Summorum Pontificum and did so in a faithful, orthodox way, not a schismatic divisive way.
God willing that Pope Leo and Cardinal Burke spoke and dialogued about what they have in common:
1. A love for canon law, order, clarity and preciseness
2. Marginalizing Catholics who embrace the faith and morals of the Church and embracing those who want to change everything about the Church in order to create a different “church”
As everyone knows, I think Summorum Pontificum must be restored but bishops should be more engaged with pastors and priests who celebrate it to make sure that the normal, ordinary form of the Mass and those who appreciate it and want a vernacular Mass are not trampled upon or have a completely Latin Mass imposed upon them. Priests must accept the modern Mass as the normal/ordinary Mass and the older form of the Mass as an exception in normal parish celebrations. Perhaps personal parishes should be set up for the TLM.
But something that Cardinal Burke recently said about the Modern Mass is fascinating to me and I think it is the way to go. He accepts the validity of the new Mass, as we all know. But he complained about the stripping away of so much that contributed to the awe, wonder and reverence of the Mass.
If the modern Mass were reformed in continuity to the TLM, while still allowing the TLM to flourish—there would be less divisiveness and the sense of the faithful will be in harmony who either prefer one to the other or both.
Thus the TLM would stand as it is in the 1962 Missal and the other sacramental forms of that era.
But the new Mass would maintain the order and rubrics of the TLM, although in the vernacular.
The new Mass would allow lay readers and extraordinary ministers of Holy Communion, male or female, (gender confused individuals would not be eligible). The same with altar servers.
The reform of the modern Mass would allow for ad orientem as in the TLM and kneeling for Holy Communion.
Thus I pray that Cardinal Burke’s dialogue with Pope Leo will help Pope Leo to continue Pope Benedict’s great liturgical magisterium and genius.
3 comments:
I had a vernacular Mass imposed on me that I did not ask for! What about my rights, my feelings?
I once had an anti-TLM zealot complain that trads are causing problems for the Catholic Church that, say, Episcopalians have. I pointed out that Episcopalians were allowed a sort of bifurcated liturgy, Rite I and Rite II, that--while I am no expert--could be loosely analogized to the TLM and NO, respectively.
I further pointed out that, unlike the higher-church Protestants who, arguably rather prudently, determined that completely upending their liturgy in favor of forcing a "banal, on-the-spot production" on their congregations with no other permissible options would cause more problems than not, the Catholic Church, from the pope starting on the 1960s on down, attacked anyone who opposed the changes as lazy, slothful, schismatic, disobedient, etc., etc., etc.
Now, this is not to say that the Protestant churches don't have this problem. Just to explain that the Catholic Church in the 1960s handled changing the liturgy about as badly as you can manage--though admittedly not as badly as Patriarch Nikon.
So, Fr. AJM, your proposal is an interesting one. The only change I might add is an allowance for the pre-1955 Holy Week in the TLM, and maybe some calendar tweaks.
Nick
Cardinal Burke "complained about the stripping away of so much that contributed to the awe, wonder and reverence of the Mass."
Pope Leo has lamented this, as well:
"We have great need to recover the sense of mystery that remains alive in [the Eastern Catholic] liturgies, liturgies that engage the human person in his or her entirety, that sing of the beauty of salvation and evoke a sense of wonder at how God’s majesty embraces our human frailty!"
It's hard to give this a construction other than Pope Leo thinking that the modern, "irreversibly reformed" liturgy of the Western Church fails to "engage the human person [entirely,]" express "the beauty of salvation[,]" or "evoke a sense of wonder at . . . God's majesty[.]" Now, this doesn't necessarily mean he thinks the TLM is the answer (but hopefully it doesn't mean he thinks creating an inculturated missal for everyone but trads is the way to go), but this certainly does seem like a "cancellation" of one of Desiderio Desideravi's more execrable portions, the one praising the new liturgy for lacking the "sense of mystery" that the old one had. I can't deny the lack, but it's laughable to say that that lack is praiseworthy.
Nick
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