We know that Pope Leo is consulting about the Traditional Latin Mass and the horrible way TLM communities are being treated by the Dicastery for Divine Worship and local bishops as they implement Traditionis Custodis.
Many uncaring progressives in the Church, enjoy the punishment traditional Catholics are receiving as they think they deserve it for their negativity to Pope Francis and anything post-Vatican II. They are really sadistic and are as lacking in charity as they accuse others of lacking in charity.
Yet, the Traditional Catholics in the USA have not acted like the disobedient Catholics of the Syro-Malabar Eastern Rite who have resorted to violence and vandalism of a Cathedral all over the request of Pope Francis that they face the liturgical East as a unified and common posture for the Liturgy of the Eucharist.
Pope Leo seems to have made a compromise that allows both directions for their Divine Liturgy. That is what I suggested to Pope Francis. Why polarize people further. Make it both/and not either/or!!!!
Pope Leo is praising Pope Francis, all the while, undoing some of the more Machiavellian aspects of his papacy, especially his more autocratic approach to everything bypassing Canon Law in the governance of the Church and his humble rejection of papal traditions and proper governance.
And certainly Pope Leo has restored so much of what Pope Francis ditched. Papal Pageantry is an important sign of this and may bode well for the more liberal allowance of the TLM and ancillary liturgies.
I think what Cardinal Sarah recently said in an interview is hopeful. But Pope Leo moves methodically and with common sense but also observing Canon Law.
May I, in my most humble way, suggest to the Holy Father that as he praises Pope Francis, that he begin to praise Pope Benedict and restore the liturgical genius of this great predecessor so that each pope respects previous papal magisteriums all the while refining what needs refining.
We know that Pope Benedict, who lived through most of Pope Francis’ papacy, suffered great internal pain to see so much of the good His Holiness promoted as pope, undone by his successor. But Pope Benedict bore that insult with humble dignity like the insults our Lord endured in His public ministry and during the Way of the Cross!
Cardinal Sarah: I still believe that we all need to reflect within the Church. When Jesus instituted the sacrament of the Eucharist, he prayed for our unity. That all may be one.
Oh, we have turned the Mass into a battlefield between traditionalists and progressives, this and that, and we are profaning the Eucharist, whereas Jesus died to reunite God's children scattered throughout the world in unity through the sacrament of the Eucharist, through the sacrament of the liturgy. Why have we turned the liturgy into a battlefield?
I think we need to reflect on this. It is the only time when man is in face-to-face relationship with God. It is the only time when man is in direct contact with God, when God listens to him, when he speaks to God. Why do we have to fight? Why forbid this? Why forbid that? Who gives us this right? Who gives us this power? Someone who has a personal relationship with God? We've never seen this in the history of the Church.
So I think that if the Pope tries to see that it's not easy because the question is a matter of faith. How we believe is how we pray. If we don't have faith, we can't take action. If people don't believe, nothing will change. We continue to fight over the liturgy, we continue to bully certain people. Whereas in fact, when we really look at the Christians who practice today, they are the ones who go to traditional Mass. So why forbid them? On the contrary, we should encourage them.
I don't know what the Pope will do, but he is aware of this battle. He is aware of this difficulty.
8 comments:
I think Pope Leo is a very smart guy and probably realizes the Novus Ordo has been a phenomenal flop. He can either reform it to be more in keeping with our liturgical tradition or suppress it and restore the TLM, both in Latin and in the local vernaculars. Maybe he can give an indult to old, doubleknit dinosaurs so they can enjoy the Novus Ordo while living
If the church changed over to the TLM tomorrow you’d see monumental kickback and an unprecedented drop in attendance worldwide because the Nuvos Ordo is not a flop!
If you listen to the pillar podcast they suggest as canonists that the way forward is for Leo or the DDW to discreetly retract the later prescripts governing TC which reserve dispensations to the DDW. That would allow local bishops to deviate from universal law. They suggest this would be done discreetly, first by agreeing delays in fully implementing the decree (as has been done recently) then letting it be known quietly that such formal requests are no longer necessary (although informal consultation to agree acceptable local solutions within the overall framework of TC might be advisable). This would still allow the DDW leverage to intervene in problematic cases or where the local bishop oversteps the mark and/or ensure some consistency. Erecting new personal parishes would still require Vatican approval and maybe oversight of permissions for new priests to celebrate the TLM
I imagine there would be a desire for the nuvos ordo to remain the usual form of mass in parish churches and the TLM to be restricted to shrines / chapels (as TC allows) where possible or selected parish churches where it can be demonstrated this is not possible.
They discuss that there are already various ethnic chaplaincies like polish / Italian / eastern rite masses etc that use parish churches and the two communities exist alongside each other in harmony which I thought was a valid point.
There may be a few hardline bishops opposed to the TLM in principle but most diocesan bishops take a pragmatic stare amenable to workable solutions but
I love the TLM and want to see it furthered, but the Pillar boyz' views on it present what, at least in the short- to medium-term, would be the most reasonable approach to take on this issue. TC's assertion that the bishop is the proper moderator of liturgy in his diocese is turned into a joke by the subsequent rescripts taking away essentially all of the bishop's authority to regulate the who-what-when-where of the TLM in his own diocese (let alone prescribing what may be printed in bulletins!). Removing the rescripts would be a big step in the right direction, perhaps particularly psychologically, but it would also give us something more approximating subsidiarity and, yes, synodality
"I imagine there would be a desire for the nuvos ordo to remain the usual form of mass in parish churches and the TLM to be restricted to shrines / chapels (as TC allows) where possible or selected parish churches where it can be demonstrated this is not possible."
This is one difficulty with even a generous application of TC in the US. The document was obviously written by someone of a European, Italianate milieu for whom shrines and chapels are a dime-a-dozen. But in the US, non-parish churches are pretty rare to begin with. There could maybe be one TLM in my whole diocese, covering 3/4 of a state and taking ten miles to drive across, if it had to be restricted to non-parish churches. There are four now.
Nick
…but may be wary having had their fingers burnt by trads previously.
*stance not stare
TC's assertion that the bishop is the proper moderator of liturgy in his diocese is turned into a joke by the subsequent rescripts taking away essentially all of the bishop's authority to regulate the who-what-when-where of the TLM in his own diocese (let alone prescribing what may be printed in bulletins!).
Although to be fair, this was precisely the case before SP. The bishop had limited scope around the TLM.
Our Cardinal bishop designated 3 parish churches as shrines, thereby allowing them to continue providing the TLM. Admittedly they were old churches of some significance without large residential congregations ie central london.
https://corpuschristimaidenlane.org.uk/
https://rosaryshrine.co.uk/
https://parish.rcdow.org.uk/willesden/
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