As everyone who reads what I write on this blog knows, what I think is the greatest crisis in the liturgy isn’t so much Bugnini’s Mass if done by the book, but all the liturgical abuses surrounding it. It is used and abused in a way that the books prior to the reform never were. The question that no one is asking is why?
I was not an advocate for the return of the TLM and opposed its first iteration by St.Pope John Paul II.
What I did advocate back then with my then bishop, Bishop Raymond Lessard, was allowance for the Bugnini Mass to be celebrated ad orientem and in Latin and kneeling for Holy Communion.
But once Pope Benedict liberated the TLM for most priests who desired to celebrate it, to celebrate it, I saw the beneficial nature of celebrating this Mass and the graces that flow from it in a way that I never experienced in the Bugnini Mass. And yes, there was cross-fertilization for me as the TLM influenced my attitude and style of celebrating the Bugnini Mass.
Never did I think that after so many years of Summorum Pontificum that a future pope would revoke it and make all those who embraced Summorum Pontificum promulgated by a previous pope but still primarily celebrating the Bugnini Mass, would be treated as poorly in the way we were and are and so derided, humiliated and marginalized with many false accusations. And yet liturgical abuse of the Bugnini Mass is given a pass and no attempts to correct it from the top now!
But once the first cut of the knife came, and others followed, I felt that like the sexual abuse of Catholics by bishops and clergy that went unchecked, that the on-going spiritual abuse of Catholics must not follow the same path-it had and has to end.
God bless Pope Leo. I hope His Holiness follows the common sense of Pope Benedict as it concerns the TLM. But if His Holiness chooses not to do so and is overly influenced by those who are opposed to the TLM based upon their reading of Vatican II, a pastoral, not a dogmatic, Council, then at least deal with the liturgical abuses of the Bugnini Mass as aggressively as killing the celebration of the TLM Mass.
But I still pray that Pope Leo acknowledges Pope Benedict’s common sense:
2 comments:
Well said Father McDonald. I suspect Pope Leo will relax the evil TC if not abrogate it outright because it shows the utter hypocrisy of those who oppose the TLM and so contrary to accompaniment and synodality!
Our churchmen should heed the advice of Gamaliel: "And now, therefore, I say to you, refrain from these men, and let them alone; for if this Way be the work of men, it will come to nought. But if it be of God, you cannot overthrow it, lest perhaps you be found even to fight against God." Acts 5:38-39. Cardinal Roche, et al., need tread carefully.
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