Okay, let’s get real and let’s be honest. The majority of Catholics who still practice their faith, between 2% to 30% of the Catholic population in various regions of the USA attend the Bugnini Mass.
Many of these active Catholics, not all, experience very beautiful celebrations of the Bugnini Mass even while experiencing the active/actual participation of the laity in the various ministries of the Mass, from male and female participation as servers, lectors, communion ministers, ushers, cantors, choir members and sacristans.
In many parishes that celebrate the Bugnini Mass exclusively, the orthodox doctrines of the Mass are upheld in the teachings of the Mass as both Sacrifice and Banquet and the Real Presence of the Crucified and Risen Lord in the Consecrated Bread and Wine, transubstantiation.
The Bugnini Mass has also made good Catholics, who express their faith and morals in positive ways and in good works, especially the concern for the poor, the environment and the unborn and born.
But taking a critical eye, we know that forgoing ad orientem for the Liturgy of the Eucharist and receiving Holy Communion in the hand reduces the clergy and laity’s embrace of the Mass as sacrifice and lessens the orthodox embrace of Transubstantiation.
As far as the Ancient Order and expression of the Roman Mass, there is more orthodoxy concerning not only the Mass but Catholic life and living a sacramental life. A greater majority of regular participants in the TLM are orthodox except when they become heterodox by rejecting certain aspects of Vatican II which are a part of the Ordinary Magisterium of the Church.
Thus, TLM participants are prone to heterodoxy by becoming elitists and gnostics, by rejecting parts of or entirely Vatican II. This type of heterodoxy can lead to schism. We see this in those who attend the TLM having no problem with attending also the FSSPX even though they are in a canonically irregular situation and may well become schismatic when new bishops are ordained.
I still say that the pope should deal with the flaws in the Bugnini Mass, especially how it is celebrated by various bishops and priests and how the laity act during these celebrations. Music is all over the place and a disaster in many parishes. Even if no changes are made to the current Bugnini Missal, making explicit that the Bugnini Mass may be celebrated ad orientem and by receiving Holy Communion kneeling at a kneeler or altar railing would be a great reform and have a beneficial impact on the orthodoxy of Bugnini congregations.
Returning to Summorum Pontificum even with the use of the 1962 Roman Missal and/or the 1964 Roman Missal, is the way to go. Some say that having various missals for the one Roman Rite, and keep in mind that the Ordinariate’s missal is also another missal of the one Roman Rite, creates division in the Church.
I say, along with Pope Leo, that diversity in unity is possible and in fact is defacto already in exclusively Bugnini parishes where there is a multiplicity of languages from different language Bugnini Missals.
Many Bugnini parishes are divided by language and seldom if never come together due to the division that various languages bring to parish communities. Some parishes have not only English Masses, but also, Latin, Spanish, Portuguese and Vietnamese and more and in the same parish!
Allow the 1962 Missal and celebrate diversity in unity, orthodox diversity, orthodox unity, though!
8 comments:
In regard to Latin Church liturgical issues:
Pope Leo XIV offered "traditionalists" an easy solution...embrace the Holy Mass of Pope Saint Paul VI. Unfortunately, throughout Trad Inc., one encounters a hateful attitude toward said Holy Mass.
Trads who despise the Holy Mass of Pope Saint Paul VI have turned an easy-to-solve situation — worship via said Mass — into a "complicated" (Pope situation.
Bishops who have fought against "traditional" reformed Masses have also complicated the situation. Said bishops have rendered it difficult, if not impossible, to encounter Latin, ad orientem, Holy Communion on the tongue/kneeling, etc.
I agree with folks who have insisted the following: As Pope Leo XIV has promoted the Holy Mass of Pope Paul VI as the place to encounter "traditional" liturgy, then it is the Pope's responsibility to ensure that "traditional" Latin Church liturgical practices are available via the "Mass of Vatican II."
(Pope Leo XIV identified the Holy Mass of Mass of Pope Paul VI as the "Vatican II Mass.)
Pax.
Mark Thomas
Pope Leo has made no definitive decision of his own on the TLM. He hasn’t changed TC either. He did allow Cardinals Burke to celebrate a Pontifical TLM in Saint Peter’s not allowed since TC. He’s listening to a variety of people in favor of the TLM and others who want to keep TC. Time will tell what hasn’t yet been told.
Father McDonald said..,."Thus, TLM participants are prone to heterodoxy by becoming elitists and gnostics, by rejecting parts of or entirely Vatican II."
Speaking of that major problem:
Archbishop Chaput:
"And it’s my personal experience that many people who are attached to the Tridentine form simultaneously reject many parts of the Council, and I think that’s a very bad thing.
"Now I also know many Catholics who love the Tridentine form and go to it faithfully who accept the Council.
"But for many of the people – you don’t have to scratch them very hard before they bleed anti-Council thoughts and sentiments.
"Because in my personal experience as a bishop, it is true that many of the younger seminarians and younger priests were beginning to distance themselves from the Council, not only on the teachings of liturgy, but also other things and somehow abandoning the Council to the dustbin of history rather than as the chief gift of the Holy Spirit to the Church of our time."
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Don Davide Pagliarani, Superior General of the Society of Saint Pius X:
"The real Second Vatican Council, it must be rejected. The Catholic Church cannot regenerate herself if it is not rejected.
"We have the experiment of Pope Benedict XVI and it cannot work: to put truth next to error; to put the two Masses next to each other, so that one can “fertilise” the other; to have “a reform of the reform through continuity”… it is a total illusion."
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Speaking humanly, much of the TLM Movement is almost certainly beyond repair.
Pax.
Mark Thomas
Interesting that you say nothing about the small perentage of Catholics who attend the Bugnini Mass. The majority of these, not all, don’t believe in Transubstantiation or the sacrificial aspect of the Mass. They want women in Holy Orders, and one day as pope, even if transexual. They want marriage for all kinds of people and genders. They reject much of the doctrinal teachings concerning the nature of God and the Church and thus implicitly reject all councils of the Church and Vatican II. They reject Humanae Vitae and the sexual teachings of the Church. And yet, you say the small number of issues the TLMers have is worse. How in the Name of God and all that is Holy can you be so blind and misguided about what has happened to Bugnini Mass goers and i mean the one that go regularly, not fallen away Catholics?
Until all the restrictions on the celebrating the new Mass in Latin and with other traditional elements are removed and such a Mass is made regularly available, all the talk about a traditional form of the new Mass is a dead letter.
MT Suit is beyond repair. I no longer read his comments because they are so off the wall and non Catholic
Father McDonald, i responded to your declaration that "TLM participants are prone to heterodoxy by becoming elitists and gnostics, by rejecting parts of or entirely Vatican II."
I noted simply that Archbishop Chaput, in line with your comment in question, declared that "many people who are attached to the Tridentine form simultaneously reject many parts of the Council, and I think that’s a very bad thing."
Pax.
Mark Thomas
MT Suit, this will kill you! Pope Leo just told the French bishops be generous to those attached to the Vetus Ordo. You will be flipping and flopping now like a fish still alive after being caught!
Finally, dear brothers, you intend to address the delicate theme of the Liturgy, to which the Holy Father is particularly attentive, in the context of the growth of communities attached to the Vetus Ordo. It is troubling that a painful wound continues to open in the Church concerning the celebration of the Mass, the very sacrament of unity. To heal it, a fresh regard from each person toward the other, with a greater understanding of the other's sensibility, is surely needed — a regard that could allow brothers enriched by their diversity to welcome one another mutually, in charity and in the unity of faith. May the Holy Spirit suggest to you concrete solutions that would generously include those sincerely attached to the Vetus Ordo, while respecting the orientations set forth by the Second Vatican Council regarding the Liturgy.
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