Rome Orthodoxy and the Tridentine Question

There is an excellent essay over at Vivificat on the subject of the effect that the imminent Tridentine indult might have on relations with Orthodoxy. The general thrust of the essay is probably not much. In the short term I tend to agree for most of the reasons stated in Theo’s essay. Rome has a lot of problems that go way beyond a botched liturgical reform post-Vatican II. Those need to be addressed first. But in fairness there are encouraging signs that many of these issues are being looked at. Thus I am not quite as pessimistic as Theo seems to be.

The new management in the Vatican is showing clear signs of a willingness to put teeth behind rhetoric in church teachings and discipline. The expected indult is just another example that Pope +Benedict XVI is shaking things up after forty plus years of anything goes. +John Paul II (Magnus) did a lot during his more than 25 years on the throne of Peter. But he had short comings. One was that while he was generally orthodox in his preaching, he was a soft touch in church discipline. This problem was compounded by the fact that the last five years of his pontificate were ones of greatly reduced leadership due to his poor health. But JP II is gone now for more than a year and there is a new sheriff in town.

+Benedict XVI having waited the customary one year from the death of his sainted predecessor is now starting to put his stamp on the church he leads. He is shaking up the Vatican Curia and reasserting church discipline in a wide range of areas. The Tridentine indult is just a foretaste of what I think is to come. In his former persona as Cardinal Ratzinger he repeatedly voiced grave concerns about the direction that the liturgical reform had taken in the years after the council. Now we see efforts underway to reintroduce Latin into the reformed Mass, affirming a right to offer Mass ad orientem as well as ad populi, prohibiting lay people from the purification of the sacred vessels and so on. Unlike +John Paul II Benedict does not have the political baggage of Polish nationality as a hindrance to establishing a rapport with the Russian Orthodox Church. Also Benedict is respected as a first rate theologian who understands the Eastern Churches better than any pope in many centuries. In short he is seriously respected in Orthodox theological circles. This alone puts the Rome/Orthodox dialogue on an entirely different plane.

But yes, Theo is right. Rome still has more problems than you can shake a stick at. Discipline is horrible and if the new pope wants to change that, it needs to be remembered as a very liberal friend of mine keeps pointing out, that Benedict is in his late 70s. This is not likely to be a long pontificate. And no matter how much discipline is reformed the very serious theological issues which divide Orthodoxy and Rome are not going to get swept under the carpet just because the Pope has issued a letter banning homosexuals from the clergy etc. In this sense I suspect that the real test will come not with this pope but the next one and his answer to a question. How far is Rome willing to go in adjusting its understanding of the decrees of Vatican I? The wording of those decrees is so crystal clear that we Orthodox have a hard time seeing how you can get around them. But the Roman Church has done some pretty impressive theological contortions before in the name of doctrinal development. A couple excellent examples are the current effort to repudiate limbo, and the gradual backing off of the crystal clear language used by Boniface VIII in Unam Sanctum about the fate of those outside the church. Boniface VIII today would be called a Feenyist and labeled a heretic. So who knows. I remain skeptical but not completely without hope.

Still, I do look forward to hearing again the glorious strains of Mozart and Gregorian Chant in the Roman Catholic Church while the last guitar is smashed over the head of the last Extraordinary Lay Eucharistic Minister. Am I asking for too much?