Pope Francis is well known for his hostility to Catholic traditionalists and has already taken steps to restrict the use of the older sacramental rites. If the report is accurate, this would be a massive escalation of his campaign to suppress the ancient liturgical patrimony of the Western Church.
Update: There have been some follow-up posts over at Rorate that are worth a read. The contempt for traditionalist Catholics behind this movement is quite shocking. On which note, it bears repeating that any church that holds these kinds of views, or believes a single bishop has the right and authority to suppress the liturgical patrimony of more than a billion people, is one that we Orthodox can never be in communion with.
I don't understand what he hopes to accomplish by this move.
ReplyDeleteFrancis and his more ardent supporters regard themselves as religious revolutionaries. They see the old mass as a rallying point for conservative Catholics, whom Francis detests.
ReplyDeleteOrthodoxy itself “suppresses” its own liturgical patrimony, as well. The Greeks, for example, don’t even follow their own already watered down typology, and not just Greeks in the West. The Old Ritualistic schism was entirely about the suppression of liturgical patrimony. And no one follows the services fully as they were in the first millenium. The only constant is change, and while our worship may be“more similar” to that of the early Church than others, it is no where near the same.
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ReplyDeleteThere is a difference between organic development which is normal and healthy, and theological/liturgical revolution which is not.
Every change began as something inorganic, enforced. A simple example is the Trisagion, and there are more (eg, everything about the Nikonian reforms in Muscovy). Most everything about the organic, so therefore valid liturgical development of the Byzantine Rite is a pious myth. Our rite was enforced internally by leaders of empire and millet.
ReplyDeleteChanges have been made, mostly organic, though you are correct that the Nikonian "reforms" were an abuse from which the Church suffered scandal and schism which persists to the present day. But none of that compares to simply abolishing an ancient liturgical rite and convening a committee, composed at least in part by Protestants, to draft a new one largely from scratch.
ReplyDeleteWhat is going on in Rome is full scale revolution. And the "old mass" is seen as a dangerous impediment to the new religion.
One might also note the slow suppression, almost to the point of extinction, of the Liturgy of St. James in the Orthodox Church, and, to the point of extinction, of the Liturgy of St. Mark and the whole Alexandrian liturgical tradition.
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