Motu Proprio: Not wait long ...

Rorate Caeli quoting Card +Bertone on the Tridentine Mass indult...

I believe one will not wait long to see it published. The Pope is personally interested that this should take place. He will explain it in his accompanying letter, expecting a serene reception.

Some more thoughts on the indult

No. It's not out yet. But since when has that slowed discussion? Anyways there is a good article in the Saint Austin Review on the perpetually imminent Tridentine Mass indult. The discussion of its implications is pretty sharp.

Hat tip to NLM.

The Latin Orthodox Church?

A very insightful post appeared overnight at The New Liturgical Movement web site as part of a discussion of my recent comments on the Tridentine Mass on this blog. I thought I would share that comment. The original and responses to it can be found here.

If we want to earn the respect of the Orthodox, it will not be by using their customs as a justification to neglect our own customs, nor by showing a general peppy enthusiasm for iconography (while rejecting its most important principles).

If we want their respect (and if we want to do what is best for our Church, regardless of its oecumenical effect), we need to adopt a more Orthodox attitude - that is, to make a pious deference to tradition in all things, and to treasure the customs particular to our own rite.

Really, this is what will make us more like the undivided Church of the early centuries - too many Roman Catholics think that Catholic liturgy is defined by rubrics and Vatican congregations.

But the Latin Church survived for most of its history with far less regulation - rubrics and Roman oversight are Counterreformational measures to protect the liturgy, not the Liturgy itself. They are part of the armor, not part of the knight.

Yet when Roman Catholics criticize some awful practice, they are more likely to condemn it as "unrubrical" than "untraditional". I have to imagine that the Orthodox think our obsession with rubrics and the pronouncements of the CDF are somewhat ridiculous - after all, they have no comparable mechanisms to safeguard their liturgy. And yet theirs has not been ruined, has not been discontinuous, has not lost its unity throughout the Orthodox world.

Why is this? Because the Orthodox have a natural traditionalism - which is the normal means for the liturgy to be preserved. It is what preserved the Western liturgy for fifteen centuries. It is what is necessary for the Latin Church to regain.

When Roman Catholics hear that the Orthodox have a canonized system of iconogrpahy, they imagine some big dusty book filled with instructions as to what angle Mary's head should be tilted. It doesn't exist - there are no rules of the sort that Borromeo and Molanus tried (unsucessfully, thank God)to impose on the Roman Church after Trent. Iconography is canonized because its creators make a pious deference to tradition and possess the humility not to apply their own fool notions to sacred art. And that is how it is in Orthodoxy, with everything.

That isn't to say that rubrics and Vatican instructions are bad - they provided a necessary corrective to Medieval excesses, and could provide a necessary corrective to certain flaws of Orthodoxy. But ultimately, they are patching the armor, not healing the wounded knight.

Until we regain a natural traditionalism of the sort the Orthodox have, all the rubrics and instructions in the world will not fix our liturgy.

[Imagine a Church that has a liturgy in natural continuity since the apostolic age, of the most extraordinary beauty and profundity, that is unquestionably deep in history; with a rich tradition of didactic iconography that lends great symbolic significance to every detail of Church building and ornamentation. Then imagine that the liturgy and iconography are Western, not Eastern.

That is an idealized vision of the late Medieval Catholic Church. Call it the Latin Orthodox Church. And then do everything possible to make sure that that Church and the Roman Catholic Church are one and the same.]

-Daniel Mitsui

The Tridentine Mass: Why do the Orthodox care?

The altar of St. Michael's Western Rite Orthodox Parish prepared for High Mass.

This morning I received an email asking why Orthodox care about the Roman Catholic Mass. That is a perfectly reasonable question and so I thought I would post both the initial email and my reply. I have redacted the name of the correspondent and the name of his publication since it is a fairly well known one among Traditionalist Catholics.

Dear Sir,

I saw your post on The New Liturgical Movement blog. I would like to know if you and/or your priest or deacon would be interested in answering a question or two about your reactions to a pending freeing of the TLM.

I have conducted several interviews for XXX, including a bishop and Archbishop, and this them kept coming up. In particular, I would be interested in why the interest in this from the Orthodox? What is appealing about it? How do you think the average Orthodox priest, deacon, parishioner would feel about a freeing of the Classical Roman liturgy, and why?

If you know some people who are interested, I could incorporate your e-mailed comments (keep to about a paragraph or less for each answer) into an upcoming article.

Please let me know. For a sampling of previous writings, you can check here. http://www.renewamerica.us/columns/mershon

In Christ Our King,

xxx

My reply:

Christ is Risen!

XXX,
This will be somewhat brief since a really detailed discussion of the Mass and how it relates to Orthodoxy is beyond the scope of an email. In general the level of interest in the matter, on our side of the fence, is not altogether widespread. It exist primarily in a few subgroups such as liturgists, former Catholics and some members of the clergy. Many Orthodox are completely unaware of the controversy and some, if they were aware, would tell you they had zero interest in what the Catholic Church does. However many Orthodox do grasp that (like it or not) what Rome does is important. Orthodox liturgists have always tended to cringe at the reforms of the Latin Church post Vatican II. There are a number of reasons for this.

First and foremost, Orthodoxy is institutionally suspicious of change. If your changing something the first question from an Orthodox will be "why?" "If it aint broke, don't fix it" could be our motto. Orthodox (who have a clue about these things) can look at the rite of +Pius V and see the pre-schism liturgies of Pope St. Gregory the Great and of St. Peter, less a few add on's that we do not accept like the Filioque and references to the merits of the saints etc. But substantially it's the Gregorian Liturgy of the Orthodox West. By contrast the reformed liturgy of +Paul VI is a radical departure from the liturgical traditions of the past. Even in Orthodoxy some things change. But it's always a very slow gradual change. Organic development in liturgy is permissible. Radical invention is not. The Pauline liturgy implicitly seems to move away from the clear expressions of faith about the sacramental nature of the Divine Liturgy commonly understood in the undivided church of the first millennium.

If you look at the rites employed in Orthodox parishes that follow the Western Rite (yes we have some), none use anything resembling the Novus Ordo. The liturgical rites most commonly employed by Western Rite Orthodox are the Liturgy of Pope St. Gregory the Great and the Liturgy of St. Tikhon. The former is a corrected form of the Pian Missal, and the latter is a corrected form of the High Church Anglican BCP of 1892. They are typically employed by the Western Rite Vicarate (WRV) of the Antiochan Orthodox Archdiocese. The other liturgy employed is the Use of Sarum which is the ancient liturgical rite of parts of pre-schism Britain. This is typically used by parishes under the Russian Orthodox Church Outside of Russia (ROCOR) and some Old Calendarist sects (although there are some minor differences between the rites used by ROCOR and the Old Calendarists).

As you may be aware there is a fairly lively debate going on within Orthodoxy as to whether or not the Roman Catholic Church retains the grace of valid sacraments (we use the word mysteries). The radical changes in the Latin Rite have been cited by some as evidence of the lack of grace in Catholic sacraments. I do not personally subscribe to this. But I do think as an indication of how seriously the changes in the western rites are taken, that it was in 1973 the ROCOR issued it's decree that it would no longer accept the validity of Catholic baptisms in contravention of the immemorial practice of the Russian Church. Today Roman Catholics (and pretty much everyone else) converting into Orthodoxy via ROCOR must be baptized.

A restoration of the so called Tridentine Rite in the Roman Catholic Church would probably be helpful. It's something that Orthodox can look at and say "we recognize this." The theological chaos now engulfing the Christian West is one of the more alarming things which we see in the modern world. As ongoing discussions about other issues move forward this could have a positive impact on the West's sensus fidei which we perceive as having been horribly compromised in recent decades. Orthodoxy remembers that the West was once part of the undivided church. And as St. John Maximovitch said "... Her venerable liturgies are far older than any of Her heresies."

In Christ,
John

Latest on the SSPX & the Tridentine Indult...

(Click on image for larger view)

The New Liturgical Movement posted a clip from CWNews on the latest rumors emanating from Rome. As I stated a while back, the indult is almost certainly coming since it is a non-negotiable condition for normalizing relations with the SSPX which +Benedict XVI urgently desires. To those who expected this to be done the day after +Benedict's election I can only say you do not know +Benedict. This is a man who does not act rashly. Even so, the pace of events in the Vatican has been at something near light speed compared to the usual glacial pace of that corner of the world. I append the news clip below.

Apr. 21 (CWNews.com) - During a closed-door meeting on March 23 with the College of Cardinals, Pope Benedict XVI indicated that he plans a move to allow broader use of the old Latin Mass. The exact nature of the Pope's move, and its timing, remain matters of intense speculation.

As the French bishops concluded their annual assembly on April 7, Cardinal Jean-Pierre Ricard revealed that the Pope is expected to issue directives "in the coming weeks or months" that would appeal to traditionalist Catholics. The French cardinal confirmed that Pope Benedict is particularly anxious to find ways of restoring normal relations with the Society of St. Pius X (SSPX).

As prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, then-Cardinal Ratzinger was closely involved in the efforts-- ultimately fruitless-- to avoid a breach between the late Archbishop Marcel Lefebvre's traditionalist group and the Vatican. In June 1988 the archbishop consecrated four bishops, against explicit orders from the Holy See, and the Vatican responded with a decree of excommunication.

Since that time the Vatican has maintained contact with the breakaway traditionalist group, looking toward a restoration of normal ecclesiastical ties. Talks between SSPX leaders and Vatican officials became more intense in the Jubilee Year 2000, at the explicit request of Pope John Paul II; the efforts have been stepped up again under Pope Benedict XVI. The new Pope has always been perceived by traditionalist Catholics as a sympathetic friend, and his private meeting last August with Bishop Bernard Fellay, the SSPX superior, was seen as an important step toward reconciliation.

For several weeks, at the Pope's request, Vatican officials have been discussing proposals for the reintegration of the SSPX into the normal structure of the Church. After the March 23 meeting of the world's cardinals, Cardinal Dario Castrillon Hoyos-- who as president of the Ecclesia Dei commission has been the Vatican's leading figure in talks with traditionalists-- said that the Church would welcome back the Lefebvrists "with open arms." The day's discussions, the Colombian cardinal said, had involved a search for "the best formula" for a canonical resolution of the split.

For the past month, a recurrent rumor at the Vatican has been that Pope Benedict will issue a motu proprio allowing the universal use of the 1962 Roman Missal. (The use of the old rite is currently allowed only with the approval of the diocesan bishop, under the terms of the 1988 papal directive Ecclesia Dei, from which the Vatican commission draws its name.) Reports have also suggested that the Vatican is prepared to lift the decrees of excommunication against the SSPX leaders. And there have been reports that the Holy See could create a new ecclesiastical unit, an apostolic administration of personal prelature, for the pastoral care of traditionalist Catholics.

However both the Vatican and the Lefebvrist group have listed conditions that must be met before reconciliation is possible. The Vatican insists that the SSPX leaders manifest their repentance for the break with Rome, and accept the validity of Vatican II documents. The SSPX demands a Vatican move allowing free worldwide use of the old Latin Mass, and the freedom to question the content of some Vatican II documents.

A motu proprio allowing unrestricted use of the Tridentine rite would fulfill the first SSPX request. Last December, in a pre-Christmas address to the Roman Curia, Pope Benedict emphasized that the documents of Vatican II must be interpreted in the light of Church tradition-- a statement that went a long way toward satisfying the other traditionalist demand.

While Pope Benedict is clearly hoping to restore full communion, it remains unclear how many members of the SSPX are equally anxious to repair ties with Rome. Some Lefebvrists have indicated a strong desire to resolve their disagreements with the Holy See; others, such as Bishop Richard Williamson, have suggested that there is no realistic prospect for agreement with a Vatican leadership they regard as thoroughly corrupt. Bishop Fellay-- probably hoping to hold the different factions together, as the SSPX moves toward a July leadership vote-- has allowed that the Vatican seems anxious to move toward reconciliation faster than his own followers are ready to go.

OK. It didn't show up today...

But it's coming. Really. The Rorate Caeli editor seems to have succumbed to despair. But all of the signs still point to some form of Universal Indult for the Traditional Roman Rite. It's a nonnegotiable condition for the SSPX whom we know that +Benedict XVI urgently desires to see reconciled with Rome. Beyond that we also know that +Benedict has long had a pronounced sympathy for the rite himself. So just relax, take a deep breath and wait. All the signs point to this coming about. Even more interesting (from my point of view) will be the response from the Orthodox. Orthodoxy has always been very reluctant to comment on the internal affairs of the Roman Church (and properly so). But it is certainly true that the chaos (heavily manifested in the liturgy) of the Western Church post-Vatican II has been a source of grave concern to many Orthodox theologians and liturgists. Some have even been openly critical of the reformed Roman Rite of Paul VI. How the revival of a liturgical rite that is at it's core pre-schism will be recieved should be interesting to watch.

The Tridentine Indult

The latest news on the Universal indult is that there is no news. Whatever +Benedict XVI is up to, he is playing his cards close to the vest. However it needs to be noted that the rumors that something significant is imminent have been widespread now for nigh on two weeks. No one, not even the most minor Vatican functionary has offered any kind of denial either on the record or anonymously. This leads me to conclude that after so many false alarms this is the real deal. It may or may not come tomorrow (my guess is it will). But something is clearly coming. At this writing, Maundy Thursday in Rome is now only hours away. Rarely has any day been awaited with such anticipation in the world of Roman Catholics (and perhaps some dread on the part of the liberal wing of that church). As a final note I saw a post that reminded me Holy Thursday is also the day +Paul VI issued his Apostolic Constitution Missale Romanum Novus Ordo in 1969. Does +Benedict have a sense of irony?

The Tridentine Signs of the Times

Some thoughts are posted by by the well known conservative Catholic Priest Fr. John T. Zuhlsdorf on the much rumored Tridentine indult. I think they are worth a look for those interested in this subject.

The Universal Indult

Rorate Caeli reports that the Italian Press seems to be confirming the much anticipated Universal Indult for the use of the pre-Vatican II Roman Liturgy is now only days away. Exactly what this will portend for relations between Rome and some of her wayward children is not entirely clear. It certainly can only help in repairing relations with the Society of St. Pius X (SSPX). My guess is that a lot will depend on how this indult is worded. Will it be a still conditional but much broader permission for the use of the older liturgy? Or will it be a truly blanket permission? Another possibility is that it might simply be a declaration that the Bull Quo Primum Tempore (1570) remains in effect. Another question is what if any other gestures will accompany this. There has been some speculation that +Benedict might publicly offer Mass using this rite, perhaps on Maundy Thursday. Of course this will have little impact on relations with the more extremist groups such as the various sede vecantist sects. They are so far over the edge that there is no real hope. But clearly this will be a significant move to bring back into the fold those Catholics alienated by the liturgical chaos of the last 40 years in the Latin Church.