My fave cardinal laments the resistance against Summorum Pontificum

VATICAN CITY (CNS) -- Five years after Pope Benedict issued Summorum Pontificum, his motu proprio permitting priests to offer the extraordinary form of the Mass without first having to obtain permission from their bishops, Cardinal Raymond Burke lamented “resistance to what the Holy Father has asked.”  [Hello to my beloved followers Frs. Anscar, Geny Diwa, Reginald Malicdem!  Yeah, they read the blog!  Booyah!!!]

“There's no question that there remains in certain places [like the Philippines!] a resistance to what the Holy Father has asked, and that's sad," said the prefect of the supreme tribunal of the apostolic signatura. “It's sometimes even an expression of disagreement with the Holy Father's discipline and even an expression that this is harmful for the Church.”  [or harmful for their theological agenda or their book selling and seminar business?  Ha!]


With his apostolic letter "Summorum Pontificum," issued July 7, 2007, Pope Benedict allowed priests to offer the Tridentine Mass without special permission from their bishops. [Why you might ask.  Because the bishops keep on saying "No!" even if the priest or the people ask for it!]  The decree also provided for the establishment of "personal parishes" dedicated to the traditional liturgy, which had passed out of use amid the modernizing changes that followed the Second Vatican Council of 1962-1965.

"What earlier generations held as sacred, remains sacred and great for us too, and it cannot be all of a sudden entirely forbidden or even considered harmful," the pope wrote at the time in a letter presenting his announcement to the world's bishops.  [unfortunately, a priest, with initials GD think it is harmful and that the TLM will be used for political purposes.  Bah-humbug!]

Pope Benedict made it clear that he was acting in part to promote reconciliation with the disaffected traditionalists of the Society of St. Pius X, who had broken from Rome to protest some of the teachings of Vatican II and subsequent changes to the liturgy.

Last month, following three years of on-again, off-again talks, the Vatican announced that the traditionalists had been offered formal terms of reconciliation. Though the SSPX has warned of persistent "doctrinal difficulties" that could prolong negotiations, Cardinal Burke has told Catholic News Service that he believes a reunion will ultimately take place.  [for as long as radical liturgists and political cardinals are kept at bay!]

But satisfying the demands of the traditionalists was not Pope Benedict's only purpose in issuing "Summorum Pontificum." The pope wrote that he acted in order to "preserve the riches which have developed in the church's faith and prayer, and to give them their proper place."  [Which these liturgists think is garbage?  Why?  Because it is not their typical office desk liturgy, a Mass that has been the product of their classroom experiment, where?  in Bukidnon and San Beda?  Owwww....]

In the same letter, the pope also affirmed that the older and newer versions of the Mass could be "mutually enriching." For Cardinal Burke, such mutual enrichment is part of the so-called "reform of the reform," the process of repairing the deficiencies of the liturgy introduced under Pope Paul VI.


The reform of the Roman Missal in the period following Vatican II was "too radical," and "went beyond, and in some senses perhaps not completely coherently with, what the council fathers had set forth," the cardinal says.  [Did the Benedictine or his padawans think so this way?  Nah!  They just celebrated SC.]

“There was a stripping away, a changing of the form of the rite that in my judgment was too much,” he added as he commented on the liturgical changes that followed the Second Vatican Council. “You can't take a living reality, the worship of God as God has desired that we worship him, and tamper with it without doing violence and without in some way damaging the faith life of the people.”  [Look at the kind of inculturation we had after Vatican II, as if inculturation was not done before Vatican II.  Hello!  Look at the Sinulog!]

The use of Latin was far from the most important loss, the cardinal says, noting that even the newer form of the Mass is still regularly celebrated in the church's universal language.

Among the other elements of tradition that Cardinal Burke hopes the church eventually will restore to the Mass in its newer version are the opening prayers at the foot of the altar, which he says provide an "immediate tie-in" to the liturgy's Jewish heritage: the psalms once sung by the high priest in the temple in Jerusalem.  [I still could not get it why the prayers at the foot of the altar have been removed by the liturgical wrecknovator aka Annibale Bugnini when nowhere in Sacrosanctum Concilium does it say.  Oh, wait, they'll use the stupid excuse of removing the excesses.  Yeah, as if the inculturation brouhaha isn't.]

Other features of the Tridentine Mass that the cardinal would welcome in the newer liturgy include the priest softly reciting the prayers before Communion, a period of near-silence that, he explains, "draws our attention to this most sacred part of the Holy Mass"; and the closing recitation of the prologue of the Gospel of St. John, a "hymn to the redemptive incarnation" that "sets in your mind once again the great reality which you have encountered and in which you have participated."  [Have you noticed that almost all of that which calls the sense of the sacred is immediately stripped off from the newer form of the Mass?  But hey!  Don't think I do not attend the New Mass.  I attend both.  Remember....I AM A SECRET SSPX SUPPORTER  *with echoing sound effect*]

On the other hand, Cardinal Burke says, the practice of reading scriptural passages in modern languages has been a "tremendous gift" of the post-Vatican II liturgy that should be incorporated in the Tridentine Mass. [It is actually being done even before the liturgical revolution of Vatican II.] And he says that the newer version of the Mass, in which the priest typically faces the congregation, can encourage a deeper appreciation of the "transparent devotion" with which priests should celebrate both forms of the liturgy.  [Unfortunately, making the priest face the people gave a lot of bad things.  Case in point:  More narcissistic priests.]

Of course, for the two forms of the Mass to enrich each other, both must be available. But after half-century of neglect, the cardinal notes, there is a shortage of priests with any knowledge of Latin, not to mention experience with the older liturgy, a problem which he says calls for revising seminary curricula. [are the seminary superiors or bishops addressing this?  Nah.  Better address the issue of mining.  Right CBCP?]

In the meantime, the cardinal counsels patience to traditionalists who feel "embattled" when well-meaning bishops cannot satisfy their demands quickly enough.

"It would be improper and even offensive to our Lord," he says," to have someone offering the Mass who doesn't know what he's saying or doesn't even know how to say it."



***

Summorum Pontificum was issued on July 7, 2007 or 07-07-07.  Easy to remember, right?

And still after 5 years what has happened?

Bishops are still apprehensive often pressuring priests who have celebrated the TLM, to either stop it or by assigning them to far off parishes.

Some bishops are even bullied themselves.  Hello Fr. Geny!

Yeah, I know what you did last summer.

Sayang!  Would love to have a recording of that phone call and sent it to Cardinal Burke.

Well, folk's unfortunately, some priests think they know better than the pope.  They'll tell you to not believe Benedict XVI since he is no liturgist.  Yeah, as if Bugnini was.  So it came down to a battle of degrees.

Poor Thomas Aquinas.  Poor Pius V.  Poor Gherardini.   They do not possess a degree in liturgy.

Fr. Anscar does.  But wait!  His is a doctorate in theology with a specialization in liturgy.  It ain't strictly a degree in liturgy!

A Filipino Jesuit does have a doctorate in liturgy.

But do they listen to him?

The Pope....they don't.....Bah!