Pope Francis breaks his silence!
A "In authorising regular use of the older Mass, now referred to as the 'extraordinary form', now retired Pope Benedict XVI was 'magnanimous' toward those attached to the old liturgy, he [Pope Francis] said. 'But it is an exception'.
B "Pope Francis told Father Spadaro he wonders why some young people, who were not raised with the old Latin Mass, nevertheless prefer it. 'And I ask myself: why so much rigidity? Dig dig, this rigidity always hides something, insecurity or even something else. Rigidity is defensive. True love is not rigid'".
Marvellously magnificent stuff from the Roman Pontiff!!! I'll try to get in with my comments on it before Fr Z does with his!! Here goes:
A This is splendid: an authoritative declaration that the word "extraordinary" means "exceptional". Let us hope that an appropriate Authority very soon makes it clear that the employment of "Extraordinary Ministers of Holy Communion" must only ever be a tremendously rare "exception". Perhaps a simple rule such as this would suffice: "Extraordinary Ministers of Holy Communion may only be used in parishes in which there is at least one Sunday Mass in the Extraordinary Form." Could anything be more equitable than that? Anything more ad mentem Summi Pontificis?
B This is even better!!! Liturgical "rigidity ... always hides something"!! After Cardinal Sarah made his splendid and exemplary call for a return to versus Orientem, various hierarchs whom out of respect I am most certainly not going to name got very excited about his words, and even mistranslated some Latin in their Rigid anxiety to discourage clergy from taking His Eminence's laudable advice. So, if we are to assume consistency on his part, Pope Francis thinks that hierarchs with a "rigidity" about liturgical Orientation, are "insecure"!!!
Now: here's a diverting question for readers to mull over. Our beloved Holy Father, having asserted that the "Liturgically Rigid" may be "insecure", gives as an alternative: "or even something else". What is this "even something else", which is clearly "even" worse than "insecurity"? Is he suggesting that the "Liturgically Rigid" may be guilty of a tendency towards Homicide? Or Pride? Or Racism? Or Idolatry? Or Theft? Or Paedophilia? Or Genocide? Or Dishonesty? Or Grinding the Faces of the Poor? Or merely the preferred sin of this pontificate, Adultery?
I think we should be told! I am certainly very keen to know of what, without even knowing it, I am probably, in the Holy Father's view, guilty!! So, surely, are those hierarchs who are with such "rigidity" opposed to versus Orientem!!!
Dig! Dig!
This "rigidity" nonsense really is a very sad throwback to the '70's and '80's and shows how out of touch some of the establishment are with where the world is now.
ReplyDeleteI won't dwell on the "rigidity" of those who would attempt to impose the dissolubility of marriage upon the Church despite the opposition of the majority of Cardinals, the Synod of Bishops and the constant Magisterium going back to the words of Our Lord Himself. Is that not a more worthy example of the rigidity of an ideologue rather than mere fidelity to the faith we have received from the apostles?
What an ignorant and hostile mentality is displayed in these words by Pope F.
ReplyDeleteYou know, I like church roofs and church floors and steeples and, yes, even the walls, to be rigid. It hides the gloomy sky or oppressive sun alike much better.
ReplyDeleteI like my coffee cup to be rigid, too. Much more freedom to drink it, that way. Perhaps it better hides the heat of the coffee from my lap?
Let's see, what else... oh, the ground! There's something terrifying about the way the ground gets irritable and runny sometimes, as it did in Norcia recently.
Walking sticks.
Organ pipes (or rather... these should be elastic, but... you know, if they're vibrating past the visually-rigid range, they don't sound as clean). Airplane fuselages and wings get a similar story.
I will confess: It was a great, hidden insecurity which led me to convert to the Catholic Church. I had become insecure, doubtful, about my approach to life. I was pretty sure I was giving Caesar his due, but was I giving unto God what is due to Him? My hidden doubt led me to the Catholic Church to seek the perfect offering to give to God.
ReplyDeleteI attended the parish closest to my home before actually converting and, before I knew it, doubt and insecurity set in again! If Catholics believed in the substantial presence of Christ in the host, in the Eucharist, then why didn’t they act like it? Why was the priest always grinning out at a congregation that behaved more like an audience than a group united in prayer? Why did the songs sound more like a theme song from a pre-schooler’s favorite cartoon than a song that inspired reverence and contemplation? And why did the sermon remind me of the “I’m okay, you’re okay” pop-psychology answer to anxiety?
I further confess that I soon realized that I was harboring an even greater hidden fear, and to dig a little deeper, hatred (!!!), yes hatred, of error and sin! I realized a horrible, hidden truth: I had become convinced that I could not overcome error and sin on my own, much less according to the theology and musical setting of local Mass songs like "Awesome God" or "All Are Welcome."
To draw from scripture and Card. Ratzinger’s homily of 18 April 2005, even before I had actually converted to the Church, and at the hands of the local liturgists, I was being "tossed here and there, carried about by every wind of doctrine" (Eph 4: 14)!
Pope Francis is right! I am weak on my own! I needed a shelter, a house built on the rock. In the stormy seas of my hidden weaknesses, I made my way to the Tridentine Mass, full of fear and hate and insecurity but sheltered from the storm.
Pope Francis has justified what he said quoting St Vincent of Lerins: 'Ita etiam christianae religionis dogma sequatur has decet profectuum leges, ut annis scilicet consolidetur, dilatetur tempore, sublimetur aetate' I do wish he would not pester us with this Latin mumbo-jumbo.
ReplyDeleteIt gets worse. According to Wikipedia St Vincent has been accused of Semi-pelagianism which I thought was a real no-no for his Holiness. And the article goes on to say: "Vincent upheld tradition and seemed to have objected to much of Augustine's work as "new" theology". Obviously not an example to follow.
Although I am, due to my misspent youth and half my adulthood, very knowledgable about Catholicism, I have not participated for many years. Yet I retain an instinctual sympathy for anyone in the deluded and tattered West who loves their tradition and who knows who they really are, resisting the Great Levelling and Erasure.
ReplyDeleteThat said, I repeat my sad sympathy for you and your Anglicanorum Coetibus brethren, who must be in a constant state of dissonance and pain over the antics of the incumbent of the Throne of St Peter. Escaping the self-sabotaged wreck of the Church of England, you were welcomed at the Flaminian Gate by the estimable Benedict of Regensburg, only to find --horribili dictu--that the Lady of the House is one Pastor Bergoglio, from a suburb of a Latin American town whose name escapes me.
I know that you have a policy which forbids certain kinds of small, venal and uncharitable remarks against the Roman Pontiff and so I will just let you know that whatever I have to say about him is forbidden by your wise and very adult attitude. I suspect your restraint has cost you much.
I will, however, recount a small tale from my seminary days in Rome in the 70s. A Latin American priest of vast liberationist and egalitarian sympathies use to purposely wear his vestments askew and walk down the side aisle of the church to enter the sanctuary at Mass, all in protest against domineering priestcraft and hierarchical oppression. He was big (and loud) on lay ministry and liberation theology. Etc. You doubtless know the type.
One day, homesick for New York and wearied by the complex etiquette of an Italian pranzo, with its sets of plates and courses, I decided to eat my secondo piatto on the same piatto as my primo. Father Che spied this and from across the other side of the refectory marched over, grabbed my plate and lectured me in front of all the brethren about my disrespect for culture and custom.
It crystallizes everything you need to know about such people. "La Tradizione, sono io."
Again, you have my sincere condolences. But take comfort, as I am sure you do,in the truth of "sic transit gloria mundi" one of the many unwise excisions from the papal coronation rite. Or in a less elegant frame, in the appreciative banner which the wittily nasty medieval Romans hung outside the house of a papal physician on the death of his unloved and very unvirtuous patient, "Ecce qui tollit peccata mundi."
Perhaps I am cruising too close to the brink there. As Meister Eckhart noted, "All suffering comes to an end."
Kyrie eleison
ReplyDeleteSurely an insistent preference for the Novus Ordo must also be considered rigidity. And given that, as 'True love is not rigid', to show love those who prefer the Novus Ordo must not only be open to others preferring the Usus Antiquior but also be willing to attend/celebrate it themselves. Truly this love business can be a double-edged sword!
ReplyDeleteMore vexing words from the current Pontiff, what are we to make of these sentiments?
ReplyDeleteI wonder what he would say about the Ordinariate rite,more rigidity one assumes?
These times are so perplexing.I work surrounded by fans of the current Pontiff ,good well meaning folks who, at times like this, I feel a million miles from.
Does he not consider the hurt/confusion/bewilderment and pain such comments have?
THE
ReplyDeleteHOLY
MASS
The Holy Mass that cannot die
Was said amidst the oaks
While pin-oak leaves came floating down
Around the simple folks
Who knelt upon the acorn floor
All dotted nutty brown
The acorns cracked and old knees snapped
Yet still there was no sound...
But the tinkling of the golden bells
As the White Host Son rose high
On priestly limbs like mighty oaks
They branched up to the sky
And in that wood I laughed with joy
Amongst the souls bowed down
For the mighty oak was once a nut
That RIGIDLY held its ground.
So good young souls like acorn nuts
Must burrow all around
And be the seeds that sprout new oaks
O’er old bad men earth bound...
Where the Holy Mass, that cannot die
Is said around the oaks
While pin-oak leaves come floating down
For the WHOLE Faith, Catholic folks!
Pope Francis says he tenderly and mercifully gazes into the eyes of sinners as he accompanies them.........
ReplyDeletePope Francis said about sodomy that, "If they are seeking the Lord who am I to judge."
I guess all that applies if you are killing babies by abortion or committing heinous acts of sodomy but if you like to worship God with reverence and you take the commandments seriously the hammer of Francis gazing-tender-accompanying mercy only has judgment, mocking, stereotyping, and vicious words for you.
Futhermore, if his recent interview is to be believed, the Pope believes that the perfect parish would be composed of Communists who love the Novus Ordo. Or maybe it is Communist priests who perform the Novus Ordo with Extraordinary Ministers. Or maybe the perfect mass is performed by Ex-priests who are Communists who celebrate the Novus Ordo. I take it that the 100 million the Communists killed are probably because THOSE communists all liked the extraordinary form, which made them too rigid. It's nice to have a Pope that is perfectly clear on these matters.
ReplyDeleteAbandon any hope of clarification since it's not really his style :) He's more of a "make-a-mess" pope.
ReplyDeleteWhat is more Pharasaically rigid than creating a whole new set of {environmental} sins which no many may avoid committing just by breathing?
ReplyDeleteWould that we could have a world wide gathering of priests and bishops to bring some doctrinal and pastoral sanity to the current situation in the Church.
Dig, dig! You will find something wrong with all of them.
ReplyDeleteThis latest outburst is not even worthy of being called demagogic. Feeble-minded is more accurate.
These words of Pope F betray the "hermeneutics of suspicion" that B16 warned about.
ReplyDeleteMany what seemed parallel events in the last 2-3 years now seem to converge. The impression beginning to form is that politics of the left is the church of the left, and the church of the left is the politics of the left - manifesting increasingly in cult psychology.
I am increasingly convinced that the Team F are a cabal of leftists whose aim is suffocating tradition and lobotomizing the Church.
ReplyDelete
ReplyDeleteI awoke one morning to suddenly perceive with absolute clarity that what Pope Francis believes the Catholic Faith to be and what I believe the Catholic Faith to be are irreconcilable. What Francis has in his favour is that he is the Pope. What I have in my favour is that I believe in what the Church has always believed and has handed down to me. May the Lord have mercy on both of us. Amen.
Come now, Father HH cannot possibly be accusing traditionalists of grinding the faces of the poor since he recently embraced Maduro who rules a land where toilet paper, medicines and baby milk are unobtainable except to Maduro and his cronies. I don't know the definition of this sin but I think that Sr. Maduro is nearer to being guilty of it than we are.
ReplyDeleteIt would more correctly described as extra-to the ordinary minister
ReplyDeleteWe need this Pope at this time. For 50 years Catholics have been subject to wild interpretations of various documents, alterations and many changes in practice and explained teaching and no discipline and it is time we had it all out, seeing who is Catholic and who isn't.
ReplyDeleteAs an ex-Lutheran I see Lutheran all over this Pope, as I do with the public expression of what I have seen in "novus ordo" Catholicism. But that doesn't mean he isn't useful to the Kingdom. Indeed, he is a light on the Church at this time.
That light he shines is good in flushing out all the Lutherans like him so they can be seen.
Sort of like turning the lights on in the kitchen of an Alabama diner at midnight. The cockroaches hide pretty well during the day, but at midnight they are all over the cutting boards and counters. Just takes the flick of a switch to see them, that's all.
He's a switch flicker.
Not likely to draw people away from the Novus Ordo with your uncharitable comments. Would die in a minute for the Catholic Faith. There are many signs of being a good Catholic...comparing us to roaches isn't one of them.
DeletePope Francis seems to be rather rigid in his statements/sentiments towards those he deems to be rigid.
ReplyDeleteCatechist Kev
"Dig, dig! You will find something wrong with all of them."
ReplyDeleteI'm depending on memory here but I believe this anecdote is from Solzhenitsyn's "Gulag Archipelago."
When Stalin purged the Communist Party of the Soviet Union in the 1930s one of the Bolsheviks found himself in the Lubyanka prison in Moscow. He could not understand why he was arrested by the NKVD secret police and protested that he was a loyal Bolshevik who had participated in the 1917 revolution. He said that the charges against him were false and that he was not an enemy of the revolution. The old revolutionary kept claiming his innocence to which his interrogator finally replied, "But comrade, you must be guilty of something."
Perhaps this an example of what the Pontiff mens when he says that, "... it is the communists who think like Christians."
When listening to many of our Bishops speak on the matter I am reminded of what St. Athanasius said, who was the first Doctor of the Church and known as the Father of Orthodoxy "The floor of hell is paved with the skulls of Bishops."
ReplyDelete"Who is going to save our Church? Not our Bishops, not our priests and religious. It is up to the people. You have the minds, the eyes, the ears to save the Church. Your mission is to see that your priests act like priests, your bishops like bishops and your religious act like religious” - Archbishop Fulton J. Sheen
"I want a Church that moves the world not one that moves with it." G.K. Chesterton
"There are many ways to fall but only one way to stand." - G.K. Chesterton
Perhaps a glance at Romans 14 might be good for him and his cohorts. If folks prefer the Latin Mass because they are weak or insecure or "rigid" (whatever that means) and the traditional Mass is helpful to them, then that is MORE reason, not less, to give it to them.
ReplyDeleteRigidity seems to be spreading: we had more people than ever at our local Latin Mass today, and the congregation was younger by far than that at the Ordinary Form Saturday Vigil Mass - and that was a First Communion Mass!
ReplyDeleteI will be singing a Latin Requiem Mass today, in Remembrance of (and praying for) those whose rigid adherence to their duty cost them their lives.
ReplyDeleteIn my sad rigidity, I will attempt to sing all the notes in the order on which they appear on the page; and all the rigid Latin texts as correctly as I can.
I will be singing a Latin Requiem Mass today, in Remembrance of (and praying for) those whose rigid adherence to their duty cost them their lives.
ReplyDeleteIn my sad rigidity, I will attempt to sing all the notes in the order on which they appear on the page; and all the rigid Latin texts as correctly as I can.
Je suis Rigid.
ReplyDeleteThe Special Snowflake of The Holy See
ReplyDeleteis unlike any Pope who came before he.
He holds the Keys and obedient must we be,
and not one can produce a just reason to flee.
Jesus is, has always been, and still is, the Head of His One True Holy Roman Catholic and Apostolic Church and St. Vincent of Lerins told us why those of us Blessed to be alive at this time (Yes, we ARE supposed to be alive as Catholics during this Papal Reign and we ARE Blessed because we get to prove we love God) are confronted by these challenges - It is the way God tests us to see if we love Him.
It was easy peasy to be a Trad Cath during the Pope Pius XII reign I was born into but were I to flee Communion with my local Bishop and Pope, what would I say when asked about that perfidy when I stand before the Judgment Seat of Christ?
I drank the chalice even after being tempted to flee in Gethsemane and you couldn't maintain communion with this Holy See? What then was all your blather about the lack of masculinity during the time you lived?
Je suis Rigid
ReplyDelete"There are many ways to break the rules of any genre: almost all of them are uninteresting and aesthetically unappealing. Geniuses need to know more, and to have this knowledge in a form that can control the generation of new ideas.”
ReplyDeleteFrom: P. N. Johnson-Laird, "Jazz Improvisation: A Theory at the Computational Level," in Representing Musical
Structure, ed. P. Howell, R. West, and I. Cross (San Diego, CA: Academic, 1991).
In other words, it is best to remain within the boundaries of "rigidity," unless one is a "genius" with sufficiently exhaustive knowledge to discern when some available benefit will truly justify an infraction.
Turning from musical improvisation to writing, some good advice from a beloved style manual:
"It is an old observation that the best writers sometimes disregard the rules of rhetoric. When they do so, however, the reader will usually find in the sentence some compensating merit, attained at the cost of the violation. Unless he is certain of doing as well, he will probably do best to follow the rules. After he has learned, by their guidance, to write plain English adequate for everyday uses, let him look, for the secrets of style, to the study of the masters of literature."
From: Strunk and White, The Elements of Style.
Pope Francis's aversion to "rigidity" may arise from a sense that sometimes necessity or opportunity demands departure from the rules. And for all I know he is indeed a "master," a "genius," who from brilliant intuition or learned judgement breaks the right rules at the right time for the right effects. (A colleague of mine felt that way about his prison foot-washing, for instance.)
But the far more likely outcome of such remarks is that people (priests) who are neither geniuses nor masters will feel that they must break rules lest they be thought rigid. I am reminded of those Protestants criticized by Martin Luther for imagining that the sum of the Gospel was scorning tradition and ceremonies, smashing statues and eating meat in Lent.
So it appears that the liturgy of the traditional Mass can be developed or reformed into the Novus Ordo but that same Novus Ordo cannot be developed or reformed.
ReplyDeleteThis has been explained before.
ReplyDeleteThe Gregorian Mass is the normal Catholic Mass. However other Rites are permitted such as those having existed for a certain time before. Also new Rites are permitted. Examples would be the Ordinariate, and the Pauline Mass as it was defined by Pope Paul but not the many unauthorised variations which we now find in the New Mass.
This was confirmed in 1570 in Quo Primum by Pius V.
Red alert, is Francis "the humble" threatening to ban the traditional Latin Mass??
ReplyDelete