Ed Pentin has publihed an interesting piece on what Canonists are saying about the present state of liturgical matters in the Latin Church.
I am going to republish some paragraphs which I drafted on December 16; and then updated and published on December 19.
I am pushing all this under your noses again because I believe it is important for Christians not to lie.
The current regime resorts to lying whenever it suits. A particularly disgraceful example is PF's July insistence that his decree Traditionis custodes should come into effect the morning immediately after its publication, followed by Roche's December assertion that the Bishops should have been putting into effect a differing (Latin) version for the previous five months.
Traditionis custodes is dated 16 July 2021. Roche's Responsa ad Dubia is dated 4 December 2021 but actually, I think, emerged on 18 December 2021.
I am not querying the right of a pope to change his mind and to issue a changed version of one of his own edicts. That would then constitute a new juridical act; a change in the law. What I regard as evil and scandalous is for Roche to rewrite history with the effect that any bishop who did put Traditionis cusodes into effect the morning after it emerged in July, is declared in December to be have been a Very Naughty Boy because he did not follow a Latin text which had not, at that time, yet been confected.
Or is it Roche's view that (whatever a pope may say) a papal edict is not legally effective until the Latin text is issued? That would be interesting!
SO HERE IS MY POST FROM DECEMBER 19 2021 ABOUT TRADITIONIS CUSTODES
Readers will recall that the nastiest and most spiteful Article was 4: which required that a priest ordained after the promulgation of the Motu proprio and who wishes to celebrate the Authentic Use of the Roman Rite must send a formal petition to his Bishop who, before granting it, "shall consult the Apostolic See".
Nastier and nastier: in the 'new' Latin version, consult is changed to "will ask for (rogabit) a licentia from the Holy See". I have checked the other Modern Language versions: they all, like the English, had consultiert; consultera; consultera. But 'consulting' implies a certain equality of standing between parties. That's not the Bergoglian ethos. Down on your knees! And be quick about it!
So, in the latest Responsa, the word CONSULT, present in all those vernacular versions, is changed. I should have written "eliminated." Indeed, CONSULTATION is now off the table. "This is not merely a consultative opinion, but a necessary authorisation given to the diocesan Bishop by the CDW." We are informed that "the Latin text ... is the official text to be referenced".
Quite how bishops were supposed to "reference"a Latin text which, until a few days ago, had not appeared, readers may wonder.
There has clearly been a policy decision to tighten up. To stop up a loophole.
But Roche and his aides cannot admit this. In Bergoglian culture, the principle is "Lie whenever possible. Truth is only for fools." The generous mendacity of PF, carefully picked up and emulated by his Roches, is perhaps the most disgraceful feature of this pontificate.
We were told that the reestablishment of episcopal control over liturgy is one of the principles of Tc. A very senior curial official significantly remarked " ... not, of course, control by conservative bishops". With this new Latin text, now reinforced by the Responsa, a bishop cannot even give a liturgical permission to his most junior curate without grovelling to some curial pen-pusher. Mere 'consultation' has gone out of the window ... it is not strong enough.
Who'd be a bishop during this imperious Byzantine dictatorship?
As far as clergy who already celebrate the real Roman Rite are concerned (Article 5), the previous texts talked about them seeking authorisation; autorizzatione; autorizacion; gennehmigung. This has now become licentiam rogabunt. It is not now good enough for a bishop to give one of his priests a pastoral intimation of his consent. He now needs to embody it in formal garb.
In Article 3: 1, a Bishop is now required to check that groups using the Authentic Use accept the auctoritatem of the novel post-conciliar rites. In the vernacular versions, this Article read validity; validita; validez; gueltigkeit. This is even true of a quotation of these words within the Responsa. In other words, when it suits the authors of the Responsa, they cheerfully quote the vernacular versions of the Motu proprio, forgetting that in their recently concocted Latin version they had changed the text to auctoritatem.
Validity and Auctoritas are quite simply not the same thing. I have no trouble accepting that the Conciliar rites fulfil all the theological requirements for validity. Given the papal acts of promulgation, they probably even have liceity. But to claim that they possess auctoritas is sheer nonsense. A Roman Pontif may indeed proclaim, announce, and define twice a day for a year that the Moon is made of Gorgonzola cheese, but ...
So the new tinkered version of Tc, followed by the more recent Responsa, are full of nasty snivelling bits of dishonesty designed to make them, at every turn, an even nastier document.
More lies: the Responsa assert that the old liturgical books have been abrogated. Since Benedict XVI said in 2007 that they had not been abrogated, Roche and his fellow conspirators need to explain to us when, and by whom (since Benedict XVI made that statement in 2007) the "abrogating"was done. Or he should withdraw this contrafactual assertion. It is not sufficient just to keep mouthing the same untruth, without giving any justification.
Roche now claims that the reformed liturgy is "the primary source of spirituality for the Christian life". It appears even to be "a condition for salvation." Dear me. Bad news for members of the sui iuris Oriental Catholic Churches. Bad news for the Dominicans. Bad news for the Ordinariates (I wonder when the bullies will get round to us?).
Roche's advice to seminarians is that "It is ... absolutely essential that priests ordained after the publication of the Motu Proprio share this desire of the Holy Father". "Absolutely essential"?? Do these people have no sense of the meaning of words? Has it ever previously been asserted, with regard to any previous pope, that it "absolutely essential" for any Christian to share his desires?
But there is one point at which something different has happened ... something rather intriguing. Article 7 of the new Latin version of the decree.
The new Latin version talks about the two dicasteries which will exercise the authority of the Holy See observantiae harum dispositionum invigilantes ... watching over, keeping an eye on, the observance of Tc. And the other modern language versions also expressed the same idea of watching over (vigilando; wachen). But the English version eliminated the suggestion that the two dicasteries would be super-snoopers. It read " ... exercise the authority of the Holy See with respect to the observance of these provisions".
This is what I think happened.
The Decree was drafted in Italian or Spanish. The Italophones and the Hispanophones, brought up on the purest milk of Peronist dogma and praxis, had of course no problem about the idea of two dicasteries acting like Stasi agents, snooping around in their battered trilbies jotting down incriminating information about bishops and clergy who are, in terms of rigid Bergoglian ideology, off- message.
But then Somebody Anglophone in the CDW looked at the texts, and remarked: "Er ... English people don't much like spies and sneaks and the Gestapo and informers and tell-tales and lickspittles. Um, er, we'd better tone the English version down a bit."
You're dead right, Sunshine. We don't.
Father, thank you so much for this analysis. What are your thoughts on 'LEX orandi' and 'LEGIS orandi' in article one of TC ?
ReplyDeleteIt seems that abrogation was done by Pope Francis himself on July 16, 2021. In the accompanying letter he expressed such intention, and apparently he thinks that by combination art.1 and art.8 of his motu proprio he has done exactly that, i.e., abrogated every norm and custom since St. Peter that might give a pretext to use the ancient Roman rite.
ReplyDeletePerhaps Cardinal Roche would say that it is the combination of Articles 1 and 8 of TC that abrogates all earlier “Libri liturgici” except for the limited uses allowed by TC.
ReplyDeleteArt. 1. Libri liturgici a sanctis Pontificibus Paulo VI et Ioanne Paulo II promulgati, iuxta decreta Concilii Vaticani II, unica expressio “legis orandi” Ritus Romani sunt
Art. 8. Normae, dispositiones, concessiones et consuetudines antecedentes, quae conformes non sint cum harum Litterarum Apostolicarum Motu Proprio datarum praescriptis, abrogantur
Statement from the FSSP
ReplyDelete"The recent document from the Congregation for Divine Worship released on December 18th does not directly address the former Ecclesia Dei communities such as the Priestly Fraternity of St. Peter who possess their own proper law.
The members of the Fraternity of St. Peter promised to be faithful to our Constitutions at the time of our admittance into the Fraternity, and we remain committed to exactly that: fidelity to the Successor of Peter and the faithful observance of the “liturgical and disciplinary traditions” of the Church in accordance with the provisions of the Motu Proprio Ecclesia Dei of July 2, 1988, which is at the origin of our foundation. The superiors of the Priestly Fraternity will be studying the document more closely while maintaining our ministry to the faithful entrusted to our care."
Confound their politics,
ReplyDeleteFrustrate their knavish tricks,
On Thee our hopes we fix,
O save us all.
Amen
DeleteThis whole campaign against the immemorial tradition of the Church is basically an admission that the new rites are bankrupt; otherwise, there would not be the need to try to force them down our throats.
ReplyDeleteOther than that, mendacity seems to be the hallmark, not only of this pontificate, but of the post-conciliar human element of the Church in general.
Popes can be mistaken, so Papa Ratzinger was inaccurate in saying that the 1962 Missal had never been abrogated (if that is what he said). The decree of promulgation of Inter oecumenici explicitly replaces the rubrics, which then were published in editio typica. Now whether Tres abhinc annos was similarly decreed in 1967, I am not sure. And even less sure about Quattuor abhinc annos in 1984, which may have rescinded the abrogation!
ReplyDeleteThe 1967 gave us in England six years of stability before the NO was implemented in Advent 1973. And of course we had the 'Agatha Christi indult' which allowed continued, restricted, use of the 1967 Missal.
"Who'd be a bishop during this imperious Byzantine dictatorship?" Puts a whole new twist to caeseropapism. Or is it papalocaeserism? Either way, I'm off of the blended stuff. Single malt only going forward now.
ReplyDelete
ReplyDeleteA few points:
1. Despite the constant reference to Vat II, there is no mandate in Sacrosanctum Concilium that mass be in the vernacular and/or versus populum.
2. The preoccupation with whethrr those attending the TLM consider the Novus Ordo valid is laughable.
A Pew poll in the US some months ago found that of all US Catholics, only 1/3 believe in the Eucharist the bread and wine become the Body and Blood of Christ.
The poll also showed that among US Catholics who regularly attend mass only 2/3 believe the bread and wine become the Body and Blood of Christ.
In the past 40 years I have known many who prefer the TLM, regularly attending when possible. I have only met one man, a Microbiologist now dead, who considered the NO invalid. When I refuted him, he said that was St Thomas' argument. My reply was that it was, now tell me what's wrong with it.
The upshot is that there is likely a greater percentage among those attending the TLM who consider the NO valid than there is among regular NO attendees.
3. The incompetence of the author(s) of these past two documents is striking. They are products of people who don't seem able to compose a coherent paragraph. They also seem, like certain others, unaware that it's no longer 1975.
Which raises another point: If Abp Roche was never a clandestine progressive, who recommended him to BXVI as the Sec of Rites and Sacraments? Was it Bertone?
I was brought up in the authentic Roman Rite;I was 16 yrs old when the novus ordo was introduced, and was shocked by it, and even more so by all the aberrations which quickly followed its introduction. Soon however I entered a Collegium in Roma, Italy where the novus ordo had not been introduced: mons Lefebvre had spent a year living there before going to Econe, and had greatly influenced the staff. In 1978 I was ordained priest - with the needed dispensations - at 22, just two weeks short of age 23. I often thought of going to Econe, but never did, fearful of the taint of "schism". How i wish that i had left Roma for Econe! As a young priest, after finishing licentiate studies and having left the Collegium, it was impossible to celebrate public Mass according to the very recently banned authentic Roman rite. I did celebrate privately, in the chapel of the Radio Vaticana, and for a time also in one of the chapels of Santa Maria Maggiore. Eventually even this became impossible to keep up and I stopped celebrating, having accepted a secular position. In 1999, having been granted a pension for life due to eye problems, I went to live in northern Europe and once sgain began celebrating the authentic Roman Mass in public, travelling around the country on sundays, celebrating fir several groups. Since 2006 I am so lucky as to be a volunteer priest on a permanent basis, acting in any liturgical function as required - attacged to a personal parish of the Old Rite in the city where I live. This great grace was due to Pope Benedict XVI, whose greatest deed as pope was to give us back the authentic Roman Liturgy and the faith of our fathers, which it celebrates. Perhaps you can imagine his distressed and saddened and angry I am, that I, and so many others like me, whom I know and care for, who love the authentic liturgy and experience that foretaste of the heavenly Kingdom which only the authenticly catholic liturgical rites can bestow, are for 8 years now being increasingly threatened to have it all taken away. Sometimes I wish that I had been born into the Eastern Orthodox Church, where the Divine Liturgy is still properly understood to be an unchangeable constituent part of Holy Tradition, a precious reflection of and the chief expression of the Sacred Deposit of Faith. Whereas the Roman Church seems now to have arrived at the abysmal end of an unhealthy papocentric development, which under the present (anti)pope, shows itself in all its destructive, apostatic, globalistic, neomarxist, revolutionary, hypocritical, mendacious, hateful, totalitarian horror. Adveniant tempora meliora!
ReplyDelete'English people don't much like spies and sneaks and the Gestapo and informers and tell-tales and lickspittles.' But that doesn't stop some. As Damian Thompson points out, the ghastly Austen Ivereigh is doing exactly that, trying to force Archbishop Stack to shut down the traditional Mass at Ledbury by threatening to shop him to Rome. Will there be a special department devoted to scrutinising parish bulletins?
ReplyDeleteHere is a telling point form someone on Twitter who goes by the name of Catherine, Constantly @ConstantCate
"(a) Vatican II is not a rupture in the church and the faith remains unchanged
(b) the post-VII Mass is an expression of that faith
(c) the pre-VII Mass is not an expression of that faith
You can't expect people to be convinced of (a) and (b) when you're also telling them (c)."
I know how folks are feeling, so I did enable a comment which referred to PF as '(anti)pope'. This Blog is resolutely opposed to any such thinking. In future, I shall continue my long-time policy of NOT enabling comments which drop such hints.
ReplyDelete"Bad news for the ordinariates". How bad? The logic of the attack on variety of liturgies would seem to include them. However action against them might be too much a direct repudiation of the work of the present pope's predecessor.
ReplyDeleteE Sapelion commented above that "Popes can be mistaken, so Papa Ratzinger was inaccurate in saying that the 1962 Missal had never been abrogated (if that is what he said)."
ReplyDeleteIt is certainly what he said or at least that is what letter to the Bishops on the occasion of Summorum Pontificum says in the opening sentence of the fourth paragraph.
Popes can certainly be wrong but the question here is whether Pope Benedict was observing a fact or rendering a decision. If it was the latter, then he was obviously right, since the determination of that question belonged to him alone as the Summus Pontifex. If the former then I would argue he was right there too, since to outlaw a valid rite of Apostolic origin is a theological impossibility. However, I won't insist on the latter point too strongly, since that is a question that will be settled by people voting with their feet over time, without ecclesiastical or papal Canutes being able to do much about it, in the long run.
I agree with Éamonn that popes can, and both JPII and BXVI did, authorise use of the 1962 Missal. My minor quibble is that the 1962 Missal was formally replaced in 1965 when the rubrics were revised, so that there was from 7 March 1965 a revised Missal duly and canonically published as the sole form (albeit not printed in a single volume). And again in 1967, the rubrics were revised, and the whole Missal permitted in either Latin or the vernacular (authorised translations). That then became the sole authorised form, and remained so in England until 1973. Now that Missal was permitted by indult in various circumstances, at least until 1984 when permission to use 1962 was given by authority of JPII. It is thus absolutely clear that from 1965 to 1984 use of 1962 as it stood was unlawful.
ReplyDeletePer Council of Trent,every post 1951 "liturgical alteration" and it's legislators are condemned to Hell.
DeleteTalk about out of the frying pan and into the fire.
ReplyDeleteTo see one church collapse in one’s lifetime may be counted unfortunate; to see two…
A great weariness steals over me at the deeds of these clerics. I begin to wonder how long Latin Christianity can possibly be considered a believable religion in any sense of the term. If it was true, how could it be so ridiculous? Those who are meant to guard its treasures and watch over the faithful, work openly to destroy both… If you hired someone to hollow out an organisation, would it look any different to the past 50 years? (The past 5 especially.) And is it tenable to consider the Papacy a rock (so often the reason given by Anglican converts)? It treats us worse than any successor of St A did.
Sometimes I wonder if it was clever for so many ACs to flee the CofE since 1992 - it hastened that church’s ruin decades before its time, and propped up dying vocationless Roman dioceses for little reward and small thanks. The end result is the English people receive less Catholic witness and ministry than ever before, while the core of Anglo Catholic treasure now survives at the whim of a tyrant in Rome. The bourgeois Irish backbone of the RCs in England got a few decades more of having a priest - reward for doing naff all to help the Faith - but that’s about it.
I suppose maybe there were no good options. But the current state of affairs is unexpectedly appalling.
I am not a theologian nor an attorney. By education and avocation, my competence is Western History. It is quite clear that the intent of Edward VI, through Cranmer and others, that the break from Rome was to affiliate in an authoritative and theological manner with European Protestantism. In consonance with that action, rites and rubrics were severed from the Roman Catholic Church. Pope Leo XIII absolutely came to the right decision regarding the validity of Anglican orders. The establishment of the Ordinariate was to provide a remedy to the invalid orders by returning to the status quo ante of 1535. In view of the changes in the Anglican Church, especially since 1930, it would seem that those few Anglicans desiring to be members of an Apostolic congregation should consider the opportunity available to them through the Ordinariate. This would seem to settle the theological issues that are currently in question. As far as Masses, rites and form are concerned, these are clearly within the governing authority of the Pontiff as long as the essentials of the intended sacraments are maintained. I realize the changes promulgated by this administration have caused some difficulty with some in the pews, but we are an hierarchical organization and not every decision made is going to satisfy everyone. My personal view is that Rome would be well advised to listen a bit more to the laity and factor their concerns into future matters of Church functions.
ReplyDeleteÉamonn remarked that “to outlaw a valid rite of Apostolic origin is a theological impossibility”. Is this true? I hope it is. Has it been discussed and worked out by theologians? Or does it hang only on Pius V's two hundred years rule, or Benedict XVI's "what earlier generations held as sacred"?
ReplyDeleteHowever. It seems that the Novus Ordo, the “current” liturgical books, _are_ the (current) Roman Rite. For those who hold this position, there is no question of outlawing any valid rite, just of using the current revision of the books. Benedict XVI's “form” language unfortunately only papers over this question: is there a new Rite now, or a revision?
I have not seen any suggestion that the Ordinariate rite, or the Rite of Zaire are “revisions of the Roman Rite”. Is there any such suggestion? So surely those “Rites” are unlikely to come under the same hammer.
Judging from the amount of “difference” between successive revisions in the past (e.g. 1634 vs 1884) and between the ritual and books of different rites (Dominican, Roman, Ambrosian, Ordinariate, etc) it seems (to me, worth little) only a matter of obvious fact that the Novus rite is _not_ the Apostolic Roman Rite. But unless that's acknowledged “officially” and begins to be accepted, the traditional form seems destined to end.
jn: It was either Chesterton or Belloc who said that what convinced him of the divine origin of the Church was that any any human institution so appallingly managed could not have survived as long!
ReplyDeleteWell great.
ReplyDeleteI'm not RC, but for the sake of the Church I'd rather the Pope and his men not be lying liars who lie.
Albertus: Things are not always so good in the East, either. Here in the U.S.A.- perhaps in Lebanon also, the Maronites have adopted quite a bit of Novus Ordo dreck. I met one of their seminarians several years ago who told me that he might be considered unsound if he were caught wearing a cassock.
ReplyDelete