There is a tacit assumption that licit Liturgy rests on a basis of Papal positive legislation. What he decrees, everybody has to do. When he changes his mind, the world must be deafened by the sound of bishops and presbyters all changing their minds. "Catholic Liturgy" is what he grants!!
The very word grants says it all.
Consummate rubbish. Liturgy rests upon Custom and Tradition, not the latest motu proprio on your computer. Or even a Rescriptum ex audientia Sanctissimi. No man on earth grants Liturgy to us.
No Pope did (because no Pope could) issue world-wide or general mandates regarding Liturgy before the invention of printing (in the middle of the 1400s).
I suppose that today's fanatical uebersuperhyperpapalists could argue that, nevertheless, the power so to legislate was tacitly incorporated in the Lord's mandate to S Peter, designed to lurk there unrecognised until, a millennium and a half later, the technological moment arrived for it to spring into action ...
... but, frankly, that is a theological fantasy-world whose daft sci-fi games I feel little interest in playing.
If only PF were to relocate to Mars and govern the obedient Martian sands with his fearsome decrees ...
The notion that we must all obey positive legislation was, I suspect, invented by the English Protestant regime in 1549 in order to impose Heresy. Which, ultimately, it succesfully did. The Evil One simply adores Liturgy which is by Motu or by Rescript or by Prescript. It enables him to display himself at his most effective.
But, earlier, there had ... I admit it ... been people who had views about Liturgy and Uniformity ... it's just that they weren't the popes! The Emperor Charlemagne was one of them. He wanted to establish in his own imperium Romanum redivivum the authentic Rite of the Urbs. Here is the description of Dom Gregory Dix of how he embarked upon this policy.
"Charlemagne therefore applied to the Pope Hadrian I, for an authentic copy ... as early as 781. The Pope was a busy man, and irritatingly uninterested in the great project of securing perfect uniformity throughout the West to the rite of his own see. No book arrived, and Charlemagne was forced to repeat his request. At last, somewhere between 785 and 793 the long-awaited copy came. After all this delay the book the Pope had sent turned out to be unusable as it stood for Charlemagne's purpose. Not only had the text been carelessly copied, but the book itself must have seemed to the emperor strangely defective. ... It is perhaps regrettable that history records no expression of Charlemagne's opinion of the Pope or his book when the latter was presented to him after getting on for ten years of expectation."
Yes!! Pope Hadrian was "irritatingly uninterested in the great project of securing perfect conformity to the rite of his own see"!
I don't think this delightfully lazy old gentleman is likely to have stamped around ranting and roaring about unicus usus!
He reminds me of an even earlier Pope, S Gregory the Great, who (according to S Bede) responded to a request from S Augustine of Canterbury. Augustine had discovered how diverse liturgical habits were, and wanted advice on how to regulate the worship of the new Anglo-Saxon Church. So Gregory explained to him that there was only one (unicus) usus of the Roman Rite and that Augustine should impose it ruthlessly. "Check the parish newsletters to ensure that they mention no diversity", he boomed. "Obey my words and do this before you had your breakfast croissant three weeks ago."
No; of course S Gregory didn't say anything like that at all. I don't even think he was aware that the Roman Church only had an unicus usus. I don't think the bergoglian supergod (the uebergott?) had revealed to him that the whole world had got to worship according to some unicus usus.
Bede claims that he replied ... ah ... how careless and carefree those popes were! ... "Ex singulis quibusque ecclesiis, quae pia, quae religiosa, quae recta sunt, elige ..."
5 comments:
Dear Father. Our Pope and Our Cross has, um, interesting personal proclivities, passions and prejudices. He is perfectly at home going to Sweden to celebrate 500 years of the Tradition of protestant revolution but he is not too keen on Catholic Tradition and praxis.
Our Pope and Cross happily participated in the Tradition of Protestant worship while doing his level best to suppress the worship of Catholic Tradition.
I think it safe to say that one is known best by what he does.
That is, he is a revolutionary whose suppression of the Holy Holocaust/Real Mass and his promotion of the Lil Licit Liturgy is a rear guard action in defending the revolution of the Second Vatican Council (It was a revolution because it over-turned the then existing order) even though the decisions taken at it are binding only insofar as they reiterate Tradition.
https://tinyurl.com/3vvetc85
We live in dark days indeed. Many priests, like myself, feel the bitter storm but know that
the Liturgy can never be used as an tool of ideology. We can say NO to that which departs
from Apostolic Tradition. The ancient rite perfectly reveals the Theology of the Mass and the Priesthood. This teaching we hold as a treasure which cannot be taken from us.
On another subject if I may.
I find it sad the Francis was so much a part of Pell's rite of burial.
But I have yet to hear him say anything about the murder of the bishop in LA. (unless I missed it).
This is not only Bede's claim, this figures in the letters of S. Gregory the Great, edited by Migne : PL LXXVII, Lib. XI, Indict. IV, Ep. LXIV (Ad 3. interr.) responsio beati Greg. papae, 1187.
And the Synod nonsense in the best of lights is meant to ratify Pope Gregory's insight-- ex singulis quibusque ecclesiis, quae pia, quae religiosa, quae recta sunt, elige...: instead we get... well, well.
dkpintar, The Pope has been waiting, perhaps, to see whether Mons O'C. was murdered by a husband who had been injured in the sanctity of his marriage; one never knows these days, alas. But the last I saw the police remained unsure of the motive: none of the reasons the murderer has been talking about 'made any sense to the investigators'. I may watch too many police serials but am pretty sure 'jealousy' occurs to the least able detective.
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