Thou shalt not pray for the pope ... nor for the Bishops ...

Is today, February 26, the Feast of an Apostle?  No; S Matthias was on the 24th. BUT this is a leap year ... so the Apostle should be observed on the correct number of days before the Kalends of February. BUT more: that would get him onto a Sunday in Lent, which would be very wicked indeed. So he gets transferred onto Monday the 26th of February.

I love these Feasts of the Apostles. But, on these days, I am nowadays sometimes slightly saddened by the recollection that, since 1970, most of my fellow presbyters of the Roman Rite have been forbidden ... YES!! ... FORBIDDEN ... to pray for the pope or for the hierarchy in the Preface of the Eucharistic Prayer. 

Before that year, the Praefatio of the Mass for Apostles begged God to grant that he would not desert his flock but would guard it through his blessed Apostles with continual protection; that she might be governed by those same helmsmen whom the Father had appointed as vicarious shepherds of his Work.  

('continual': one old manuscript entertainingly reads pervigili; God, literally, was asked not to nod off to sleep. You might justly fear that mixed metaphors of Shepherds and Helmsmen might have been confusing to some people ... but such minor details had long-since been smoothed away.)

However, in the post-conciliar disorders, this petition was struck out. It is no longer lawful in the Preface for a Novus Ordo priest to beg (suppliciter exorare) the Father for anything at all.

I find myself wondering: if this salutary petition had been retained and kept in the Preface, might the Church have been spared the terrible decades since the Council? Instead, there is not a single word of deprecation in the new Preface.

Another detail which is not without significance: in the formula which has replaced the old Preface, instead of the reference to "Vicars of your work", the unfortunate clergy concerned have been saddled with "Vicars of your Son", which I take to be an allusion to the phrase "Vicar of Christ", commonly applied to the Roman Pontiff.

And I think that phrase smells of Canon Law. Or am I being over-sensitive?

Do remember to thank God for Summorum Pontificum.