January-March 2008 |
Volume
13, Number 1 - Editorial |
|---|
As Oriens went to press, reports from Rome indicated that the Vatican will issue a new document clarifying the terms of Summorum Pontificum in which Pope Benedict XVI liberated the traditional Latin Mass.
The Vatican Secretary of State, Cardinal Tarcisio Bertone, told Italian magazine Famiglia Cristiana that the Ecclesia Dei Commission will issue instructions to “clarify the criteria for the application of the motu proprio.”
The reason for the new document, Cardinal Bertone said, was “confused reactions” by the bishops to the motu proprio. Contrary to the claims made by critics, Bertone said that the Pope neither rejected Vatican II, nor planned to replace the new Mass with the old. Less diplomatic than Bertone, Archbishop Malcolm Ranjith, secretary of the Congregation for Divine Worship, charged that some bishops have imposed arbitrary interpretations on the motu proprio in order to render its terms null and void in their dioceses.
As of writing, we do not know when the new directive will be published.
The jugglers
A few weeks before Christmas, a close observer of current Church affairs, and one well informed about the quality of ecclesiastical manpower, suggested to Oriens that, when it came to implementing a liturgical “reform of the reform,” bishops had to confront the fact that many, perhaps the majority, of their clergy were “ecclesiologically challenged.”
This was a kindly way of saying that much of present generation of clergy, for the most part trained in the period 1965 to 1995, is so compromised by contemporary styles of manhood and priesthood, that it lacks the cultural aptitude for a sympathetic response to Pope Benedict XVI and his call for teaching and worship to be anchored in the whole tradition of the Church. This analysis includes “papal liners” as it does “liberals”.
It is the “pope’s men” who interest us here. During the John Paul II years, it was easy to be a “papalist”. In those days one could declaim against the culture of death while liturgically celebrating the culture of banality. One could proclaim human rights, and bemoan the marginalised, while kicking traditional Catholics in the pants and banishing them to the outlands. One could condescend to Catholic pieties while paying reverence to the shaman’s humbug. One could kiss the papal hand and Mr Mahomet’s book with nearly equal respect. For a certain type, combining ornery attachment to some tough Catholic doctrines with obeisance to the most respectable fads was a cakewalk. But suddenly it is not so easy to juggle incompatibles.
First, we have a motu proprio that rejects discarding the historical forms of worship, and calls for the new liturgy to be reformed by re-establishing contact with the liturgical tradition.
Secondly, we have an encyclical, Spe Salvi, dated 30 November 2007, that contains not a single direct reference to the documents of Vatican II.
And, thirdly, we find in this same encyclical, contrary to the separation of Church and society often credited to Vatican II, a rejection of private holiness in favour of one that transforms and challenges the pretended autonomy of things that are doomed to pass away.
Strange country
We have insufficient space to expand on each of these points. Taken together, however, they signal that we have entered the post post-conciliar world where the landscape is disconcertingly unfamiliar. That is why Rome is contemplating – and perhaps might have published by the time you read this – “a new document clarifying the terms of Summorum Pontificum.”
When the Church’s leadership group falls short of the required level of catholic cultural literacy, a document like Summorum Pontificum will pose some comprehension problems. It is completely understandable that the apostolic administrator of the diocese of Savona-Noli in Italy, for example, should have banned the celebration of the traditional Latin Mass (see our story “Here and there”, page 2) until the terms of the motu proprio should be sufficiently clarified. Similarly, there is no problem to fathom in a university with a jaunty Catholic swagger like Ave Maria (Florida) waging an internal war against the Latin liturgical and musical tradition. These are symptoms of a well-understood syndrome. When men and women have kept a long-established peace with the culture, it is not realistic to expect that overnight they should become advocates for a Catholic world-view and sensibility now foreign to them. Even among Benedict XVI’s episcopal supporters, there would be quite a few for whom his liturgical thought as a cardinal, and now his teaching and legislation as pontiff, would pose marked discomfort.
A burst of “reform of the reform” activity by the bishops, predicated on a “dialogue” between old and new Masses envisaged in Summorum Pontificum, is not, therefore, going to develop easily. Even where bishops might be willing, their clergy and diocesan liturgical apparatus will mostly prove inapt to the task. Consequently, the liturgical reform indicated by Pope Ratzinger will have to be the work of future generations. So, when making further “clarifications” about how his motu proprio should be implemented, he will need to insist upon certain things to lay the ground for work that others after him must do.
Latin must be a compulsory seminary subject, and seminarians must meet minimum standards of competency in it before ordination to the diaconate.
It is only by obliging the bishops to implement such measures that the harmonious discourse between liturgies old and new can ever take place. If such be the Pope’s objective, then he must take measures fitted to the purpose.
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