September-December 2007 |
Volume
12, Number 2 |
|---|
Pope Benedict XVI issued on 7 July 2007 two remarkable documents – the motu proprio,Summorum Pontificum, which reasserts the right of all priests to celebrate the Traditional Mass; and an accompanying letter to Bishops that explains the papal decision. Oriens editor Gary Scarrabelotti identifies some key points.
Catholics will be writing about Summorum Pontificum of 7 July 2007, and its accompanying letter to the bishops, for a long time to come.
Both documents are packed with significant statements, though the full force of them is, at certain points, both veiled in mildness and sharpened by irony.
Benedict opens by positioning himself as but the latest Pope in a long tradition. This is normal in a papal document. But it is especially significant in one that sets about restoring what his immediate predecessors sought to ban (in the case of Paul VI) and could not restore (in the case of John Paul II).
Thus Summorum Pontificum – hereinafter SP – begins by emphasising the concern of successive pontiffs for “a worthy ritual to the Divine Majesty, ‘to the praise and glory of His name,’ and ‘to the benefit of all His Holy Church’.”
Invoked, in particular, is St Gregory the Great (Pope Gregory I) because he “made every effort to ensure that the new peoples of Europe received both the Catholic faith and the treasures of worship and culture that had been accumulated by the Romans in preceding centuries” and “commanded that the form of the sacred liturgy as celebrated in Rome … be conserved.”
Missionary principle
In an important extension to this passage, Pope Benedict links Pope St Gregory’s work of liturgical preservation to his active support of the Benedictines and their missionary role in the conversion of Europe.
He took great concern to ensure the dissemination of monks and nuns who, following the Rule of St Benedict, together with the announcement of the Gospel, illustrated with their lives the wise provision of their rule that “nothing should be placed before the work of God.” In this way the sacred liturgy … enriched not only the faith and piety but also the culture of many peoples.
From the fact that Pope Ratzinger has taken the name Benedict, and shares with his order its priority for the liturgical “work of God”, we can deduce a missionary strategy for the reconversion of the Western world. This is very much part of the thinking behind SP. By issuing this motu proprio, Pope Benedict is drawing from the Church’s cultural reserves the “instruments” called for by the new mission to the West. This is not something articulated in passing. The Pope formulates with great deliberation in the opening passages of SP the connection between missionary work, liturgy, and the West, and he offers it as a key principle upon which the subsequent legislative articles are based.
Having established this principle, the pontiff then traces the line of care for the Roman liturgy from Gregory I, through Pope St Pius V, described as “outstanding” for his work of liturgical renewal and publication, down to Popes Pius XII and John XXIII.
Here the line stops and the tone shifts. Speaking of a Vatican II desire “that respectful reverence due to divine worship should be renewed and adapted to the needs of our time”, Pope Benedict records that, moved by this desire,
… Our predecessor, the Supreme Pontiff Paul VI, approved, in 1970, reformed and partly renewed liturgical books for the Latin Church.
Curate’s missal
Here is a remarkable phrase: “reformed and partly renewed”. To use a favourite expression of the late Michael Davies, this is a “liturgical time-bomb”. “Partly renewed”: in other words, the work of renewal upon which Paul VI embarked in the wake of Vatican II is incomplete. Note what the pontiff has just said. He did not say that the use to which the Paul VI Missal has been put falls short of the renewal formulated in this missal. What he said was that the missal itself is only “partly” renewed. The implication? The work of liturgical reform, envisaged by Vatican II, has to be taken up again. But having said it, the pontiff glides serenely to his next point.
Although these (partly renewed) books “were willingly accepted by bishops, priests and faithful”,
… in some regions, no small numbers of faithful adhered and continue to adhere with great love and affection to the earlier liturgical forms [which had] so deeply marked their culture and their spirit.
To find out how that could have happened, one needs for a moment to break off from SP and turn to its accompanying Explanatory Letter to Bishops. Here we find another quietly spoken but astonishing remark. Attachment to the older form of the Roman rite was deepest, the pope observes, precisely
… in those countries where the liturgical movement had provided many people with a notable liturgical formation and a deep, personal familiarity with [it] …
So it was not curmudgeonly reaction, nostalgia for the past, or undue attachment to familiar forms, that prompted people to hold to the old liturgy. It was, rather, the success of the preconciliar liturgical movement in deepening peoples’ understanding of the established liturgy, and their attachment to it. In short, their fidelity to the old Mass was a sign of virtue, not of vice. Which raises a question: what kind of Pope and episcopacy could have made war on these most Catholic values?
This is not something that a reigning Pope can answer for several pontificates to come. But the current pope has posed the problem – and having posed it, has gone on to legislate:
There is one Roman rite, but two usages;
Another order
The Pope then formally decreed this “new order” in language that has not had much of an airing in recent times:
We order that everything We have established with these Apostolic letters issued Motu Proprio be considered as “established and decreed”, and to be observed from 14 September this year, Feast of the Exaltation of the cross, whatever there may be to the contrary.
Pope Benedict has given his motu proprio such a solemn, and canonically formal, legislative character that his successors for generations to come will feel themselves bound by it. With future Popes Summorum Pontificum will prevail as Quo Primum prevailed from Pius V to John XXIII.
Two further points.
First, in regard to the rationale for SP, the Pope cited in his Explanatory Letter, among other things, the need for him, and all the bishops, to do all in their power to bring peace and harmony to the Church.
What was on his mind here was the “split” between Rome and the so-called Lefebvre movement – and the fear that it might have already reached the point of no return.
Looking back over the past … one continually has the impression that, at critical moments when divisions were coming about, not enough was done by the Church’s leaders to maintain or regain reconciliation and unity … omissions on the part of the Church have had their share of blame for the fact that these divisions were able to harden. This glance at the past imposes an obligation on us today: to make every effort to enable those who truly desire unity to remain in that unity or to attain it anew. … Let us generously open our hearts and make room for everything that the faith itself allows.
This will surely go down as one of the most deeply moving and powerful pleas for a generous spirit and peace among churchmen and people ever uttered by a Pope.
Secondly, and in tough-minded counterpoint to this, Pope Benedict gives a devastating reply to critics of his long-signalled measures without a harsh or unjust word slipping from his pen. One objection that he identified was that use of the 1962 missal “would lead to disarray or even divisions within parish communities.” The answer is worthy of study as a model of its kind.
This fear also strikes me as quite unfounded. The use of the old Missal presupposes a certain degree of liturgical formation and some knowledge of the Latin language; neither of these is to be found very often.
Like so many of Joseph Ratzinger’s disarmingly clear and simple-seeming statements, this has meaning in depth – and meaning that cuts like a scalpel.
It would be too crude, and too bloody, to spell out the pontiff’s thought. It is best left to the reader to dwell upon. Suffice it to say that every bishop with a conscience will be searching it.
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