The substance of an issue is the real thing, not the 'atmospherics'.
However, if one does not pay attention to the 'atmospherics', one can easily
miss which way an argument is going.
There are plenty of signs that an important mood shift is taking place within the Church on the liturgical question and that shift is moving in the direction of the historical tradition of the Church.
Take, for example, the case of Father Joseph Fessio SJ
and his launching
of the new liturgical magazine Adoremus. While Father Fessio
and Adoremus do not represent a full-blooded return to the classic
liturgy of the Western Church - the Adoremus group sails under the
so-called 'reform of the reform' banner - the critique they have launched
against the implementation of the liturgical decrees of the Second Vatican
Council represent a decisive shift by a highly influential group of mainstream,
conservative Catholics.
Instead of maintaining the ultramontane fiction that the Emperor is gloriously arrayed, Father Fessio and his supporters have declared him horribly naked. Some traditional Catholics, instead of being cheered by this development, might be tempted to feel annoyed: Father Fessio, and many others with him, have identified the facts but have failed to draw the appropriate conclusions. This would be a hard judgment. After all, the Adoremus group has now reached the position which the new generation of 'traditionalists' reached only in the latter half of the 1980s. Why blame others for arriving late at conclusions which we ourselves reached belatedly and but a few years ago? Rather we ought to be delighted. There are two reasons why we should be.
First, because the conservative Catholic 'middle-ground' has moved away from defence of the status quo - which historically is what conservatives habitually do - to a critique of the same status quo based, for all practical purposes, upon traditional Catholic principles. This is a significant change. It means that the once immobile phalanx of Catholic conservatism has shifted position and begun edging, however uncertainly, toward an integral view of Catholic tradition.
The importance of this development should not be minimised. While conservative Catholics have kept the faith throughout the post-conciliar turmoil, their defence of aggiornamento has served, contrary to all their intentions, actually to block reform and to preserve the liberal ascendancy. It may well be that the future progress of Adoremus will be punctuated from time to time by aggiornamentist and ultramontane rhetoric. The reality is, however, that some of the best regiments on the side of Catholic orthodoxy are no longer prepared to die for a failed pastoral strategy.
The second reason for our delight is that traditional Catholics should now no longer feel quite so 'marginalised'. The fact is that the liturgical issue has now been 'mainstreamed'. Certainly, there are differences of position, and different emphases even where there is agreement, between - for instance - Oriens and Adoremus. But the main point is that we agree about the failure of the liturgical reform and, in large part, about the reasons for it. These are factors which can only lead, not necessarily by any straight or easy route, to a convergence within the Western Church about the liturgical worship of God.
The Adoremus phenomenon is, however, not the only sign of fairer weather on the liturgical horizon. Nowadays one is likely to hear from the most unexpected quarters recognition of the value of our Western traditions of Catholic worship. Take, for example, the June-July edition Inside the Vatican. In it there is an interview with an American Benedictine, Father Cassian Folsom, a Professor at Rome's leading liturgical institute, the Pontifical University Sant'Anselmo.
Now Father Cassian makes some extraordinary remarks, for
a Professor, that is, of a Roman university:
"Concerning the Tridentine liturgy, or the old rite,
or the classical rite, or whatever name you want to give it: it has its
own integrity and very great beauty. I see no reason why the old can't
exist alongside the new. After all, haven't there always been various rites
in the Church, both West and East? It seems ironic to me, that while, on
the one hand, we call for pluralism and inculturation, on the other, we
deny this particular expression of pluralism and this particular synthesis
of faith and culture. Unfortunately, the whole question has become highly
politicised."
This statement is extraordinary because it was made in
Rome, from within the higher Catholic educational establishment, and in
the columns of a magazine which circulates widely in the Vatican itself.
Father Cassian has obviously drawn the conclusion that these things can
now be said openly even before those who have the power to sack him. In
sum, the 'atmospherics' have radically changed.
What is even more interesting is that what is now being
said openly in Roman circles is nothing less, in effect, than the policy
of the Ecclesia Dei Society and of Oriens. And that is that
the traditional Latin rites of the Catholic Church should, at the very
least, be allowed freely to co-exist with the other rites, ancient and
modern, of the Church. By free co-existence we mean that all Catholics
should be able freely to resort to, and that all priests should be able
freely to celebrate, the traditional Latin rites of the Western Church.
In short, our policy is a call for authentic religious freedom: the freedom
to be traditional Catholics in worship as in belief.
This is no small point. Great play has been made in the
Church in recent decades about religious freedom. If, in the name of religious
freedom, a Buddhist bonze and an Indian shaman can offer
prayers on the sanctuary of a consecrated Catholic Church - as at Assisi
in 1986 - then Catholics are no less free to celebrate their traditional
liturgy in their own churches and upon their own altars. It is to assert,
preserve, and promote this same religious freedom that the Ecclesia Dei
Society, and its organ Oriens, came into being.
Happily, there are now significant indications abroad
that many Catholics other than ourselves are beginning to conclude that
religious freedom is something our Church leaders ought also to extend
to their own flock. In this kind of atmosphere we can begin to breathe
more freely.
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