By
Morgan on November 20th, 2007
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OPINION FROM THE TELEGRAPH
(London) Two and a half years after the name “Josephum” came booming down from the balcony of St Peter’s, making liberal Catholics weep with rage, Pope Benedict XVI is revealing his programme of reform. And it is breathtakingly ambitious.
The 80-year-old Pontiff is planning a purification of the Roman liturgy in which decades of trendy innovations will be swept away.
This recovery of the sacred is intended to draw Catholics closer to the Orthodox and ultimately to heal the 1,000 year Great Schism. But it is also designed to attract vast numbers of disenchanted conservative Anglicans, who will be offered the protection of the Holy Father if they convert en masse.
The liberal bishops don’t like the sound of it at all.
Ever since the shock of Benedict’s election, they have been waiting for him to show his hand. Now that he has, the resistance has begun in earnest - and the Archbishop of Westminster, Cardinal Cormac Murphy-O’Connor, is in the thick of it.
Benedict’s pontificate moved into a new phase on July 7, with the publication of his apostolic letter Summorum Pontificum.
With a stroke of his pen, the Pope restored the traditional Latin Mass to parity with the modern liturgy. Shortly afterwards, he replaced Archbishop Piero Marini, the papal Master of Ceremonies who turned many of John Paul II’s Masses into politically correct carnivals.
Cardinal Murphy-O’Connor was most displeased. Last week, he hit back with a “commentary” on Summorum Pontificum.
According to Murphy-O’Connor, the ruling leaves the power of local bishops untouched. In fact, it removes the bishops’ power to block the ancient liturgy. In other words, the cardinal - who tried to stop Benedict issuing the ruling - is misrepresenting its contents.
Alas, he is not alone: dozens of bishops in Britain, Europe and America have tried the same trick.
Murphy-O’Connor’s “commentary” was modelled on equally dire “guidelines” written by Bishop Arthur Roche of Leeds with the apparent purpose of discouraging the faithful from exercising their new rights.
A few years ago the ploy might have worked. But news travels fast in the traditionalist blogosphere, and these tactics have been brought to the attention of papal advisers.
This month, Archbishop Malcolm Ranjith, a senior Vatican official close to Benedict, declared that “bishops and even cardinals” who misrepresented Summorum Pontificum were “in rebellion against the Pope”.
Ranjith is tipped to become the next Prefect of the Congregation for Divine Worship, in charge of regulating worldwide liturgy. That makes sense: if Benedict is moving into a higher gear, then he needs street fighters in high office.
He may also have to reform an entire department, the Pontifical Council for Promoting Christian Unity, which spends most of its time promoting the sort of ecumenical waffle that Benedict abhors.
This is a sensitive moment. Last month, the bishops of the Traditional Anglican Communion, a network of 400,000 breakaway Anglo-Catholics based mainly in America and the Commonwealth, wrote to Rome asking for “full, corporate, sacramental union”.
Their letter was drafted with the help of the Vatican. Benedict is overseeing the negotiations. Unlike John Paul II, he admires the Anglo-Catholic tradition. He is thinking of making special pastoral arrangements for Anglican converts walking away from the car wreck of the Anglican Communion.
This would mean that they could worship together, free from bullying by local bishops who dislike the newcomers’ conservatism and would rather “dialogue” with Anglicans than receive them into the Church.
The liberation of the Latin liturgy, the rapprochement with Eastern Orthodoxy, the absorption of former Anglicans - all these ambitions reflect Benedict’s conviction that the Catholic Church must rediscover the liturgical treasure of Christian history to perform its most important task: worshipping God.
This conviction is shared by growing numbers of young Catholics, but not by the church politicians who have dominated the hierarchies of Europe and America for too long.
By failing to welcome the latest papal initiatives - or even to display any interest in them, beyond the narrow question of how their power is affected - the bishops of England and Wales have confirmed Benedict’s low opinion of them.
Now he should replace them. If the Catholic reformation is to start anywhere, it might as well be here.
By
Morgan on November 20th, 2007
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LITURGICAL ABUSES PLAYED PART IN HOLY FATHER’S DECISION
By Cindy Wooden
Catholic News Service
VATICAN CITY (CNS) — A lack of respect for the norms for celebrating the Mass after the Second Vatican Council contributed to Pope Benedict XVI’s decision to grant wider permission for the celebration of the Tridentine Mass, a Vatican official said.
“There is a certain tendency to interpret the post-conciliar liturgical reform using ‘creativity’ as the rule,” said Archbishop Albert Malcolm Ranjith Patabendige Don, secretary of the Congregation for Divine Worship and the Sacraments.
An interview with the archbishop was published in the Nov. 19-20 edition of L’Osservatore Romano, the Vatican newspaper, after he had given a speech and an interview in which he criticized bishops and priests who were putting restrictions on celebrations of the Tridentine Mass even after Pope Benedict authorized wider use of the rite in July.
In his decree, the pope said the Tridentine Mass celebrated according to the 1962 Roman Missal should be made available in every parish where groups of the faithful desire it. He also said the Mass from the Roman Missal in use since 1970 remains the Ordinary Form of the Mass, while celebration of the Tridentine Mass is the Extraordinary Form. “Regarding the Tridentine Mass, over the years there was a growing request, which little by little became more organized,” he said.
“On the other side, fidelity to the norms for the celebration of the sacraments continued to fall,” he said. “The more this fidelity (and) a sense of the beauty and awe in the liturgy diminished, the more requests for the Tridentine Mass increased.”
“So, in fact, who really requested the Tridentine Mass? It was not just these groups, but also those who had little respect for the norms of a worthy celebration according to the ‘Novus Ordo,’” or new order, he said, referring to the post-Vatican II liturgy.
“For years the liturgy suffered too many abuses and many bishops ignored them” despite the efforts of Pope John Paul II, Archbishop Ranjith said.
“So the problem was not requests for the Tridentine Mass as much as an unlimited abuse of the nobility and dignity of the eucharistic celebration,” he said.
Archbishop Ranjith said that although the church’s liturgy has developed and changed over the centuries “we must recognize that the liturgy has a particular ‘conservative’ characteristic” because it is a part of the church’s heritage that must be preserved.
“This is a central aspect: We are called to be faithful to something that does not belong to us, but is given to us,” he said.
L’Osservatore also asked Archbishop Ranjith about liturgical music and art, saying they were other concerns about the liturgy.
Gregorian chant has pride of place in the liturgy, he said, and it should be used “to give praise to the Lord.”
As for the visual arts, Archbishop Ranjith said the church must find ways to enter into a deeper dialogue with artists to encourage religious art, but also to ensure that pieces of art in places of worship help people pray.
The Congregation for Divine Worship and the Sacraments, he said, has scheduled a Dec. 1 study day to discuss ways to promote religious art for liturgy, stripped away from many Catholic churches in the first wave of post conciliar experimentation in the early 1970’s.
By
Morgan on November 8th, 2007
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VATICAN CRITICIZES OBSTRUCTIONIST BISHOPS
By Cindy Wooden
Catholic News Service
VATICAN CITY (CNS) — The secretary of the Congregation for Divine Worship and the Sacraments criticized bishops and priests who have given a narrow interpretation to Pope Benedict XVI’s permission for the wider celebration of the Tridentine Mass.
Archbishop Albert Malcolm Ranjith Patabendige Don told an Italian Internet news site that he found it difficult to understand the action “and even rebellion” of churchmen who have tried to limit access to the older Mass.“On the part of some dioceses, there have been interpretive documents that inexplicably aim to limit the ‘motu proprio’ of the pope,” he told the Web site Petrus Nov. 5.Pope Benedict’s apostolic letter, published in early July, eased restrictions on the use of the 1962 Roman Missal, which governed the liturgy before the new Order of the Mass was introduced in 1970.
The papal document said the Latin-language Tridentine Mass should be available when a group of the faithful requests it and should be celebrated by qualified priests. However, differences exist over what the precise characteristics of the group should be and over what specific knowledge and training a priest must have before he can celebrate the Mass according to the 1962 missal.Behind the attempts to define the terms in a way that limits the availability of the Tridentine Mass, “there hide, on the one hand, ideological prejudices and, on the other hand, pride, which is one of the most serious sins,” the archbishop said.
“I repeat: I invite everyone to obey the pope. If the Holy Father thought it was his obligation to issue the ‘motu proprio,’ he had his reasons and I share them fully,” he said.
“The bishops, in particular, have sworn fidelity to the pontiff; may they be coherent and faithful to their commitment,” he said.
Archbishop Patabendige Don often is rumored to be in line to succeed Cardinal Francis Arinze as prefect of the congregation; on Nov. 1 the cardinal turned 75, the normal retirement age for bishops and Vatican officials.
“The Tridentine rite,” the archbishop said, “belongs to the tradition of the church. The pope has duly explained the reasons for his provision, which is an act of freedom and justice toward the traditionalists.”
The archbishop’s comments to Petrus were published about a month after he strongly criticized church members, including bishops, who publicly disagree with papal decisions.
Speaking to a Latin liturgy association in the Netherlands, he said, the church needs members who are obedient to God’s will, “which is manifested in a special way through the church and its visible head, the Roman pontiff.”
While discussion and debate can be appropriate, he said, “if it does not in the end lead to a spirit of obedience in the service of unity then it divides and can only be interpreted as a manifestation of the intent of the evil one to disturb and retard the noble mission of Christ. Even those wearing ecclesiastical purple or red are not exempt from the tempter’s enchantments.”
By
admin on October 23rd, 2007
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Welcome to the website of the Central Alabama Chapter of Una Voce America.
We are committed to the Roman Rite of the Roman Catholic Church, as clarified in the Motu Proprio Summorum Pontificum, issued by our Holy Father, Pope Benedict XVI.
Within this sacred Rite are the two forms of the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass - the Forma Ordinaria (Ordinary Form) and the Forma Extraordinaria (Extraordinary Form).
Our mission is two-fold:
1) To promote the rights of priests and the faithful, in the celebration of the Extraordinary Form of the Roman Rite.
2) To promote more solemnity in the celebration of the Ordinary Form of the Roman Rite, through the sacred music and language which it has legally retained since the convocation of the Second Vatican Council by Bl. Pope John XXIII, the subsequent development of the Ordinary Form by liturgical commissions in the late 1960’s, and the promulgation of the Ordinary Form by decree of our late Holy Father, Pope Paul VI.
We are fully faithful to the Magisterium of the Roman Catholic Church.