A corporal work of mercy.

A corporal work of mercy.
Click on photo for this corporal work of mercy!
Showing posts with label ad orientem. Show all posts
Showing posts with label ad orientem. Show all posts

Thursday 19 January 2017

David Malloy, Bishop of Rockford declares himself Supreme Pontiff!

David Malloy, the Bishop of Rockford has barred his priests from offering the Novus Ordo Missae in the ad orientem posture. The rubrics of the Roman Missal Third Edition are quite clear in the instruction, that the priest, when he says the Orate or the Pax, is "facing the people." It specifically states that in red because it presumes that he is not, facing the people.

Secondly, Mr. Malloy, has banned priests from offering the traditional Roman liturgy without his permission in direct contravention of Summorum Pontificum.


The bishop is a malefactor. He has no authority to do either. He is a disgrace.

While he is at it, maybe he should ban Confession or public recitation of the Rosary?

How much shall we bet that his next move will be to demand his priests give the Blessed Sacrament to adulterers or sodomites who have not repented and have no intention of amendment of life?

Father Z has the details.

Dr. Joseph Shaw of the Latin Mass Society in the U.K. reports at Rorate.

The Bishop is wrong. Only a man with a distorted ecclesiology and a corrupt Catholic heart and mind would diminish the liturgy of the Holy Mass and mock his priests and people in such a manner.

The man is a clericalist and a disgrace. A boil on the Body of Christ.

Let him be anathema. 

He looks rather queer* too, no?


Image result for Most Rev. David J. Malloy

*Queer: strange or odd from a conventional viewpoint; unusually different; singular:
a queer notion of justice.

Saturday 23 July 2016

Idiot Bishops - learn your Latin!

Fathers Hunwicke and Zuhlsdorf have written frequently these last two weeks on the mis-translation that bishops are using to smack down the "ad orientem" issue in their dioceses. Father Z covers it again.

If it were not permitted, why is Pope Francis it so?

Just one more reason why the Novus Ordo is a dead letter. It is irreformable. There is no reform of the reform. It is a lost cause. The Novus Ordo Missae, whilst valid, is a deficient liturgy even when celebrated in Latin, ad orientem, with chant as is proper to it, incense, the Confiteor and Roman Canon, and so on. It is deficient because of the Offertory and the changing of ancient Propers and elimination of the historical, 1500 year old Lectionary! It is a bastard rite because of its Offertory and multiplicity of Eucharistic Prayers, none of this authorised or asked for by the glorious Council! 

None of it!

When one takes these deficiencies,combined with priests and bishops who enforce an outdated and incorrect liturgical theology, how can one believe that there is any possibility of reform?

The treatment of Cardinal Sarah was the final straw for me, It happened to coincide with the badly-behaving Catholics at the parish I served at for eight years. Enough! 

No more work in the nervous disorder. Traditional Mass is it.

This is my third Saturday off. Fox and I will enjoy it immensely.




http://wdtprs.com/blog/2016/07/girm-wars-another-front-opens-in-iowa/

GIRM WARS: Another front opens in Iowa

When the 2000 GIRM was issued (now usually cited as 2002 GIRM because it is in the 2002 Missale Romanum), a question was put to the Congregation for Divine Worship: Can a bishop, in his role as moderator of the Sacred Liturgy in the diocese, forbid ad orientemworship?
On 10 April 2000, the Congregation for Divine Worship issued an official response (Protocol No. 564/00/L) about GIRM 299 (my emphases):

Monday 11 July 2016

The "ad orientem" fight in the Nervous Disorder, is on! Who will win? -- UPDATE - Not Cardinal Sarah, he's now been thrown under the Vatican bus!

This past week, I decided, in consultation with the Pastor where I have been singing the Ordinary Form on Saturday for the past eight years, to resign. My frustration has been building for a while now. I have come to the conclusion that no matter how faithful the priest, the people are just so distracting and so disrespectful and so utterly stupid, that I could no longer bear it. The actions against Cardinal Sarah now have affirmed my decision.

The contrast between the Novus Ordo in general and the Mass on Sundays two dioceses away where I direct the music in the traditional Rite is like night and day. It has become, for me, simply too much to bear.

Dysfunction of the liturgy is embedded

The inherent dysfunction of the Novus Ordo, is impossible to reform. Priests who have tried to do it have been, and continue to be, persecuted.  Cardinal Sarah is now open to being persecuted already by Federico Lombardi!

I have given it 30 years. I was once denounced publicly from the Ambo on Good Friday by the Pastor of the parish I grew up in for delivering a Good Friday liturgy in accord with the Novus Ordo Roman Missal. He was a priest of the Polish Congregation of St. Michael the Archangel, and even denied my mother's funeral in her parish church because the request was for it to be in Latin, and according to the Novus Ordo! Another, a "baby priest" at 27, wagged his finger after Mass in front of the parishioners at me and said, "I told you never to sing in Latin, I am the priest and you must obey!" To which I responded, "No Father, you told me not to sing that which was not in Catholic Book of Worship II and the Canadian Conference of Catholic Bishops have put it in the hymnbook, perhaps you should take it up with them." Fortunately, that effeminate and rageful clericalist is no longer in Toronto but now in the Archdiocese of Detroit and is a Pastor. Keep him away from you boys, he was once also from the CSMA.

I will give the Novus Ordo, no more of my time. It is a useless exercise. It is a liturgy which was an error and remains so. It was and remains, an abomination. It cannot be reformed, it will not be reformed until the Pope and Bishops find the determination to do it. Nice words from Cardinals are not enough as we have no seen.

"Person" centered worship

It was not from the Holy Spirit. It is simply not possible. It is a cult of man, not of God. It is illogical and blasphemous to think that it could be from the Holy Spirit. 

Look at the fruits!

God knows all things. Sees all things. He knows the future. Father, Son and Holy Spirit know all, see all. This great God could see the damage to souls and the faith that the new order of the Mass has produced. He saw it all. Why would He cause it? He permitted it, to be sure, but the Novus Ordo and the theology that formed it has caused the literal collapse of the faith because it is the point at which most Catholics come together. Why would God debase a liturgy that is meant to worship Him and sanctify us? It is simply not possible that this was from the Holy Spirit, it simply defies logic.

Valid? 


Yes. That is a different matter.

Yet it remains a liturgical abomination, I am convinced of it. After 30 years, of labour, there is no fruit, there are no seeds sprouted, the ground is barren. My time and talents will now be spent exclusively with the traditional Latin Mass. Week by week, we see the fruit, the growth, the faith.

Cardinal Sarah himself has stated that the "faithful are now unfaithful." He also knows why.

I raise the possibility of looking again at the Constitution and at the reform which followed its promulgation because I do not think that we can honestly read even the first article of Sacrosanctum Concilium today and be content that we have achieved its aims. My brothers and sisters, where are the faithful of whom the Council Fathers spoke? Many of the faithful are now unfaithful: they do not come to the liturgy at all. To use the words of Pope Saint John Paul II: many Christians are living in a state of “silent apostasy;” they “live as if God does not exist” (Apostolic Exhortation, Ecclesia in Europa, 28 June 2003, 9). Where is the unity the Council hoped to achieve? We have not yet reached it. Have we made real progress in calling the whole of mankind into the household of the Church? I do not think so. And yet we have done very much to the liturgy!

The Novus Ordo and any reform of the reform is a dead letter. Unless it is put in the Missal and ordered by the Pope, it will not be carried out. It will not be fixed, not by this Pope. Leave it. If you wish to remain Catholic, get yourself to the traditional Mass.

The proof is for all to see




Anthony Spadaro's little tweet is evidence of this. It may also disclose what Francis thinks as Spadaro is a confidant. Cardinal Sarah's recent talk in Rome was just that, talk, and his views, virtually alone.

Spadaro is also wrong. He is not only wrong, he is manipulative. The paragraph in the GIRM appears again at the Pax Vobiscum. Why? Because it is presumed that one is actually, not "FACING THE PEOPLE" or the direction would not be there.


In the original Latin, the GIRM, presuming the priest has just incensed the altar and performed the Lavabo, states:



146. Ad medium altaris deinde reversus, sacerdos, stans versus populum, extendens et iungens manus, populum ad orandum invitat, dicens: Oráte, fratres, etc. Populus surgit et responsionem dat Suscípiat Dominus. Deinde sacerdos, manibus extensis, dicit orationem super oblata. In fine populus acclamat: Amen. 146. Upon returning to the middle of the altar , the priest , facing the people , extending and then joining his hands, invites the people to pray , saying : Pray, brothers and sisters, etc. The people rise and make their response May the Lord accept . Then the Priest, with hands extended , says the Prayer over the offerings. In the end, the people make the acclamation, Amen.

Why would it say, "facing the people" it it were not the norm? It specifically instructs him to face the people thereby presuming that he was not, previously!

Not only Spadaro, but now Cardinal Nichols of Westminster has ordered his priests to ignore the Cardinal's request; saying that is not for priest to “exercise personal preference or taste,” citing GIRM 299. 

Again, like Spadaro, Nichols displays his twisted logic and in fact, discloses his bias.

GIRM 299 states:

The altar should be built apart from the wall, in such a way that it is possible to walk around it easily and that Mass can be celebrated at it facing the people, which is desirable wherever possible. The altar should, moreover, be so placed as to be truly the centre toward which the attention of the whole congregation of the faithful naturally turns. The altar is usually fixed and is dedicated.’”

Note that? 

"Can" not must. 

"Desirable" not mandatory.

Father Z addresses the matter at his blog.

It seems that that this Cardinal Nichols knows how to pray to pagan gods but he won't permit his priests to face the True God?


Is he even Catholic?





The Congregation for the Liturgy and Discipline of the Sacraments has already address this in  Prot. No 2086/00/L


The Congregation for Divine Worship and the Discipline of the Sacraments has been asked whether the expression in n. 299 of the Institutio Generalis Missalis Romani constitutes a norm according to which the position of the priest versus absidem [facing the apse] is to be excluded.
The Congregation for Divine Worship and the Discipline of the Sacraments, after mature reflection and in light of liturgical precedents, responds:
Negatively, and in accordance with the following explanation.The explanation includes different elements which must be taken into account. First, the word expedit does not constitute a strict obligation but a suggestion that refers to theconstruction of the altar a pariete sejunctum (detached from the wall). It does not require, for example, that existing altars be pulled away from the wall. The phrase ubi possibile sit (where it is possible) refers to, for example, the topography of the place, the availability of space, the artistic value of the existing altar, the sensibility of the people participating in the celebrations in a particular church, etc.

Benedict XVI wrote in the Spirit of the Liturgy that Mass facing the people was a community "turned inwards on itself." He had the opportunity to order this change. He did not. Now Cardinal Sarah voices the desire and immediately, it is rejected by a prominent Cardinal and a confidant of the Bishop or Rome.

Lombardi contradicts


Just after the announcement that he is being replaced by a layman, professional journalist Greg Burke, Federico Lombardi said:



"There are therefore no new liturgical directives foreseen from next Advent, as some have wrongly inferred from some of the words of Cardinal Sarah, and it is best to avoid using the expression ‘reform of the reform’ when referring to the liturgy, as it's sometimes been a source of misunderstandings.”

http://www.ncregister.com/blog/edward-pentin/father-lombardi-cardinal-sarahs-ad-orientem-suggestion-misinterpreted

Exactly padre, they're already there!

How much longer do we need to keep repeating the same thing over and over again whilst expecting a different result? That is insanity!

What will happen in Toronto?

This photo is of then Archbishop and now Cardinal Thomas Collins celebrating a Latin Ordinary Form Mass at the Toronto Oratory, he is celebrating "ad orientem." After the Mass, which I attended, I greeted him downstairs. I kissed his ring and thanked him for what he did at Mass. His response? "I think I should do this in the Cathedral some time."

Yes, he said that to me.

Those writing last week with effervescent enthusiasm were premature. Until Rome orders it and authorises it in writing and prohibits the persecution of priests by bishops for doing it, nothing will change.

Mass facing the people is illogical. It is the single worst problem with the Novus Ordo and it is not even mandated! It is against 1,935 years of liturgical history. It is against the practice of our Jewish forefathers in faith. It points to man, not God. 

The Reform of the Reform of the Novus Ordo is a dead letter. Spadaro and Nicholls prove it.

There is only one option.

Take it.


Vigil of Pentecost, June 7, 2014, Solemn Mass in the Presence of a Greater Prelate
Thomas Cardinal Collins, Archbishop of Toronto together with Diocesan priests and seminarians at St. Lawrence the Martyr Parish in Scarborough, Ontario

Wednesday 6 July 2016

Cardinal Sarah calls for "ad orientem" worship and kneeing for Holy Communion. Is it enough?

 
“It is very important that we return as soon as possible to a common orientation, of priests and the faithful turned together in the same direction – eastwards or at least towards the apse – to the Lord who comes.” ... “I ask you to implement this practice wherever possible.”

He said that “prudence” and catechesis would be necessary, but told pastors to have “confidence that this is something good for the Church, something good for our people”.
“Your own pastoral judgement will determine how and when this is possible, but perhaps beginning this on the first Sunday of Advent this year, when we attend ‘the Lord who will come’ and ‘who will not delay’.

With these words, Robert Cardinal Sarah has pushed further the argument for a "reform of the reform" of the modernist liturgy forced upon the Catholic faithful by Paul VI.

What are we to think of this?

First, a suggestion is worthless, except that it may indicate a future command to come and that this is to soften up the troops, so to speak. You can count on objections and vehement fights against it. All we in the English speaking world need to do is to recall the fight over the correct translation of the Latin modernist liturgy into English.

Second, it is not going to save what Pope Benedict XVI called, the "Ordinary Form of the Roman Rite" because it is not enough.

The liturgy forced upon the Church by Paul VI was so far and removed from anything the Council Fathers desired in Sacrosanctum Concilium as to be nothing more than a complete break with the past. The problem with this Novus Ordo Missae is the Novus Ordo Missae. It is fundamentally flawed.

Nothing in the Council called for Mass facing the people and in fact, the ability to face liturgical east is already in the Missal where the priest is directed at the Orate Fratres and the Pax vobiscum, to face the people. This presumes that he is not. The Missal and its Graduale Romanum already provides for Gregorian chant, Latin Ordinary and text, incense, beauty, and so on. Why is it not done?

The ability to reform the reform is already there in every Missal and no priest needs permission to do it.

Fundamentally, turning the priest will fix little without more.

The Offertory of the Mass is nothing more than a minor Talumudic table blessing

Baruch atah Adonai Elohainu melech haolam hamotzli lechem min haaretz.Blessed are You, Lord our God, King of the Universe, Who brings forth bread from the earth.
Baruch atah Adonai Elohainu melech haolam borai pri haaitz.Blessed are You, Lord our God, King of the Universe, Who creates the fruit of the tree.

It was put in the Mass by Anibale Bugnini after an outrage by Paul VI because there was to be no resemblance of an Offertory in Bugnini's, "Presentation of the Gifts." The priest would receive the bread and wine from a contrived procession, prepare them and then say the "Prayer over the Gifts" leading directly into the Preface. No offertory prayer. No orate fratres. Paul VI demanded an Offertory and this is what we got. A Jewish talmudic table blessing which replaced this:

Accept, O Holy father, Almighty and Eternal God, this spotless host, which I, Your unworthy servant, offer to You, my living and true God, to atone for my numberless sins, offences, and negligences; on behalf of all here present and likewise for all faithful Christians living and dead, that it may profit me and them as a means of salvation to life everlasting. Amen.
O God,  Who in creating man didst exalt his nature very wonderfully and yet more wonderfully didst establish it anew; by the Mystery signified in the mingling of this water and wine, grant us to have part in the Godhead of Him Who hath deigned to become a partaker of our humanity, Jesus Christ, Thy Son our Lord; Who liveth and reigneth with Thee, in the unity of the Holy Spirit, God, world without end. Amen.
We offer unto Thee, O Lord, the chalice of salvation, entreating Thy mercy that our offering may ascend with a sweet fragrance in the sight of Thy divine Majesty, for our own salvation, and for that of the whole world. Amen.
Come Thou, the Sanctifier, Almighty and Everlasting God, and bless this sacrifice which is prepared for the glory of Thy holy Name.

How do you even begin to compare these prayers? Can an ardent defender of the modernist liturgy please explain it?

We are to believe that simply turning the priest around will fix what is wrong?

The problems of the penitential rite options, the Canon (Eucharistic Prayer) options and the actual orations themselves, changed or deleted entirely from the ancient Missal are even greater problems with the liturgy.

Until these options are removed, by order and the I Confess, Offertory and Roman Canon are mandated by law, then there can be no reform.

At the same time, we are to accept that girls and women should still assist at the altar, women should have their feet washed and communion should be given in the hand.

The Cardinal also said that people should return to communion, kneeling.

Has he tried that in a typical parish?

I applaud Cardinal Sarah for this beginning. The reality is, this, the bishops will ignore it and priests who take this on without the leadership of their Ordinary will be pilloried. 

It is a beginning. 

It is not enough.

Saturday 26 January 2013

Facing East

More thoughts on "ad orientem" worship in the Catholic Mass with a hat-tip to Father Allan J. McDonald of Southern Orders.

The following article written by Victor R. Claveau, gives a wonderful historical and theological analysis of the Mass facing East or toward God, with both the congregation and priest facing the same direction:
Facing East

Victor R. Claveau 

According to the rule laid down in the Apostolic Constitutions (written in Syria about AD 380), churches were to have the sanctuary at the east end, the reason being that by this means the Christians in church were able to pray as they were used to pray in private, i.e. facing the east.

―After this, let all rise up with one consent, and looking towards the east, after the catechumens and penitents are gone out, pray to God eastward, who ascended up to the heaven of heavens to the east; remembering also the ancient situation of paradise in the east, from whence the first man, when he had yielded to the persuasion of the serpent, and disobeyed the command of God, was expelled‖ (Apostolic Constitutions, Book II, §LVII.).

Joseph Jungmann‘s book on the Early Liturgy informs us that the early Christians all faced east for prayer! Why east? Because east symbolized the return of Christ in glory. 

St John of Damascus describes the practice of the Church in these words:

When ascending into heaven, He rose towards the East, and that is how the Apostles adored Him, and He will return just as they saw Him ascend into heaven, as the Lord has said: ―Just as the flash of lightening rises from above and then descends downward, so will be the arrival of the Lord


Waiting for Him, we adore Him facing East. This is an unrecorded tradition passed down to us from the Apostles.


Just as Moslems today turn toward Mecca for prayer, and just as the ancient Jews turned toward Jerusalem, so the early Christians turned toward the east. In the early Egyptian liturgies, we find the instruction ―Look towards the East! Included at the beginning of the Eucharistic Prayer. St Augustine would conclude his homilies with the command Conversi ad dominum ―Turn to face the Lord. And St Basil the Great confirms the Damascene‘s claim that the practice of facing the east to pray is an unwritten custom passed down from the Apostles.

In the churches of the patristic Church, the Holy Table was typically located in the east end of the building, with the building built on an east-west axis. The altar was free-standing (though we know that in at least one Syrian ante-Nicene church it was actually attached to the east wall). The celebrant would stand on the west side of the altar and together celebrant and congregation would face the Lord for praise and worship.

However, this rule was by no means universally observed. The ancient churches in Rome, including St. John Lateran, are arranged with the entrance at the east and the sanctuary at the west. This allowed the early morning sun to flow into the building through the open doors. So do we not have here a counter-example with the priest facing the congregation? Not so! The apostolic rule was to face the east for prayer, and so the bishop faced the east and only incidentally therefore did he face the congregation. The big question is —which direction did the congregation face? I‘m not sure if anyone knows the answer to this question for certain, but I can tell you that Joseph Jungmann, Louis Bouyer, and Klaus Gamber (all very respectable liturgists) believe that in these churches the congregation too would have turned to face the east! Western Churches built after the 4th century conformed to the eastern practice and sited the altar in the east end.

The practice of priest and congregation facing the Lord in praise, worship, and prayer belongs to the fundamental grammar of Christian liturgy.
The versus orientem promotes a sense of God‘s transcendence. We stand together facing the mystery of the Holy Father, offering to him the body and blood of his Son through the ministry of our great high priest. We participate in the heavenly liturgy of the Triune God, sharing in the eternal self-oblation of the Son to his heavenly Father.
The priest is an instrument of the risen Christ. As St John Chrysostom states, the priest but lends Christ his voice and hands.

St Augustine:

―When we rise to pray, we turn East, where heaven begins. And we do this not because God is there, as if He had moved away from the other directions on earth …, but rather to help us remember to turn our mind towards a higher order, that is, to God‖ (Quoted in Klaus Gamber, The Reform of the Roman Liturgy [1993], p. 80)

Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger, (now Pope Benedict XVI) Feast of Faith (1986):
―The original meaning of what nowadays is called ‗the priest turning his back on the people‘ is, in fact–as J. A. Jungmann has consistently shown–the priest and people together facing the same way in a common act of Trinitarian worship, such as Augustine introduced, following the sermon, by the prayer ‗Conversi ad Dominum.‘

Priest and people were united in facing eastward; that is, a cosmic symbolism was drawn into the community celebration–a factor of considerable importance. For the true location and the true context of the eucharistic celebration is the whole cosmos. Facing east‘ makes this cosmic dimension of the Eucharist present through liturgical gesture. Because of the rising sun, the east–oriens–was naturally both a symbol of the Resurrection (and to that extent it was not merely a christological statement but also a reminder of the Father‘s power and the influence of the Holy Spirit) and a presentation of the hope of the parousia. Where priest and people face the same way, what we have is a cosmic orientation and also an interpretation of the Eucharist in terms of resurrection and Trinitarian theology. Hence it is also an interpretation in terms of parousia, a theology of hope, in which every Mass is an approach to the return of Christ.(pp. 140-141)

Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger, (now Pope Benedict XVI) The Spirit of the Liturgy (2000):

―The Eucharist that Christians celebrate really cannot be adequately be described by the term meal.‘ True, the Lord established the new reality of Christian worship within the framework of a Jewish (Passover) meal, but it was precisely this new reality, not the meal as such, that he commanded us to repeat. Very soon the new reality was separated from its ancient context and found its proper and suitable form, a form already predetermined by the fact that the Eucharist refers back to the Cross and thus to the transformation of Temple sacrifice into worship of God that is in harmony with logos. Thus it came to pass that the synagogue liturgy of the Word, renewed and deepened in a Christian way, merged with the remembrance of Christ‘s death and Resurrection to become the Eucharist,‘ and precisely thus was fidelity to the command 'Do this‘ fulfilled. This new and all-encompassing form of worship could not be derived simply from the meal but had to be defined through the intercommunion of Temple and synagogue, Word and sacrament, cosmos and history. (pp. 78-79)

―The turning of the priest toward the people has turned the community into a self-enclosed circle. In its outward form, it no longer opens out on what lies ahead and above, but is closed in on itself. The common turning toward the east was not a 'celebration toward the wall‘; it did not mean that the priest had his back to the people‘: the priest himself was not regard as so important. For just as the congregation in the synagogue looked toward Jerusalem, so in the Christian liturgy the congregation looked together 'toward the Lord.‘… It was much more a question of priest and people facing in the same direction, knowing that together they were in a procession toward the Lord. They did not close themselves into a circle; they did not gaze at one another; but as the pilgrim People of God they set off for the Oriens, for the Christ who comes to meet us. (p. 80)


―A common turning to the east during the Eucharistic Prayer remains essential. This is not a case of something accidental, but of what is essential. Looking at the priest has no importance. What matters is looking together at the Lord. It is not now a question of dialogue but of common worship, of setting off toward the One who is to come. What corresponds with the reality of what is happening is not the closed circle but the common movement forward, expressed in a common direction for prayer. (p. 81)
(An excerpt from the chapter on eastward orientation can be found at the Adoremus site: http://www.adoremus.org/0500-Ratzinger.html

Klaus Gamber, The Reform of the Roman Liturgy (1993):
―The custom of facing East in prayer is as old as the Church; it is a tradition that cannot be changed. It symbolizes a continuous 'looking out in the direction of the Lord‘ (J. Kunstmann), or, as Origen says in his tract about praying (c. 32), it is an allegory of the soul looking towards the beginning of the true light, ―looking forward to the happy fulfillment of our hope when the splendor of our great God and Savior Christ Jesus will appeal(Tit. 2:13). (pp. 172-173)
K. G. Rey, ―Signs of Puberty in the Catholic Church, cited in Gamber, Reform of the Roman Liturgy:

―While in the past, the priest functioned as the anonymous go-between, the first among the faithful, facing God and not the people, representative of all and together with them offering the Sacrifice, while reciting prayers that have been prescribed for him–today he is a distinct person, with personal characteristics, his personal life-style, his face turned towards the people. For many priests this change is a temptation they cannot handle, the prostitution of their person. Some priests are quite adept–some less so–at taking personal advantage of a situation. Their gestures, their facial expressions, their movements, their overall behavior, all serve to subjectively attract attention to their person. Some draw attention to themselves by making repetitive observations, issuing instructions, and lately, by delivering personalized addresses of welcome and farewell … To them, the level of success in their performance is a measure of their personal power and thus the indicator of their feeling of personal security and self-assurance. (pp. 86-87)

Aidan Nichols, Looking at the Liturgy (1996):

Today the question [of orientation] should be determined, in my judgment, in relation to the threat of what we can call 'cultic immanentism‘: the danger, namely, of a congregation‘s covert self-reference in a horizontal, humanistic world. In contemporary 'Catholic communalism,‘ it has been said: Liturgical Gemutlichkeit, communal warmth, friendliness, welcoming hospitality, can easily be mistaken for the source and summit of the faith.‘ Not unconnected with this is the possibility that the personality of the priest (inevitably, as president, the principal facilitator of such a therapeutic support-group) will become the main ingredient of the whole ritual. Unfortunately, the 'liveliest church in town‘ has little to do with the life the Gospel speaks of. (p. 97)

Sunday 20 January 2013

Is "ad orientem" to be the norm?





From the 1920's, "liturgists" began experimenting with the priest at Mass facing the people and above are three examples from the 1950's to highlight the traditional Roman liturgy being celebrated in this manner which by 1966 was the norm in Canada, the United States and most other places. 


Of course, this has been seen to be the "norm" everywhere since the promulgation of the new order of the Mass in 1970 and many will agree that it is the single most damaging aspect to the Mass in either Form. The The priest has become the showman, he is no longer seen as "another Christ" re-presenting the Sacrifice of Calvary, but a Presider over a Supper and as Pope Benedict XVI in the Spirit of the Liturgy wrote, we are now a community "turned inward on ourselves" instead of being focused on the LORD and His propitiating sacrifice.

In the Third Roman Missal, in two places; at the "Pray brethren (my brothers and sisters)" and at "May the peace..." the priest is instructed, "facing the people the priest says...". If the instruction is to "face the people" where then does the Missal presume the priest if facing?

Cardinal Canizares, the Prefect of the Congregation of Divine Liturgy and the Discipline of the Sacraments has been quoted in Zenit as saying that the "The Council did not speak of the priest celebrating Mass facing the people, that it stressed the importance of Christ on the altar, reflected in Benedict XVI's celebration of the Mass in  the Sistine Chapel facing the altar. This does not exclude the priest facing the people, in particular during the reading of the word of God. He stressed the need of the notion of mystery, and particulars such as the altar facing East and the fact that the sacrificial sense of the Eucharist must not be lost." Speaking at a conference on liturgy at the Spanish Embassy, the Cardinal confirmed the publication soon of an Instruction for priests and laity alike on the celebration of and participation in the Mass. "We are preparing it, I hope it will come out this year, in the summer," according to Zenit. 

As a middle way, Pope Benedict XVI, in the same book previously referred to wrote of what we now call the "Benedictine arrangement" of six candles and a crucifix on the altar between the priest and people to focus everyone, especially he priest, back on Christ. The reality is, this is not being implemented.

Perhaps then the Holy Father and the Prefect realise that the example is not going to be followed and that what is going to be necessary is Instruction.

Are we seeing then the beginning of new liturgical movement to address this matter? Will the the Congregation order this with an implementation period of perhaps five years for all altars to be moved or reconstructed to face literal or liturgical east and the priest will no longer face the people. In the meantime, will the Benedictine arrangement be mandatory?

Let us pray that this becomes the norm and that the indication of further work in sacred music and architecture are also high on the agenda.  

Sunday 5 June 2011

Will the new English translation be enough?

This question is poised by by Dom Mark Daniel Kirby is Prior of the Diocesan Benedictine Monastery of Our Lady of the Cenacle in Tulsa, Oklahoma on his blog, Vultus Christi. I had a conversation last week with a Toronto priest currently undertaking a repair of a wreckovation and a major infrastructure renovation of a church. He opined that the "single, most damaging reform to the Mass is the priest facing the people."

Yet, last week at a conference in Toronto on the new Missal, a colleague conducting a children's choir at the parish where I chant on Saturdays expressed her shock that "ad orientem" might actually occur. A few days later, when inviting someone to the upcoming Missa Solemnis at St. Mark's she indicated that her "husband doesn't care for the priest turning his back on the people."

How did we become so disoriented?

Here is Father Kirby's blogpost:

WILL THE NEW ENGLISH TRANSLATION BE ENOUGH?

By Father Mark Daniel Kirby
Pondering
Having had time, over the past few days and nights, to reflect on various aspects of the reform of the Sacred Liturgy, and in the light of what I have been experiencing here in Italy, it occurred to me that I might share some of my thoughts with the readers of Vultus Christi.
Mass Facing the People: The Single Greatest Obstacle to the Reform
Here in Italy it is evident that churches were designed and constructed with an eye to the absolute centrality of the altar with priest and people facing together in the same direction. The placement, within perfectly proportioned sanctuaries, of secondary altars to allow for Mass facing the people has utterly destroyed the harmony, order, and spaciousness that the Sacred Liturgy, by its very nature, requires.
The Cheek-by-Jowl Ambo
Adding insult to injury, these versus populum altars are, more often than not cheek by jowl with a lectern (or ambo) that effectively impedes any movement around the altar, and positively discourages the incensation of the altar at the Introit and Offertory of the Mass.
Crucifix, Candles, and Flowers
Here in Italy -- and also in France -- the traditional symmetrical arrangement of the candles and crucifix has all but disappeared in favour of a curious asymmetrical disposition that nearly always includes a bouquet of flowers placed at one end of the altar, one, two, or three candles at the opposite end, and a crucifix somewhere in the sanctuary that may or may not be construed as having an inherent relationship with the altar.
The Priest Magnified
Apart from these considerations, the most deleterious effect continues to be the magnification of the priest and of his personality. The theological direction of all liturgical prayer -- ad Patrem, per Filium, in Spiritu -- is obscured, while the priest, even in spite of himself, appears to be, at every moment, addressing the faithful or engaging personally with them.
It's All About Me
Certain priests and bishops, marked by a streak of narcissism, abuse their position in front of and over the congregation to soak up the attention and energy of the faithful, attention and energy that, by right, belong to God alone during the Sacred Liturgy.
Placed in front of and over the congregation, priests an bishops all too easily give in to an arrogant liturgical clericalism, subjecting the faithful to their own additions amendments, comments, and embolisms. The faithful, being a captive audience, are subjected to the personality of the priest, which can and often does obscure the purity of the liturgical actions and texts that constitute the Roman Rite.
Translation and Business As Usual
The New English Translation of the Roman Missal will not, of itself, be enough to bring about an authentic reform and renewal of the Novus Ordo Missae. A deeper and broader reform is needed, one that must, necessarily, begin with bishops and with their priests charged with the care of souls.
Where to Start?
What concrete steps might be taken? It is fully within the authority of bishops to mandate and prescribe, for example, that two arrangements of the sanctuary will be allowed in their dioceses.
The Altar
In churches possessing an ad orientem altar integral to the architectural genius of the original design of the apse or of the sanctuary, secondary versus populum altars should be removed, and the sanctuaries should be restored to the original order, harmony, and spaciousness that characterized them.
In churches possessing only a versus populum altar, that altar should be so arranged as to place the crucifix, with the corpus facing the priest, in a central position with three candles at either side, following the Roman practice. Ideally there should be a space of minimally five feet on all sides of a free-standing altar, so as to facilitate the necessary ritual incensations and so as to allow, whenever possible, the celebration of the Mass ad orientem.

Saturday 10 March 2007

Monsignor R. Michael Schmitz

"The Classical Roman Rite and the Renewal of the Liturgy"
Conference by Monsignor R. Michael Schmitz
February 19, 2007
Centrality of the Mass in the Life of the Church

My talk to you today is about the Classical Roman Rite and the renewal of the liturgy. First of all, I believe we are all convinced here that a renewal of the liturgy, in whatever way, is urgently needed for the good of Universal Church. And the good thing is that we are not the only ones who think this way, but there is a man on the Throne of Peter who is as convinced as we are that something has to be done, and something has to be done very soon. He has made that very clear in many books that he published as Prefect of the Congregation for the Faith, and he has repeated this publicly and privately many times.

In a preface to a book that Dom Alcuin Reid has published about the organic growth of the liturgy, the Holy Father compares the Church to a gardener and says that every change in the liturgy has to be organic growth. So you cannot cut away pieces, you cannot simply destroy a plant that you want to grow, but you must be very careful to find for this plant a good time in the year to plant it, the right nourishment, the best place for it to be and grow, and then you must take care of it with great prudence daily and without interruption. It is very important that our Holy Father has made this remark because this is implicitly a critique of so many things that have happened in the last forty years. People have believed that the wonderful plant of the liturgy that God has planted in the midst of the Church can be treated like a plastic plant, that you can expose it as you want to your whims, that this plant is more beautiful than a real rose.

The outcome of that is much too obvious to all of us, and I do not want to spend this evening by enumerating stories that you all know about the numerous abuses that the liturgy has undergone in these last years. The Holy See, in the famous document has far as I recall, enumerated at least sixty types of abuse that are prohibited and still continue, and with that has shown that there is a problem.

Well, the Institute of Christ the King is very clear about how to resolve the problem. The problem is, first of all, to recognize the place of the liturgy in the Church. This will be the first of my topics today. We have to understand that the liturgy is not a decoration on a cake, like a little bit of whipped cream that you place on a wonderful birthday cake to make it more beautiful. The Church, even today in the crisis that we are undergoing, is still a very impressive worldwide operation. If you only think that the Church most certainly has the greatest number of charitable organizations in the whole world, that the church has hundreds and thousands of hospitals, of kindergartens, of orphanages, of schools, of universities, of all kinds of operations that take care of the needs of people in our times. The Church is like -- and this is not a word coined by me but by a German scholar -- the Church seems to be like a frozen giant. It is sad that She is frozen, She seems paralyzed, but She is still a giant, and she is everywhere present, and under the rags and underneath the dust that seems to cover Her, She is still the powerful queen that She has always been.

But all that is not Her center. All this is only a consequence. The wonderful social doctrine of the Church -- everything we can do in this state and in politics to bring the realm of Christ to real brilliance and to power -- all this is a consequence. A consequence that is very important and cannot be belittled if we do not want to destroy society, but it is still a consequence because the call of the Church is not there. The call is a liturgy. The call is the foremost and grandest liturgical act ever. The call is the sacrifice of the cross that is perpetuated on our altars. If we belittle the fact that the drama of the redemption takes place on the most forlorn altar in Gabon in the middle of the jungle every day, if we belittle in our parish churches that what our parish priest does is the most important action that can ever happen in the world, if we do not understand that the great and magnificent apparatus of the Church is all about protecting and promulgating the flame of love that has been sacrificed for us in the Heart of Jesus on the Cross, we have totally misunderstood the Roman Catholic Church. And therefore, we have to go back to a deeper understanding of the Liturgy.

I do not want to hurt any feelings. I have studied with wonderful men in the past that had Catholic theology in their fingertips. The fathers of an order that I do not want to mention, have wonderfully preserved, even at that time, the orthodoxy. But as a young priest, as a young seminarian, I learned nearly nothing about the liturgy. The only thing that I really learned about the liturgy in depth, I may say a little jokingly, was in a half-course, how to purify the chalice in the quickest way. I am not an exception. There are many young priests or not so young, like me now, that have never been introduced to the mystery of the liturgy. And with the many priests, innumerous faithful have not been taught that the most important action of the Church is the liturgical action, is to honor God, is to put God in the middle of all what we do. God comes first. This reality has been totally forgotten. And we know that what has afterwards been called the anthropological change has dethroned God and has centered our attention on poor human nature. All of a sudden the Church, with Her majesty, cannot seem to turn any longer around the mystery of the altar but seems to incline Herself in front of this little slave of sin that is called Man.

It is the great grace that the Church has received in this Pontificate that we have a Pope who has always understood the centrality of the liturgical mystery. I have to say that I am deeply grateful to the founder of the Institute of Christ the King, Msgr. Gilles Wach, that he has always said that we have to go out and proclaim the Faith, but that before we do this, before we take any action, we have to concentrate on what the first task of the priest is -- the liturgy. There is no time, there is no amount of money, there is no energy too precious to foster a more solemn celebration of this first calling, which is the heart of the Church.

If the Church has been subjected to so many heresies in the last forty years, if ever the Church has been subjected to heretical thinking, it is because people have wrongly understood that God acts only on our brain. But God is a God incarnate, and He acts, therefore, as he has shown, in the heart, through the heart, and on our heart. And He does that also in the Church, and the Church has as Her heart the liturgical mystery from which all Her blood, all the pulsations of Her heart, all Her energy comes. If the Devil wanted to destroy the beauty of the handmaid of the Lord, the beauty of Holy Mother Church, he had to attack the liturgy. He had to weaken the heart. He had to undermine the understanding of Catholics that it is more important to be on your knees than to be activists alone. First, you have to be on your knees and then you can be active because God gives you grace for that. If you understand that, then, with our Holy Father, you put emphasis on the celebration of the liturgy.

Therefore, the liturgy is in the first place to be understood as the direction of our whole being toward God. In a few moments I will come back to this, but be assured that it is totally wrong to believe that the Mass is only for us. The consequences of the Mass are for us because we are poor beings and God knows it, and therefore sacrificed Himself on the cross knowing that the re-establishment of the glory of God would heal this sinful world. But the first step, the first sense of the sacrifice of the cross is to re-establish the glory of the Father. The Second Person of the Holy Trinity came into this world not only to heal a bunch of unrepentant sinners, but in the first place, to re-establish the glory of God and the possibility of Divine Love being poured on these creatures of God that are weak.

So the aim of the first liturgical act, the sacrifice of the cross, is much larger. It is, as a matter of fact, infinite, and it aims toward God and His eternal beauty and glory. And this is true for every Mass. If you assist at a Low Mass where the priest, silently perhaps, says and follows the rubrics, the glorification of God is always the goal and the aim of the celebration of this Mass. The glory of God is present at what the Chuch does because the good Lord asks her to do it because He has instituted it by His Sacrifice.

Can you imagine what it means if you destroy this universal outlook, this glorification of God, this invocation of His majesty that comes down on our altars, though human banality? Certainly, the call and the validity of the Mass, by the grace of God has not been touched, but if God, over 2,000 years, has taken time and effort and grace to really instruct us in every detail about how He wants to be glorified, how could I, because I have read a few books, believe I could do it better than the Holy Ghost. If I do it I will be rewarded with my own stupidity.

Therefore, the first step we must take, along with the Holy Father, within our own life and existence, is that we recognize this powerful reality of the centrality of the Mass in the life of the Church. And with the Mass, of the whole liturgy, the liturgy of the sacraments, the liturgy of the Divine Office, the liturgy that the whole Church lives from morning to evening, the liturgy that still today is celebrated without end, 24 hours a day throughout the entire globe for the glorification of God. This used to be a uniform liturgy with many beautiful expressions, but it would always incessantly say “holy, holy, holy,” with all of its details and expressions throughout the whole world. If you destroy that, if you diminish it, if you touch it, then, the heart of the Church perhaps does not stop beating, but the beats of this heart will be weakened and the energy of the Church, the energy of the proclamation of the truth, the energy to battle the enemy, will get weaker and weaker. And that is what we are witnessing.

So let us be grateful to the Holy Father that he insists that the clergy will rediscover the mystery of the liturgy. If my confrères will allow me to say a word about the clergy.
I do not want to offend the lay people present here. We know that the laity is very much, like us priests, called to holiness. And we know from our own mothers that we would not be here without the laity. And we know we would not have had a wonderful education without the efforts of our parents. We would not be the Church who has kept the Faith of our Fathers if not for the faithful lay people who have brought back the Latin Mass in so many locations, against the will of the clergy. And I thank you for that.

But still, St. Hildegard von Bingen, the great Benedictine, has said, omni malo ab clero, all evil comes from the clergy. That means if the clergy is forgetful about the mystery of the Mass, if the clergy does not grasp what the liturgy really means, then this disease will pass over to the lay people and weaken their own dedication and devotion.

Blessed Pope John XXIII, once said that “The devotion of the lay people, if it is authentic, has to be an objective liturgical devotion.” You can have many devotions, as I have, to many saints, but the core of your devotion has to be the Mass, has to be the liturgy. Whatever graces the Holy Ghost gives you to understand it [the liturgy] better, it is your attending daily Mass, Sunday Mass, your presence at the manifold liturgies of the Church that gives more meaning to your own private devotion and the strength you need in this world. And we the clergy have the task and the calling to help you gain an ever deeper devotion and understanding of the centrality of the liturgy.

Specificities of the Traditional Latin Liturgy

Let me therefore come to the second part of my talk. There are specificities of the traditional Latin liturgy that we have to rediscover if a renewal of the liturgy in the Church will be possible. Two so-called specificities of the old rite are also to be found in the so-called Novus Ordo if it is celebrated according to the rubrics. The first is Latin, and the second is the direction of the altar.
9
Ad Orientem
9
The Holy Father, as perhaps you know, has written a Preface to a book by a very learned member of the London Oratory, Father Michael Lang, who is a very holy priest, about the direction of the altar. And the Holy Father fosters the results of that book. Father Lang has discovered that never was there anything else in the history of the Church other than an eastward-bound altar. And everyone would look toward the same direction together with the priest, toward the east, toward the resurrecting Son—toward Christ—toward the center of the liturgy. Father Lang makes it very clear that any other direction of the altar is not traditional. It is simply a recent introduction. And even if you go through the Novus Ordo Missae you will find a few rubrics that indicate that this Mass was meant to be celebrated at an altar facing the tabernacle. So even the new liturgy was not meant to be celebrated exclusively facing the people.

Latin
Latin is still the language of the Church. Personally, I find it embarrassing when the members of the clergy do not understand Latin. It makes them victims of ignorance because if one cannot read and understand Latin, one cannot read and understand the original documents of the Second Vatican Council. One cannot read and understand even most of the Fathers of the Church that have been so widely propagated in the last forty years.
When the clergy would be made national, then all of a sudden, we would not have a Roman Catholic clergy anymore. We would have an American clergy. We would have a German clergy. We would have an Italian clergy. And when they come together, they have no language with which to communicate. This is not the intent of the Church. This has never been the intent of the Church.

The same Pope John XXIII, in the famous encyclical, Veterum Sapientiae, during the Council, asked that all clergy be instructed in the Latin language. Just recently, Benedict XVI has again underscored the importance of the Latin language for the Church and for the liturgy.
So if we are for the orientation of the altar toward the tabernacle, and if we want Latin as the language of the Church, we are just doing what the Second Vatican Council wanted, even though the Second Vatican Council is often misrepresented as being against these.

I will give you an important argument to make for the Traditional Latin Mass. The Traditional Latin Mass, from the beginning to the end, was the liturgy of the Second Vatican Council. Not one of the Fathers celebrated any other Mass privately or publicly [during the Council]. And the great liturgies during the Council were the Solemn Papal Masses according to the traditional ritual, every time the Pope was involved.

The liturgy was changed slowly, and with pressure by others, long after the Council was finished. No Father during the Council ever had to see, nor endure what many of us have to endure sometimes today.

With these two points, we are simply going with the direction of the Church of all time. And for the next points, which are much more clearly anchored in the Traditional liturgy, you will see that they also are most important if we want a real and lasting renewal of the liturgy.

The Mass – A Sacrifice

First of all, we have to understand that the Mass is in the first place a sacrifice. I will not linger on that because you all know it. In primi sacrificium est. In his famous letter, Dominicae Cenae, John Paul II said that the Church teaches, as always, that the Eucharist is in the first place a sacrifice. We cannot emphasize this too much. Even the part of the Mass that has the form of a meal -- and I speak of communion (and you know that communion of the people is not necessary for the validity of the Mass) -- even this part of the Mass is clearly a sacrificial banquet. It is not an ordinary meal. Everyone has known, right from the beginning, that this meal is the consequence of the sacrifice that God gives to him in order to strengthen him with the sacrificial fruit of the sacrifice of Christ. The Traditional Latin Mass makes that very clear.

If you have some time, and we don’t have that time this evening, go through the prayers of the Offertory and you will see that it is full of allusions and very clear statements about the Mass as a sacrifice: the oblatio munda, the pure sacrifice, the immolatio, the offering, the sacrifice even of the host that the priest offers to the good Lord, is already called an oblatio. It is all about bringing to God a gift to be sacrificed, and the priest at the very end of the Mass says again that he has sacrificed the host for the people. He says ”Placeat tibi, Sancta Trinitas, obsequium servitutis meae, et praesta, ut sacrificium quod oculis tuae Majestatis indignus obtuli, tibi sit acceptabile.” “Be pleased, Holy Trinity, with the observance of the rite that I have just offered, and grant that this sacrifice that I have offered to Your Majesty unworthily may be acceptable to you.”

The fact that the Mass is a sacrifice brings about the glorification of God and the honor of God that is objectively given to God in every valid Mass will be enhanced greatly if the priest knows that he is the priest of the sacrifice; that, accordingly, his life should be a life of sacrifice, and that sacrifice in our own lives is something extraordinarily positive.

The faith that is proclaimed today is a faith of comfort. We have comfort food; we have comfort houses; we have comfort faith. This is a lie. It is a lie because we know that our lives are not comfortable. We know that there is a cross in every life. You can be so successful: you can have a thousand acres in La Jola, California, you can have a big bank account and a Bentley, you can even be the President of the United States, but you know that somewhere there is the cross that God has prepared for you for your holiness. But if you do not hear about that in the most important celebration of the church, how can you understand it?

Go read in the Old Rite how many times the word sacrifice, offering, oblation, immolation, is used. You will understand that the priest who does not use these words daily anymore, does not understand the sacrifices in his own life. Then you understand why so many priests walk away, why so many priests in the moment of temptation get weak, why so many priests are led astray by a comfort faith that they have to offer to the faithful in the name of what-not. And therefore, try, if you can, to introduce young priests, if not to the actual celebration, at least to the texts of the Old Liturgy and you will see that their priesthood will deepen, as your own faith as lay people will deepen, from the understanding that the sacrifice of the Lord is identically brought about every time that the priest utters the words of the consecration. The sacrificial aspect of the celebration of the Mass has to be once again understood, in order for their to be a renewal of the liturgy, for it to once again become the center of the Church.

Adoration
Another aspect that I want to touch briefly on is adoration. Here I will be very brief. Fortunately in the United States there is a new and wonderful movement to bring back adoration of the Blessed Sacrament. More and more priests expose the Blessed Sacrament, more and more faithful adore the Blessed Sacrament. The traditional liturgy lives from this Adoration. The numerous genuflections in the course of the Mass show how wonderfully the church teaches the adoration of the mystery in the liturgy. I do not know whether you have assisted at the Mass of a very elderly priest when he says the Traditional Latin Mass. Sometimes these priests -- and I will be in this situation some time soon -- have a hard time genuflecting. But isn’t it always the witness of a wonderful act of faith to see the old priest grabbing the altar, and making slowly the twentieth genuflection and then getting back up again? This expresses the spirit of adoration. He should be on his face; he should be prostrated, if were possible to be say Mass this way, because indignus, unworthily, we say the Mass.

The most beautiful thing happens right after the consecration. When the priest has uttered the words of consecration, the rubrics of the Mass say: “quibus verbis prolatis, statim Hostiam consecratam genuflexus adorat.” “When he says the words of the consecration, he,” the priest, “will immediately adore the host on his knees.” This genuflection has been abolished. It had been there for a thousand years, in order to demonstrate that the consecration and the reality of the real presence is not dependent upon our own faith. It is an immediate reality: from the moment that the words of the consecration are uttered, according to the will of the Church and the commandment of God, God is present. There is no need to show the host to the people in so that they may believe in the presence, in order to make the presence real. The presence is real in spite of our weak faith. And every time a priest, immediately after the consecration, kneels down, we all know that he, like we, witnesses adoringly the real presence of the Lord. We have to bring back this adoration of the presence of the Lord to the liturgy if we want the renewal.

Realism
Then there is something that I want to mention because it touches again upon the priesthood. The Missal that I have the grace to use is very realistic. Sometimes we are accused of the purported fact that the Old Liturgy does not take care of reality: that it is distant from the people, that we do not really know what the situation of the world is, and so on and so forth.

But, first of all, the liturgy knows all about me as a priest. It addresses me all the time as a sinner. Already when I ascend the altar I have to say the Confiteor and I have to beg the forgiveness of the congregation represented by the altar boy. Then, when I ascend the steps of the altar, I say “Aufer a nobis, quaesumus, Dominue, iniquitates nostras, ut ad Sancta sanctorum puris mereamur mentibus introire.” I ask God to take away my iniquities. And then afterwards, still bowing over the altar, when I kiss it I say, “Oramus te, Dominue, per merita Sanctorum tuorum, quorum reliquiae hic sunt, et omnium Sanctorum ut indulgere digneris omnia peccata mea.”” When I kiss the altar where the relics of the saints are embedded I ask for the forgiveness of my sins before I dare to begin the holy sacrifice of the Mass and go to the side of the Missal to begin the Introit.
I cannot give you all the places where the priest is reminded of his own sinfulness, but this seems to me -- as we know from the recent past -- utterly realistic. The priests are sinners, as we all are. But in comparison with the layman – and this I quote from a saint -- a priest has not just one private devil; he has about five, who try to bring him to betray the good Lord. Therefore the church always reminds him that he is a sinner, that he needs purification and that he is not worthy to offer the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass.

But there is another point of realism. This Missal knows about our sorrows. It knows about our needs. The prayers in this Missal -- every single little prayer, the Collect, or the other prayers -- are full of descriptions of our miserable situation. And, furthermore, in an annex to the Mass there are so called “special prayers.” You will find there prayers for everything and anything. There are special prayers for those who travel, for those who have died, for those who need rain, for those who need good humor, for those who need tears, for those who are persecuted, for those who need other blessings, for the Pope, for married people, for everyone and everything. And the priest is free to add these prayers in the private Mass every time he is asked to do so, or he himself needs prayers.

This Missal is also a document of the human need. In the first place it is a document of the need of the church for the glorification of God. But the Church, as a good Mother, has never forgotten that the glorification of God brings about the consequences of grace, and She knows about all the needs of us, her poor children. The Church is a realistic Mother and so is the liturgy. If sometimes we hear only about very theoretical social justice issues, this seems to me much less realistic than these down to earth prayers that the Church has developed in centuries.

Heaven
Another point that we need to especially emphasize if we want to bring back a beautiful liturgy and the renewal of the glorification of God in the Church, is Heaven. The liturgy has to reflect Heaven.

Well, ask yourself: does your parish church and her liturgy reflect Heaven? I don’t want answers. I can tell you, come to our Seminary, come to our churches [of the Institute of Christ the King] in the United States, go to other Traditional Latin Masses, especially High Mass, and particularly the pontifical High Mass; in these you know that you have a glimpse of Heaven. It is true what St. Jerome said: “He who has never had a foretaste of Heaven will probably not go to Heaven.” Well, the Church gives us a foretaste of Heaven. If you go to a small parish church where nothing has been changed and the liturgy is celebrated in a Missa cantata on Sunday with a nice choir that sings Gregorian Chant, there, in the middle of nowhere, in the middle of the jungles of Africa, you have a glimpse of Heaven, a glimpse of something that is so overwhelmingly divine that you understand that God is present.

So many people have been converted simply by being present at the heavenly beauty of the Mass. Among many others the Duke of Oldenborg, who came to a Low Mass at one of our houses and after the Low Mass said: “Now I have to become Catholic.” This comes from the fact that every detail in the Mass is not a human invention but an inspiration of the Holy Ghost. That every detail has been shaped into a harmonious unity, and if we change a tittle of it, then we will easily destroy the presence of the beauty that God, from heaven, wants to give us. We have to go back to a worship that is worthy of Heaven, and therefore, every human detail has to be as beautiful as it can.

Hierarchical Order

And finally, if we want a renewal of the liturgy we have to go back to the hierarchical order that the Traditional Latin Mass reflects. I do not know how many of you have ever seen a Pontifical High Mass, but if so, and if it was celebrated according to the full rubrics, you will have seen, at the beginning, that the pontiff is vested at the throne. It is a little lengthy procedure, but I am always astonished how fascinated everyone is to see that the human being who comes into the chapel or church is slowly changed by Holy Mother Church into the sovereign high priest and the representative of Christ. [At the Institute] we have had bishops from the whole world, some pleasantly astonished at what was happening to them; but after the vestition no one could have mistaken the bishop except for what he really is -- a bishop, the representative of Christ, Christ on earth.

The Pontifical High Mass includes the bishop, the presbyter assistens, the deacon, the subdeacon, and all the servers of the minor clergy. They stand on different levels of the sanctuary. This shows you at one glimpse what otherwise has to be explained at length -- that the Church has a gradation of hierarchy, and this hierarchy is instituted by Christ, from the liturgy for the liturgy, to make clear that we need steps, that we need help, that we need support and elevation to come to the sancta sanctorum, [the “holy of holies”], to midst of it all, to the sacrifice and to the presence. If you assist at a beautifully celebrated Solemn High Mass you will come out a changed person because you will have seen the reality of the Church. You will have seen that she is still the beautiful queen. You will have seen that she is still the powerful queen of angels and saints. And you understand why the Church teaches that at these Masses, and at every Mass, the whole heavenly court is present, in gradations, in hierarchies, in the hierarchies of the angels and of the saints that lead to the culminating point – to the revelation of the Holy Trinity in the presence of Christ.

The liturgy has not been destroyed in her center, but perhaps weakened in her hierarchical expression, and this has bee reflected in the perception of the laity. And we cannot be astonished if lay people do not approach a bishop with a notion of his hierarchical station if he is not presented to them as the sovereign high priest during the liturgy.

Renewal Through the Traditional Latin Mass

So, that is what we can learn, and we shall learn, and we will learn if there is a renewal of the liturgy -- the Sacrifice, the Adoration, the Realism, the Beauty of Heaven, and the Hierarchy have to come back in the liturgy of the church. And to be frank, I know a solution. We, in the Institute of Christ the King, by the grace of God, live part of this solution in our humble condition, in our frailty, by the gracious permission of the Holy See. We can only hope that the renewal that the Holy Father wants to bring about is linked to a universal, generous permission of the Traditional Latin Mass to all groups, to all priests who want to say it.

It has already been confirmed by many canonists that the canonical situation seems to be such that every priest can already say the Mass privately. The public Mass will hopefully soon be reinstated at least as an opportunity for everyone.

In the last forty years we have heard so much about liberality, liberty and liberalism. I am for the liberalization of the Traditional Latin Rite. I’m very grateful to the Holy Father that he has brought about this discussion. When I was in the seminary in 1976, speaking about the Latin Mass was a reason to be thanked and showed out the door.
I want to be very optimistic, in the sense of Christian hope. What has happened in the last ten years is a miracle. That many other traditional groups and the Institute of Christ the King are everywhere now, that we have this wonderful church in St. Louis or the wonderful church in Wausau, and everyone can come and worship in the Traditional Latin Rite, would have been unthinkable under other popes. So we want to be very grateful to Pope Benedict XVI and to Pope John Paul II for having opened the door, first a little bit, and now hopefully more.

Well, this talk is taped, but still I want to say that we joke sometimes at table at our community, saying “Well, in thirty years we will all be here, white-haired, and we will say ‘The indult will come out any day now’.” Well, I hope not. To close this short talk, I can only tell you at least that the document is ready and that the person who is responsible for all of it does not want to discuss it any longer. We have now only to pray that the appropriate time to publish it will be found soon. This will bring about a great strengthening not only of Traditional Latin Mass groups -- it will bring about a renewal of the liturgy, it will bring about a renewal of the clergy, it will bring about a renewal of the beauty of the Church. It will be like seeing your mother all dusty and in rags on the streets; you go up to her and rip off the old dusty clothing and below that you see the golden clothes that she has brought for the most beautiful ball she has ever attended.

And that will be Holy Mother Church with the Traditional Latin Rite liberalized for everyone.