Saturday, December 21, 2013

Moderately Traditional. . .

I have no inside knowledge and have read little about this except a news report.  It seems, however, that in response to a very traditional Latin Mass order of priests and lay, the Pope has intervened to take over the order, close the seminary, disperse the seminarians, install a new overseer, and prohibit the Latin Mass (or at least severely restrict its usage) within this order.

The news report is here.

I do not know if his intervention was warranted or not, whether the Latin Mass issue was central or peripheral, or, really, much else.  What I do find interesting is that this traditionalist group was told that you cannot have the Latin Mass if you prefer it and judge it better than the vernacular.  That is both interesting and unusual.

Given the fact that the Pope has had his plate full of left leaning monks, nuns, and priests -- throw in a bishop or two -- and yet none of these received such a seemingly quick and harsh rebuke, it does make you wonder.  Now anybody with a mind knows that no Pope is going to come out against the Latin Mass but he need not.  If he chooses, he can restrict its usage (contrary to B16) in such a way that it becomes the rare exception instead of a real alternative to the vernacular that now predominates.  Again, I have no inside knowledge here but merely the curiosity that for this group the Pope has prevented the Latin Mass from being used, at least as widely as it was by the Order, and seems to have come down with a more restrictive punishment for their sins (which may be great, who knows) than he has for others and their sins.

In other words, he wants folks to be traditional but moderately so, to love the Latin Mass but not too much, and to stop saying that the Latin Mass is either more faithful or better than the Novus Ordo.  Now I am only a Lutheran and live in Tennessee, so my judgment may be suspect here.  If I am misreading him, I apologize, but from the vantage point of one outsider it does seem a rather unequal approach...  What do YOU think?


4 comments:

Anonymous said...

From what little I gather on the subject the Latin Mass can be conducted using the Novus Ordo - post Vatican II mass. That said the services are few and far between for a variety of reasons. One of theme being to the unavailability of priests who are familiar with Latin.

Sure, many of the traditional Catholics as they call themselves favor it, but they may be whistling past the graveyard. I doubt that even 1% of the masses in the U.S. are done using the Latin mass.

I believe Pope John Paul II brought it back from obscurity and his successor, Pope Benedict 16th was for it, too. Perhaps, the current pope, Francis, is against excesses like the one illustrated in your example where they may be using the Latin one exclusively.

Anonymous said...

It's symbolic, really. Many of the Latin-rite RCs (I know quite a few personally) take Trent very seriously, usually teach their kids the Baltimore Catechism, etc. The press might call them "fundamentalist catholics" (which would be hilarious), we might call them confessionally Roman...They are as against postmodernism and American pop evangelicalism as we are, but take a harder stance against Protestantism and Lutheranism than your generic mega-church RC. They often attend Mass daily, honor the church's teaching on contraception, their women wear mantillas during services, usually they receive Communion only in one kind (bread).

It's actually a lot easier to talk to a Latin-rite Roman Catholic because you know where they stand and you can appeal to their confessional documents in discussion and they know what you're talking about.

Anonymous said...

Frank is a marxist fraud. His intent is to assure that no RC be allowed to have a strong, solid faith. He knows that a strong faith works against his personal goal of universal marxism.It is truly bizarre that the form of the Mass practiced for hundreds of years is now looked upon as "extreme." Think about that; how can such a thing be?

It only happens when someone claims to know more than all the generations that have preceded him. It is marx and world government on the march.

Fr. D+
Anglican Priest

PS: My son is a Latin Mass RC, and he fronds on the Novus Ordo very strongly. I think he is right to do so.

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