WHAT'S DA MOTU YOU?

I do not understand all the brouhaha over the motu proprio.

About once a month or so my family and I would go to one of the indult masses in Cleveland. We did this after we attended mass at our own parish. (We were musicians. We would fulfill our ministry and worship with our community and then go to the Latin Mass to fulfill some inner desire we had.)

At our home parish we sang all the parts of the mass in Latin on Wednesdays and on some high holydays. I actually did not realize that not everyone (or rather almost no one) did this except the parishes in my little Catholic ghetto until I went into the seminary. (Ah! I was so naive!) Though now looking back, I think my home parish, at least in this one respect, was much closer to what Vatican II actually said (rather than what people want it to say).

47. According to the Constitution on the Liturgy, “the use of the Latin language, with due respect to particular law, is to be preserved in the Latin rites.”(30)
However, since “the use of the vernacular may frequently be of great advantage to the people” (31) “it is for the competent territorial ecclesiastical authority to decide whether, and to what extent, the vernacular language is to be used. Its decrees have to be approved, that is confirmed by the Apostolic See.”(32)
[But]. . . Pastors of souls should take care that besides the vernacular “the faithful may also be able to say or sing together in Latin those parts of the Ordinary of the Mass which pertains to them.” (33) (Instruction on Music in the Liturgy)

Good ole’ Father Ozimek was cutting edge and didn’t even know it.

Anyway, I’ve lived both, love both, and see merit in both (though I am hardly qualified to be celebrant of the earlier form of the mass).

So I find it a bit troublesome that the very people who taught me that, “Unity does not mean uniformity!” would be the very ones who are most against this permission for greater usage of something that is already permitted in the Church albeit in a limited fashion. There is no reason why this should be seen as a great division in the Church.

The greatest proponents of the Norvus Ordo mass state that it is a natural outgrowth of the previous way of praying the mass: that nothing has essentially changed. We are, in essence, doing the same thing. That is all the less reason to be upset. Why those who would see nothing wrong with liturgical dancers or inclusive language at a mass in the United States go apoplectic at the thought of a Tridentine Mass existing somewhere is interesting. Besides nobody is going to be forced to attend (just as nobody is forced to attend a rock and roll mass or a polka mass.)

The New York Times (Thursday, June 28th) sited the Rev. Keith Pecklers, a Jesuit scholar at the Gregorian University in Rome as worrying that relations between Catholics and Jews may be harmed by the move. He sites as an example the Good Friday mass, which includes a prayer for the conversion of the Jews. If this were in fact a true concern, Fr. Pecklers and those who agree with him should be the first to rejoice that motu proprio has come out. In a more complete way the rite will become part of the living tradition of the Church once again rather than a historical anomaly that we keep alive. The rite, now that it will have to be taken a bit more seriously, will become susceptible to natural evolution. We know this is true from when it was still the universal rite of the Latin Church. The Holy Week services changed quite a bit in the 1940s. Pope John XXIII added, “We honor Joseph her husband” (sed et beati Joseph, eiusdem Viriginis Sponsi) to the canon of the mass. Now those parts of the mass that might be found objectionable to modern sensibilities might be more subject to change.

The charge in this article is also made that clergy will be overburdened, but that is in the paragraph just before it states, “there seems to be no widespread demand for it.” So which way is it guys?

Let’s be frank, most priests cannot even say the mass anymore. New churches are not designed for the rite and our grand old dames have often been so severely wreckovated that it would not even be possible to say the mass there anyway.

Still I call on those who would cry out “sensus fidelium!” to take a dose of that same medicine. It has been over four decades since the close of the Second Vatican Council. If there is still a hue and cry for this apparently legitimate way to pray the rite, maybe we are being told something. Who knows? If it is of God we will know soon enough. If it is not, it will die out of its own accord.

For us in the United States, all this moaning and fussing is really quite silly. What I do understand however are those in authority in such places as France where much energy has been spent suppressing this rite against those who feel the Church has gone astray and want us to return celebrating the way mass as it was before Vatican II because of it. They spent a lot of their authority capitol making the point that we have moved on and there is no returning. I felt the same way when defending parishes not allowing altar girls. I would say, “That is not our tradition, we are not allowed, Rome has spoken.” Well, then they spoke again and I felt as though I had enough egg on my face to feed a small 3rd world country. But you know what, if this is that to which we are called, you move on. The problem will be having both sides agree to play nicely with others and not run with scissors. When celebrated well, neither is “better” than the other. Both are mass. And as Christ is the ultimate celebrant of every sacrament, though we may get more out of one way than the other, the Christ proclaimed and the Body and Blood receive at both are exactly the same.

Perhaps I am really missing something here (and that is very possible) so file this under the, “nobody asked for my opinion” and “like what I think matters anyway” column, but let us wait and see and not get our liturgical underwear in a bunch in the mean time.