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| I really hope younger readers don't think when the TLM was the only show in town it was this showy. It wasn't. |
The Vatican has issued a follow up instruction to Pope Benedict's 2007 letter Summorum Pontificum. This was the letter which liberalized the use of the Latin Mass. This latest Vatican instruction is taken by some traditionalists as Benedict putting the Latin Mass on the same footing as the Novus Ordo. The following is an extract from the blog of Britains' Damien Thompson, a man not noted for being a progressive--at all.
The Vatican Instruction on how to apply Summorum Pontificum was published this morning and it’s good news for traditionalists. If bishops thought they had the power to block the return of the Tridentine Mass, they must abandon that fantasy. Universae Ecclesiae does not retreat from Benedict XVI’s liberation of the Traditional Mass. On the contrary, it entrenches it further into the life of the Church. A group – however small – is entitled to ask for (and receive) provision of the Extraordinary Form; and that group need not come from the local parish or even the diocese.
Talk about giving a blank check to Latin loyalists and Temple Police. I truly feel sorry for the first time in a very long time for some of our bishops. I can just imagine how this is going to play out. Here comes a new society dedicated to demanding a Latin Mass in every parish in every diocese because this letter apparently gives them the right to do so. If Thompson and Fr. Zuhlsdorf are interpreting this instruction correctly, this will stomp all over the rights of bishops to run their own dioceses in their own way for their own people. And the stomping can be done by a small group of people who don't even reside in a targeted diocese much less in a targeted parish. Wow.
I think I'm beginning to understand why Benedict chose the day after the Beatification ceremony of JPII to announce the forced resignation of Bishop Morris. As the traditionalists did unto Bishop Morris, they can now do unto every bishop every where. JPII be praised, the precedent has been set. The temple police have been officially deputized.
I wish I could say I had no idea what Benedict thinks he's doing, but I know better. He said it before he was pope. He's worked on it for the last thirty years. He is creating a smaller 'purer' church, but he truly does care that millions of us leave. It is his goal. His legacy will be a Roman Catholicism that is purged of modernism and secularism and relativism and ninety percent of it's faithful in first world countries. It will also be notably lacking in compassion and pastoral sensitivity but hey, it will be fluent in a dead language.
In the meantime I will be trying to get my head around the thought that in a time when the Church is experiencing a serious shortage of priests, the Vatican's concern is pushing these poor over worked souls into learning the Latin of the Tridentine Mass along with the Latinized English of the new translation of the Novus Ordo. No wonder it was so important for the Vatican to put obedience over everything else when it came to the selection of bishops. If we had more bishops with the personal integrity of a Morris, the newly deputized and mandated temple police wouldn't be effective.
I really hope this latest letter from the Vatican is the brick that makes the load too heavy for most of our bishops. This is not just an instruction from the Vatican, nor is it really about the TLM. No what it is, is a direct attack on their own pastoral authority under the guise of the TLM. In the meantime the tail continues to vigorously wag the dog.
Just a bit of post script: If you take the link to Fr. Z's blog check out all the things he's now selling to, you know, keep up the battle against progressives and modernists. I especially laughed at the special plea not to support the NCR blog drive (NCFishwrap) but to send those donations to him. His take on the Bishop Morris situation is quite fascinating. I wonder if he needs all these different means to support his blog because Fr's Euteneur and Corapi are no longer around to compete for those traditionalist bucks. Yes, these trad priests do eat their dead. And to think Corapi and Zuhlsdorf were both ordained by JPII in the same ceremony. Can't wait till they take over the whole church.
