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| By the time Pope Benedict meets his maker, he and his predecessor will have proven in spades, two popes outrank an ecumenical council. In the meantime the exodus out the doors will have more or less destroyed the living Church in the West. |
Vatican Preparing a Manual to Help Priests Celebrate Mass
Prefect Warns Against Making Liturgy Into a 'Show'H. Sergio Mora - ROME, January 16, 2013 (Zenit.org).The Congregation for Divine Worship and the Sacraments is preparing a booklet to help priests celebrate the Mass properly and the faithful to participate better, according to the prefect of the Congregation for Divine Worship and the Sacraments.
Cardinal Antonio Cañizares confirmed this Tuesday at an address at the Spanish Embassy to the Holy See on "Catholic Liturgy since Vatican II: Continuity and Evolution."
"We are preparing it; it will help to celebrate well and to participate well. I hope it will come out this year, in the summer," the cardinal told ZENIT.
During his talk the cardinal reiterated the importance Vatican II gave to the liturgy, "whose renewal must be understood in continuity with the Tradition of the Church and not as a break or discontinuity." A break either because of innovations that do not respect continuity or because of an immobility that freezes everything at Pius XII, he said. (It's beginning to look like the only aspects not frozen with Pius XII will be the use of the vernacular. Well, at least the latinized version of the vernacular.)
In particular, Cardinal Cañizares stressed the importance that Sacrosanctum Concilium gave to the sacred liturgy, through which "the work of our Redemption is exercised, above all in the divine sacrifice of the Eucharist," adding that "God wants to be adored in a concrete way and it's not up to us to change it."
The cardinal said that there is talk of a renewed Church, which must not be understood as a mere reform of structures, but as a change starting with the liturgy, because it is from the liturgy that the work of our salvation is effected. (I am at a loss as to where God has specifically given concrete directions for how He wants to be worshiped. Perhaps this just didn't translate well.)
When speaking of the liturgy, continued the cardinal, one must not forget what the conciliar document states: "Christ is always present in his Church, especially in the liturgical action. He is present in the sacrifice of the Mass, be it in the person of the minister, 'offering himself now through the ministry of the priests as he then offered himself on the cross,' be it especially under the Eucharistic species."
He stressed that the objective of the liturgy "is the adoration of God and the salvation of men," which is not a creation of ours, but source and summit of the Church." (Back in time we go to a theology which elevates the priest and elevates the atonement aspects of one tradition of Catholic theology above any others.)
The prefect of the Congregation for Divine Worship and the Sacraments criticized existing abuses such as showmanship, and praised moments of silence "that are action," which enable the priest and the faithful to talk with Jesus Christ and which exclude the predominance of words that often becomes showmanship on the part of the priest. The correct attitude is the one "indicated by Saint John the Baptist, when he says he must decrease and the Messiah must increase."
The cardinal criticized the effort to make the Mass "entertaining" with certain songs -- instead of focusing on the mystery -- in an attempt to overcome "boredom" by transforming the Mass into a show.
He added that 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. (So here it is, by the summer Rome will have declared that priests once again face the wall and the traditionalists will have won yet another liturgical point without input from any other views.)
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Slowly but ever so surely, the Novus Ordo is being 'reformed' into the vernacular version of the Tridentine Rite. The Vatican could have saved everyone a lot of angst with a little honesty. They could have come out of their Tridentine closet years ago and just said" "those of us who grew up in the Latin Rite and enjoyed all that priestly status it entailed, do not like this more egalitarian Mass which de emphasizes mystery and priestly magic for the sake of community and lay involvement. The lay don't need to be involved. They can be bored or pray their rosaries." The fact it's taken them this long only means that now we can fiddle with our smart phones or read our Ipads without fearing any dirty looks from the priest who will conveniently once again have his back to us.
I keep going back to the one meditation I did about six years ago when I was shown that the Vatican would indeed do everything in it's power to roll back the core concepts of Vatican II, that collegiality would give way to dictatorship, that subsidiarity would give way to micro management from Rome, that the laity would again be reduced to passive sponges, that the Mass would once again return to a magic ritual in which the Resurrection would take a very very distant second place to Crucifixion so necessary for atonement theology and a male priesthood, and that the Way Jesus taught would be buried under papal idolatory and papal decrees.
So far this is all coming true, and it's abusive in it's execution. I had hoped that the sexual abuse scandal would at least delay the implementation of some of this, but once JPII started appointing bishops on the basis of loyalty oaths rather than ability, that became an empty hope. Pope Benedict has only accelerated the process, and the older he gets, the more acceleration, as if his goal is to have everything back in it's proper pre Vatican II order before he dies. He's probably going to get his mission accomplished, but at what price?
How many souls must be turned away to save the few who will be left in the West. Apparently it doesn't matter and that is the saddest part of all of this 'reform'.
