- Feb 5, 2002
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For 14 years, Benedict XVI’s hoped-for interchange between the ordinary and extraordinary forms of the Mass. In many parishes that coexistence had been taking place.
Three seminarians sat around our dining room table in last spring, chatting about their classes at our local minor seminary.
They were all taking Latin, and ready to learn it for the sake of being able eventually to celebrate Mass in Latin and even learn to celebrate the Traditional Latin Mass according to the 1962 Missal. There was no anger or bitterness over having to learn Latin, and none of them were raised going to the Traditional Latin Mass. They were simply embracing it as part of the liturgical tradition of the Church.
Listening to them talk, I had this belief that the Church was going to be moving into the next generation of priests without bitterness or division between those who prefer to attend the Traditional Latin Mass (what Benedict XVI called the “extraordinary form”) and those who prefer the new Mass of the liturgical reform (the “ordinary form”). I hoped that both forms of the Roman Rite would truly co-exist and that we would not lose in the Roman Rite the deep beauty of the extraordinary form. That future was possible and actually happening in multiple places around the Church.
Yet, with his new motu proprio Traditionis Custodes and the accompanying letter to the bishops, Pope Francis seems to be sending a message of division while claiming to be promoting unity. He says that he hopes to “re-establish throughout the Roman Rite” a “single identical prayer” and to “to provide for the good of those who are rooted in the previous form of celebration and need to return in due time to the Roman Rite promulgated by Saints Paul VI and John Paul II.”
Continued below.
My Parish: Where the Two Forms of the Mass Met in Mutual Enrichment
Three seminarians sat around our dining room table in last spring, chatting about their classes at our local minor seminary.
They were all taking Latin, and ready to learn it for the sake of being able eventually to celebrate Mass in Latin and even learn to celebrate the Traditional Latin Mass according to the 1962 Missal. There was no anger or bitterness over having to learn Latin, and none of them were raised going to the Traditional Latin Mass. They were simply embracing it as part of the liturgical tradition of the Church.
Listening to them talk, I had this belief that the Church was going to be moving into the next generation of priests without bitterness or division between those who prefer to attend the Traditional Latin Mass (what Benedict XVI called the “extraordinary form”) and those who prefer the new Mass of the liturgical reform (the “ordinary form”). I hoped that both forms of the Roman Rite would truly co-exist and that we would not lose in the Roman Rite the deep beauty of the extraordinary form. That future was possible and actually happening in multiple places around the Church.
Yet, with his new motu proprio Traditionis Custodes and the accompanying letter to the bishops, Pope Francis seems to be sending a message of division while claiming to be promoting unity. He says that he hopes to “re-establish throughout the Roman Rite” a “single identical prayer” and to “to provide for the good of those who are rooted in the previous form of celebration and need to return in due time to the Roman Rite promulgated by Saints Paul VI and John Paul II.”
Continued below.
My Parish: Where the Two Forms of the Mass Met in Mutual Enrichment
