Saturday 28 July 2012

Would you like Pope Benedict to celebrate Mass in the Extraordinary Form?

Yes, wouldn't we all.
I am sure that, like me, you are all praying fervently for this to take place, but, in accord with the maxim "God helps those who help themselves" you may now also contribute to a petition (yes, I know, another one, but this is a really good cause).

Sooner or later, in God's good time, it will happen - here is the link to the petition site........
http://www.change.org/petitions/to-the-holy-father-pope-benedict-xvi-petition-to-celebrate-a-public-mass-according-with-the-1962-missal

But also....keep up the prayers!

13 comments:

  1. As great as it would be if the Holy Father would celebrate the Traditional Mass, I daresay it seems decidedly unCatholic to be petitioning His Holiness to do such a thing. What is the point, anyways, if the TLM and the Novus Ordo are "two expressions of the same Roman Rite?"

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  2. Matthew - it is a decidedly Catholic thing to do to petition one's Father for a special request to be granted. Pop music and classical music are both expressions of a musical form but I know which one has the most integrity.

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    1. Well, Mr. Collins, of course one has more integrity than the other. I just am not so sure that the Holy Father thinks thus.

      My point was that one should not have to petition the Holy Father to celebrate the real Roman Rite. Given the times in which we are, I understand. My point was not that it is unCatholic to ask the Pope to do something, and I regret having come across in that manner.

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  3. Benedict XVI celebrated the Traditional Mass while a Cardinal. The thing you have to remember is (and this is real damned important, so pay attention) ...

    THIS WOULD BE A PAPAL MASS!

    P-A-P-A-L. MASS.

    Okay, now to elaborate.

    In the "ordinary form," a Papal Mass is already a big deal, and there is no other Mass like it. Consider then, what it would take to celebrate a Mass that has not been done in a particular way for nearly half a century, one that is not done anywhere else, for anyBODY else. It's not enough for the Pope to want to celebrate it. It took him over a year to get St Peter's to celebrate the regular Sunday Mass in Latin and not Italian (or so I'm told by reliable sources). Can you imagine what he has to do to get several dozen people on board with the idea, and all of them already working in the Vatican? I would not be surprised if he has been working on it for several years now.

    The Pontifical Mass at the National Shrine in Washington DC took about two years to plan. It had not been done in nearly half a century either. This is much bigger.

    Much. Bigger.

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  4. But if the pope says a papal mass in the EF, I have read on the internet those who say that perhaps up to a third of the world's bishops would leave the Catholic Church. What a schism that would be. Certainly unprecedented!

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  5. "What a schism that would be. Certainly unprecedented!"

    To say nothing of unsubstantiated. Whether the threat existed or not, the fact remains that a Papal Mass in this form has not been done in half a century. There is likely no one alive who even knows how it should be conducted, not even in the SSPX, where they (obviously) don't have their own pope.

    Besides, if those bishops leave, where are they gonna go?

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    1. The Rubrics for the Rite and the Ceremonial are both readily available [see wikipaedia!], so that should be no problem. More to the point-where would be the Noble Guard, the Prince Assistants at the Throne,the Chamberlains of the Cloak and Sword, to say nothing of the Sedia Gestastoria, the flabella and, of course, the Triregnum?
      All of these were abolished/put into disuse by Paul PM VI.
      Either these woulld have to be restored, the rite amended or the Holy Father would have tom content the Faithful with a private low Mass.

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  6. Most of the ceremonial associated with Papal Masses is of no great antiquity - the Noble Guard was formed in 1801 and the Palatine Guard in 1850 - whereas the Roman Rite most certainly is, and we are now told that it was never abrogated, despite Gelineau's boast in 1967 that it had been destroyed. The Sedia Gestatoria was used by both Paul VI and John Paul I, and has nothing to do with the liturgy as such, and there must be flabella lurking about. However, Benedict XVI, should he decide to celebrate the Roman Rite, would get stick not only from certain Italian bishops (and it is these who have threatened schism - in the unlikely case of it happening they could be replaced by orthodox ones) but also from an army of traditionalist bloggers who would see any deviation from a papal Mass of Pius XII as equivalent to the Pontiff donning a clown mask and picking up a guitar.

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    1. John Nolan: Keep in mind that, whatever their tenure on the job, the Noble and Palatine Guards were in procession at a papal Mass celebrated by Pius XII, so their elimination in the years following the Council would leave a bit of a gap in the proceedings, and our über-trad friends would not be amused.

      Chauntrye Pryste: No one would be content with a papal Low Mass, least of all the Pope. And as an experienced MC, I can tell you from experience, that reading a ceremonial is quite a different experience than is using it. And as our friend Rubricarius indicates, some of the players in the ceremonial would require a revision thereof. I'm not even sure there are enough people in the curia who would know where to begin.

      For one thing, they'd all have to brush up on their Latin, as that is the language likely to have been used to write the books.

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  7. David Alexander makes an excellent point. Even if Benedict XVI wanted to celebrate a solemn Mass in the Papal rite half of the required personnel no longer exist after the destruction of the papal court.

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    1. There is no reason why we can't have dicasterial clerics fill places. For example, if the Prefect of the Holy Office typically filled position X, then why can not the Prefect of the CDF fill position X now? If a dicasterial position was abolished or suppressed, then just assign what would have been his traditional role in the Solemn Papal Mass to a different dicasterial cleric now.

      Few of the participant clerics' positions within the Roman Curia had anything innately connecting them to their position in the Papal Mass. As far as I understand, it just so happened that over time and through pure association, it became traditional for Cleric X to fill Position X in the Mass. If Cleric X no longer exists, delegate the position to either the closest modern Curial official, or if there is no approximation, or if it would seem inappropriate to do so in some case, then delegate it to some currently existing Prefect/Secretary/Valet/whatever.

      This would not be "inauthentic" or "fake" or anything, since as I said, few of the participant clerics' Curial roles had any innate or natural connection to their role in the Mass. It would look exactly the same, feel exactly the same and in all details be exactly the same Mass, but with perhaps some different clerics filling different roles than in the Mass, which does not really matter.

      For the Guards:

      1) Make some new uniforms and let some Swiss Guards fill their positions.

      or

      2) Just let Swiss Guard absorb their roles.

      As I see it, most of the logistical problems can be solved with a good dose of common sense.

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  8. Supposedly there was a priest of the ICRSS who knew the Papal Mass in-and-out, but he succumbed to cancer much too early (God rest his soul). Perhaps someone else therein learned the details before his passing! It would be a production of immense proportions, given curial politics and it not having been done for 50 years.

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  9. Se habla demasiado de que el Papa celebre o no una misa tradicional, creo que mejor rezemos para que el Papa vuelva a ser católico y haga lo que la Iglesia siempre hizo, porque hoy de católico no tiene nada, solo es puro ornato y palabras vanas, resultado de la gran apostasía en donde cayó el vaticano II.

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