Fr. de Souza responds to responses about “reconciliation” of newer and traditional Forms of the Roman Rite

I suppose, however, they would be introduced as “options”.

Is there anything the OF needs less than more options? A good first step would the elimination of all current options, retaining in each case only the most traditional practice–propers with no substitutions, confiteor form of the penitential rite, Roman Canon as the only Eucharistic prayer, etc. This would immediately relieve priests of the prevalent temptation to invariably choose the worst option whenever given a choice.

A lot of people would actually be surprised at how many of those young people who grew up with the NO love the older traditions of the Church and would be ready to fight for them…

As for “reconciliation”, for NO : turn towards the Lord, get those not-so-extraordinary ministers out, get proper altar boys, bring back the last gospel, get the Gregorian, the incense, the high altars, the communion rails, the beautiful vestments and the beautiful churches, do all the options in the missal (including the “abbreviated readings” and pick the longest prayers… and say it all in Latin.

For the EF : update a bit the saints calendar…

I wrote that the superiority of the OF lectionary was a matter of broad consensus. I understated that, actually; it is nearly a unanimous position even in conservative liturgical circles, but evidently leading voices in the EF community do not think so. While there are clearly some weaknesses in the OF lectionary – the prologue of St. John’s Gospel is never heard by most Catholics – its more ample inclusion of Scripture is surely an improvement. It may be here that Cardinal Sarah’s warning about treating the EF as a “museum object” is most on the mark.

Count me as agreeing with the leading voices in the EF community.

Sure, the OF lectionary countains a lot of Bible. So far so good. However, and this is a big however, the EF works on the premise – and the OF should work on the premise – that Mass is an entire whole; that it does contain Scripture lessons, yes, does achieve amongst other things to make Scripture known to attenders, yes, but all this subordinated to the higher principle that the lessons of the Mass conform to the Mass.

Hence we have to say that the OF lectionary comes at a price. The price is that in the OF, we can no longer really speak of a beautiful development from the first Sunday after Epiphany down to the sixth, from the first (or second) Sunday after Pentecost down to the twenty-forth, always developing more on the topic and almost without notice introducing new topics, until we finally have reached the Sunday of the Last Judgment, according even to the natural cycle of the year. And Pope Benedict observed that the Sundays between the 23rd and 24th Sunday after Pentecost with their harvesting and similar themes very much fit to both occasions, after Epiphany and before the end of the year; and that similar, a different but also meaningful connection arises on the Southern Hemisphere where our spring is their fall and vice versa.

The OF lectionary with its supposed superiority simply replaces this by the (forgive me:) all to simple principle to just start a synoptic Gospel and read it through to the end.

The case of the weekdays is even more obvious. In the case of the weekdays, the OF lectionary just starts with the Gospel of St. Matthew (?) in January and Ends with the Gospel of St. Luke in November – but in case the weekday is actually a weekday. And it adds lessons from the Old and New Testament which – other than, it is to be admitted, the Sunday lessons – do not have much to do with the Gospels of the day. Most of all, though, what do Church attenders on a weekday actually want? They want to celebrate the feasts of Saints; though I grant that if the Saint is (so to say) less popular, a Votive Mass as usual in the EF does have its charm. As does repeating the Sunday Mass especially if it could not be had on the Sunday (for reason of a feast, or so). The purposely everydayistic use to have simple weekday Masses and cut down on the Saints for the purpose may be favored by liturgists for some reason I do not know, but this feeling has never found an echo among the faithful populace. And even so, even with the heavily cut-down New Calendar, the OF weekday lectionary’s purpose is still in serious jeopardy due to the ever-intervening feasts of Saints – to be silent of the fact that one asks oneself what all those beautiful Votive Masses stand in the Missal for, if they virtually cannot ever been taken.

As for having two lessons on Sundays and first-class feasts, that stands on the books; but people are surprisingly traditional in that regard, and in the great majority of cases only one is taken (German speaking here, I think we have an indult for this).

(However, I disagree to the statement that the prologue of St. John is never heard by OF churchgoers. It is the Gospel for Christmas Day, and around here not usually replaced for pastoral reasons. Also, the “usual Mass times” of 9 am or 10 am or 10:30 will usually be considered “day” rather than “morning”. Most Church-going folk attends twice on Christmas; and I guess of those attending only once, those who choose Christmas Day as the more convenient one, with the family celebration the evening before and all that, is at least a sizeable minority.)

Although I’ve always been quite conservative and tradition-loving by nature, my whole life was spent with the NO Mass until three years ago. We are blessed in our metro area with many orthodox and obedient parishes (OK, not many, but several), and I have loved the reverence and peace of those Masses. Ending up at a FSSP parish was the result of my husband’s attraction to the old Mass, not mine, though, and I went along out of sheer deference to him. So I am a person who very much exemplifies the faithful but completely ignorant pewsitters who really saw no reason to go “back.”

And what I can say in regard to this post is that I am astonished at how much more Scripture I find to meditate upon in the EF. It is true that reading a translation from Latin, rather than hearing the Word proclaimed in English, is annoying and in some ways (to me) anti-pastoral. But the loving dwelling-upon that chant is, as well as the silence, the poetry, and the highly symbolic liturgy, have all sunk in, such that I find a great deal to meditate upon during (and after Mass).

And the way that the year has a shape! There’s such a shape to it, which all our ancestors lived with, even those Europeans who denied Rome and went off into sects. I have begun to get this faint whiff of how liturgical living is really living in another world, or rather our world, but with its ordinariness shot through with supernatural meaning. All these saints’ days — the ONLY thing that I would ask from the OF is to find a way to incorporate the new saints into the existing calendar, because Edith Stein and Charles Lwanga and Mother Teresa are all too magnificent not to celebrate.

Anyway, I speak as one who never had any interest in bringing back the “old Mass,” but who can now honestly say that there is a muscular and radiant quality to it that might really feed those of us who are weary with the fight to keep the faith. A lot of us have never known what we were missing!

Father, I have to disagree, respectively, on your statement that more traditional reforms to the Of should be introduced as “options.” [But… I didn’t say that. I just supposed that they would be (which I don’t think is a good idea.)]

I think precisely what the OF needs less of is options.

New traditional “options” would simply be ignored at best or further drive the point of the instability and constant tinkering most OF Catholics have lived with for several decades.

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Clinton R. says:

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Austin says: