Letter #21, 2025, Tues, Feb 4: Motu Proprio, Pt 8

    Letter #21, 2025, Tuesday, February 4: Motu Proprio, Pt 8

    This letter ends my series about the liturgy.

    I gave a lecture almost 18 years ago, in the summer of 2007, and this is the 8th and final part.

    A great deal has happened since then, that I could not know at the time but know now. This will require updating in future letters.

    And I left out very much in this lecture. This will require more in-depth analysis about the liturgy and what happened to it, and why, in future letters.

    ***

    On August 17, 2007, I gave a talk at a church in California, St. Cecilia Church in Tustin, near Los Angeles, on the decision of Pope Benedict XVI to issue on July 7, 2007, his motu proprio Summorum Pontificum, granting wider use of the old liturgy throughout the world.

    The motu proprio had been published just 5 weeks before.

    So, at that time, in August 2007, it was entirely in keeping with the wishes of Rome, and of the Pope, to receive and to accept and to praise and to embrace that document.

    Pope Benedict had encouraged me to try to explain his intent in the pages of my magazine, Inside the Vatican, and in any talks I gave.

    So I felt “authorized” to try to give my interpretation of what he had done, and why, when I gave my first and only talk on the subject, in August 2007.

    I spoke without notes, and went on for about an hour. (It was recorded by Terry Barber of St. Joseph Radio — thank you, Terry!)

    Even as I gave the talk, I felt it was reasonably effective, but later people told me it was the best talk that I had ever given.

    I did speak from my heart, and from my memories as a child, and from my studies as a historian, and from my many conversations with Pope Benedict, in the 1980s and 1990s, when he was still Cardinal Ratzinger.

    I tried to be clear, and fair, and reasonable, and faithful, to what I had lived and learned during those decades about the Catholic Mass.

    Later, people came up to me and told me that my talk had moved them and instructed them, and they thanked me.

    I put the talk onto a CD which was entitled Motu Proprio: Why the Latin Mass? Why Now? (To order a copy, please quick here)

    Now, almost 18 years have passed by, and the attitude of Rome, and perhaps also of the Catholic faithful in general, has changed over these nearly two decades. Indeed, in Rome, the current pontiff seems intent on restricting the celebration of the old Mass, for reasons he has set forth in two documents and in several interviews. (see this link from seven months ago).

    During December, one month ago, an old friend and reader of the magazine told me that my talk had influenced him deeply, and that he had taken to listening to the talk on his car CD player (I realize that many cars no longer have CD players!) while driving on long trips. “It is a great talk,” he told me. “I may have listened to it 12 times or more by now. I always find something new in it. Why don’t you share it again, make it available again?”

    So I decided to publish that talk here, and to make the CD available again. I will also soon be posting a downloadable audio file.

    I note again that, when this talk was given, in 2007, it was given in an attempt to explain and defend the reasoning of Pope Benedict, who had acted just 5 weeks before.

    The talk was therefore intended to offer my full support to the reigning pontiff, and to explain why he had taken the decision that he took.

     —RM

    P.S. Order the Motu Proprio: Why the Latin Mass? Why Now? CD here

    P.P.S. Subscribe to Inside the Vatican magazine here. (Each subscription is quite helpful to us!)    

    Motu Proprio: Why the Latin Mass? Why Now?

    Part 8

    (Continued from previous letter)

    So the new Mass is modern and smooth, clean shaven, as it were, as opposed to the old gnarly, and in a sense, cobbled-together Mass that reaches back through the centuries and still has the smell of the Catacomb Church and the sense of the Jewish, and the Christian, and the Greek, and the Latin.

    The Old Mass in itself was an education in world history, an education in salvation history.

    In 45 minutes, you went through the entire question of what is man, what is God, and what do we do about that.

    And what we do about it is we become like God.

    The Old Mass is very clear.

    That can’t be done unless God infuses into us and grants to us and shares with us His very life.

    That is, we eat His blood, eat His body, drink His blood, and are nourished by this.

    We receive our life from Him who is living bread, the word and the sacrifice, the divinization.

    This is what the Orthodox emphasize.

    This is what the New Mass, in some way, either consciously or unconsciously, downplays.

    As it also downplays the sacrifice.

    The Orthodox say that they emphasize Easter.

    They emphasize the risen Christ who conquers death and therefore shares with us eternal life.

    Sharing with human beings eternal life means making them live forever, making them like God.

    For this reason, as I talk about these things, I think it’s a serious matter.

    I’ve taken, in a way, my entire life to try to follow these things and try to struggle to understand them because I can’t find anything else more important.

    It seemed important to me from a child. And I still think it’s important, and I think the Pope [Benedict], by saying what he said, made clear that he thinks it’s important.

    But what is it that he’s saying? Is he saying the New Mass is not sufficient?

    I don’t think he says that, but he does say we need the old liturgy.

    First, for those small groups of people who love it, because it’s not fair that they shouldn’t have it.

    Second, there is a lack of something not essential, but important [in the new liturgy]. There’s a lack of a sense of the sacred in the new Mass, which the old Mass, if it’s celebrated more often, will remind us of, will train us in, and will therefore change the new Mass.

    He says that in the Motu Proprio, in the letter.

    He says [I paraphrase], “I am allowing the old Mass because I think it’s going to have a good effect on the new Mass.”

    Now, he could not say “We’re not going to have the new Mass at all anymore.” That would have been what that old bishop had said to me. That would have been “total confusion” again.

    I actually attended many of his [Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger’s] morning Masses in Rome, and it was the new Mass that he celebrated. (But he’s reported privately now in the mornings to be celebrating the old Mass. But I can’t say for sure that that’s true, I’ve not confirmed it. I’ve read that from other journalists.)

    The allowing of the old Mass is being protested, downplayed, ignored, and denounced by some in the Church.

    Now, it could be that they have a point, but I think they protest too much.

    If there is no interest and no importance, they need not say anything at all.

    I do not know what is going to happen and how people, parish by parish, will choose to celebrate their remembrance of Jesus in the Mass.

    I don’t know what you will do in this parish. I don’t know whether many priests will celebrate, or few, or none, and whether many parishioners will say “We would really like to have it [the Mass celebrated in the old rite, being permitted more widely by Benedict in his motu proprio] at 8am” or “every Sunday.”

    I don’t know how it’s going to work out, but it’s clear that Benedict wanted to give a place to the traditional liturgy in the Church that it did not have, and was being prevented from having.

    Even though John Paul II, 20 years ago, had asked bishops to be rather generous.

    So the Pope [Benedict], against great opposition… there were some in the Vatican who said to me privately, “We’ve got people here who are so opposed to this idea of the Motu Proprio, that they hope, by filibustering and protesting and saying we need to change this phrase or that phrase, that they’ll postpone it until he dies. And he’ll never publish it.”

    And we know that more than a year went by when the thing was… when the document was being prepared and written.

    And I’ve spoken with people around the Pope who said they went in six months ago and said, “Holy Father, we are with you. Be strong. Publish it.”

    But there were certainly people who flew to Rome and said, “Don’t publish this.” “More confusion.” “Turning the Church back.”

    So he knew that that’s what people were saying, and he took the decision to publish it.

    ***

    The Pope repeatedly has spoken about the end of the world.

    In a certain sense, the world is always ending.

    Each of us will see from our own perspective the world end, and then we will see what comes after.

    But there are two great books about the last times. And again, all times in some sense are the last times.

    So I’m not being a kind of kooky apocalyptic. The Lord of the World by Robert Hugh Benson and Tales of the Antichrist by Vladimir Soloviev.

    Lord of the World, 1906 or 1907. Tales of the Antichrist, 1900, Vladimir Soloviev, a Russian Orthodox.

    Repeatedly, five, 10 times, Cardinal Ratzinger cited these works during the past 25 years.

    So, we know that he read them.

    These works describe a world without a particular date.

    A world in which a rather “decent” and “tolerant” world government has said: “Everyone can get together. We can accept each other. We can have a good social cohesion. But there’s one thing that we cannot overlook. We can’t have anybody claiming that they have the truth.”

    We can’t have that: any “Messiah” who says he, in his being, in his person, in his work, in his life, in his words, in his death, is the Savior.

    We can’t have Jesus.

    He must diminish.

    And if the Christians accept this, that he’s not the sole Savior, they can participate in this new world order.

    That’s what these two books describe as a vision of the end times.

    Christianity diminished.

    And in those books, the sacrifice of the Mass plays a critical role.

    There’s a description of a priest looking for a little bit of bread. Unleavened bread and a little wine to celebrate the Mass, the sacrifice on Calvary, and to bring Jesus’s true, real presence into the world, because the Mass is no longer celebrated.

    So what did the Pope do?

    He said every priest, Jesus in the world, has the authority, almost like a Pope, to celebrate the Mass of the ages, if he would desire to.

    He [Benedict] has decentralized the liturgy.

    He’s given it back to every priest.

    Each priest is another Christ, alter Christus, ordained to sacrifice [to give up] enormous goods in this world in order to share in the suffering of Christ and to lead the people of God toward the kingdom of God.

    The Pope has given every priest great dignity in this motu proprio, in my opinion.

    I think, and I’m summarizing now. I’m sorry if I’ve gone on too long.

    I think that we are now at the beginning of a period we will call the Benedictine Reform.

    I think this will reintegrate all the struggles of the last century in a new key, in a new way, and all of us have to participate as best we can in our personal lives, family lives, group lives, parish lives, diocesan lives in order to make, from east to west, a perfect offering to the father.

    Thank you very much.

    [End, August 17, 2007, lecture on the July 7, 2007 decision of Pope Benedict to allow wider use of the old liturgy]