Letter #26, 2022, Friday, February 4: Kwasniewski

    Just a brief note to say two things:

    1) We will have a Writer’s Chat open to all with Dr. Gavin Ashenden two weeks from today on Friday, February 18, 2022. You might like to join us and see how we are doing and ask questions at the end of the Writer’s Chat. So you may want to note that date and put it in your calendar!

    2) Below, we have a link to our last Writer’s Chat which was very interesting. It was a conversation with American scholar Dr. Peter Kwasniewski and it dealt with liturgical questions which are of great interest to many. I think many of you might like to click on the video and see what Dr. Kwasniewski had to say. We also attach an interview we ran in our last issue of Inside the Vatican magazine with Dr. Kwasniewski. This would be an opportunity, also, for you to consider subscribing to the magazine which is an unusual publication that does need living subscribers(!). We do appreciate every single subscriber.

    Of course, we are deeply concerned about the tensions in Ukraine and we will try to report on the situation next week. We pray for peace.

    We wish everyone a wonderful weekend.

    P.S. Join us on Friday, February 18 at 1:00 p.m. Eastern for our next ITV Writer’s Chat with Dr. Gavin Ashenden. Click below to register and join us.

   A New Book Chronicles the Worldwide Reaction to Traditionis Custodes (link)

    From Benedict’s Peace to Francis’s War looks at the new suppression of liturgical tradition from many perspectives

    By Christina Deardurff

    Author, educator, musician and liturgy scholar Peter Kwasniewski, an American, is not one to pull punches. Nor does From Benedict’s Peace to Francis’s War, his new book of collected reactions to Pope Francis’s 2021 motu proprio Traditionis Custodes.

    The book is an anthology of 70 essays written by 47 authors from quite diverse backgrounds, nations and callings — even an atheist – within a two-month window following the promulgation of the papal document in July 2021.

    Dr. Kwasniewski calls it the result of “a worldwide passionate and articulate response” to Traditionis Custodes, which suppresses the use of the Traditional Latin Mass (“TLM”) — what Pope Benedict XVI had previously designated as the “Extraordinary Form” of the Mass in his own 2007 motu proprio Summorum Pontificum. In that document, Benedict liberalized the regulation of the TLM and, as it were, welcomed it back into the fabric of the Church’s liturgical life in a way that it had not enjoyed since its veritable whole-cloth replacement with the Novus Ordo (what Benedict called the “Ordinary Form”) in 1966. Francis’ motu proprio reverses all that. Inside the Vatican spoke with Kwasniewski about his book, published by Angelico Press, and what might be coming next on the Church’s liturgical horizon.

    “The Mask Has Fallen”

    An interview with Peter Kwasniewski, editor of From Benedict’s Peace to Francis’s War

    Inside the Vatican: Tell us what this book is all about, and how the idea came to you.

    Dr. Peter Kwasniewski: The motu proprio Traditionis Custodes and its accompanying letter prompted a worldwide flood of articulate and passionate responses, showing that the question of the Church’s relationship to her tradition—her duty to her own heritage and to the faithful who are sustained by it—is of vital importance for a broad segment of the faithful, even those who are not self-professed “trads.”

    As I scrambled to keep up with the reactions, the conviction grew in me that the best essays, articles, interviews, lectures, etc. should be gathered into a single volume for convenience and “for the record.” Already early in September Angelico Press approved the concept and I got down to work, selecting, collating, editing, annotating, and, of course, contacting authors and publishers for permission. It was what I like to call a “grad school project”: I was working on it night and day, so that it could be available as soon as possible.

    What will the reader find in the book?

    Kwasniewski: We set basically a two-month window: materials written in the period of two months after July 16, 2021. Most of the content was published already at dozens of different websites, but there are several substantial pieces, especially by Dr. Joseph Shaw, that appear in print for the first time (having been given as talks), a number of translations that also appear only in this anthology, and finally a number of fresh translations of articles that had been poorly served in their initial appearances.

    You can read the complete interview with Dr. Peter Kwasniewski here.

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