Letter #8, 2025, Monday, January 27: Motu Proprio: Why the Latin Mass? Why Now? Part 1
Almost 18 years ago, 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 XXVI 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 listed 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 give, 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!)
St Cecilia Church, Tustin, California – August 17, 2007
By Dr. Robert Moynihan
Part 1
My subject tonight is Pope Benedict XVI’s Motu Proprio Summorum Pontificum, issued by the Pope on a day that is easy to remember because it was the 7th day of the 7th month of the 7th year of the 3rd millennium.
If we shorten it, we have 7 7 7. July 7th, 2007.
People have asked, was that date intentional?
I don’t know the answer. But certainly, when, a few days or weeks before it was decided that the letter would be released, it was intentional — that it would be released before the beginning of summer, in this year, the seventh year, and in the seventh month, and on the seventh day, which is certainly not the sixth month, or the sixth day, or the sixth year.
So we have something very auspicious, which is, in its fundamental nature, the culmination of the thinking and praying of Pope Benedict for the two years and three months or so that he had been Pope when he published it.
And really for the 25 years that he’d been a Cardinal and for the entire period of the post-Council where he had reflected on what Vatican II meant and what the new Mass was and how that had affected the Church and how the Church could recover a sense of the sacred, a sense of the presence of God that in some way appeared to have slipped away in some places, in some churches, in some liturgies.
And he’d written about this repeatedly.
He had spoken about this in lectures, he had talked about this in interviews, and he was opposed in this decision by many people in the Church who thought this decision, too, would cause confusion, would not restore a sense of Church identity and of understanding of what the liturgy is about, but would actually confuse things further.
So part of my goal is to explain how this does overcome some of the confusion that we’ve experienced, really, since the Second Vatican Council.
First of all, we have to understand what the liturgy is.
The liturgy is essentially the work of God.
In fact, people who are liturgists speak of the Mass as Opus Dei, the work of God.
The liturgy is a series of actions, words, gestures, which create an intersection of this world with the eternal world, of the present with the eternal.
T. S. Eliot used the phrase, the intersection of time with the timeless.
The power of the liturgy is the power of touching the timeless.
Or being in the presence of God.
The liturgy was written and spoken and acted by Jesus Christ himself.
The first author of the Mass is Jesus Christ.
The first Mass, we really can say, occurred on Holy Thursday.
Jesus exchanges the bread and wine with his disciples, but the Mass condenses and brings together also the events of the following day, Good Friday, the sacrifice on the cross, and Easter Sunday, the resurrection and the continuing presence in the Church of the risen Christ.
And it also brings in what happened in the New Testament, when the two disciples on the road to Emmaus met a stranger on the road.
This is described in the Acts of the Apostles, and they talked with this stranger. He explained to them how all the things in the scriptures referred to Jesus, how they were fulfilled in Jesus.
And then they don’t recognize Him, and they get to the village of Emmaus, and they sit down with Him to break bread with Him. And the moment that He broke the bread, something was lifted from their eyes. They recognized it was the Lord. It was Jesus.
And this is why, even today, we say, in the breaking of the bread, the disciples of Christ recognize Him.
The Mass was the putting together of the Passover meal of Holy Thursday, which was Jewish, which was a celebration of the Passover of the Jewish people from Israel from Egypt over the Red Sea into Sinai from slavery into freedom, with the arrest that Thursday evening and the crucifixion the next day of Jesus.
The Church, which is the mystical body of Christ, the Church is only one thing: it is the continuation in time and in history of Jesus Christ himself.
This is the mystical reality that we all share, and communion, when we share the body and blood of Christ, makes us members of this community.
[Part 2 to follow]
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