This past Saturday Pope Francis travelled to the parish of Ognissanti (All Saints) in commemoration of the 50th anniversary of the first vernacular Mass celebrated there by Pope Paul VI in 1965. Immediately following the Mass, the Holy Father exited the church to address the faithful gathered in the courtyard:
“Let us thank the Lord for what he has done in his Church in these 50 years of liturgical reform. It was truly a courageous gesture for the Church to draw near to the people of God so that they are able to understand well what they are doing. This is important for us, to follow the Mass in this way. It is not possible to go backwards. We must always go forward. Always forward (applause)! And those who go backward are mistaken…”
Taken at face value, the pope’s words are troubling to say the least and seem unnecessarily provocative. They also appear to dismiss the “reform of the reform” of the Roman Rite sought by his predecessor and embraced by a whole new generation of priests and faithful. The view expressed by Pope Francis seems inconsistent with that of Pope Benedict who (when addressing the world’s bishops upon the release of Summorum Pontificum) said:
“What earlier generations held as sacred, remains sacred and great for us too, and it cannot be all of a sudden entirely forbidden or even considered harmful. It behooves all of us to preserve the riches which have developed in the Church’s faith and prayer, and to give them their proper place.”
Indeed, rediscovering our rich liturgical tradition, in many ways epitomized by the celebration of the Extraordinary Form of the Mass, cannot simply be dismissed as going “backwards”. If there is one overriding lesson we should have learned from the papacy of Benedict XVI, it is that the Church is always moving forward-and toward the Lord-when the sacred is restored to the liturgy.
As I read the Holy Father’s comments from Saturday, a variety of images entered my mind. Pictures like the ones below, illustrate better than any words possibly could the liturgical reality of the post-conciliar years, and the possibility of what can be for those who have rediscovered what was lost.
“Let us thank the Lord for what he has done in his Church in these 50 years of liturgical reform…”
“It is not possible to go backwards. We must always go forward. Always forward (applause)! And those who go backward are mistaken…”
We always “go forward” when we restore the sacred to the liturgy.
Brian Williams is a convert who entered the Catholic Church in 2006. He is a graduate of Long Beach State University with a BA in History. Brian blogs on life, liturgy and the pursuit of holiness at liturgyguy.com. He lives in Charlotte, North Carolina with his wife and five children.
“Let us thank the Lord for what he has done in his Church in these 50 years of liturgical reform. It was truly a courageous gesture for the Church to draw near to the people of God so that they are able to understand well what they are doing. This is important for us, to follow the Mass in this way. It is not possible to go backwards. We must always go forward. Always forward (applause)! And those who go backward are mistaken…”
I’m wondering if the Pope sees the same things the rest of us do. Did the Church, drawing “near to the people of God”, move away from God (not necessarily in the liturgy)?
In the liturgy, the priest turned his back to God.
In the face of the facts, that is an ideological summary of the last 50 years if there ever was one. That borders on willful ignorance, from my perspective.
And yet in the Catechism, the Church is the people of God. Pope Francis has the knack of showing only one side of the coin. He seems unable to say yea, yea without saying no, no.
I wouldn’t want to drive a car without a reverse gear.
reduced to one — death. no hell means no heaven.
Eschatology
From what he has been saying, Jesus saves us from poverty.
“There is a danger, it seems to me, that the shift among Catholics from a preoccupation with eternity to an engagement in the world has now gone so far that it effaces the very idea of an afterlife and so distorts the teaching of the gospel and endangers the coherence of the Christian religion. I would also suggest that neglect of the Four Last Things is one of the causes for the relative decline of the fortunes of the Catholic Church in the developed world.” – Piers Paul Read, Hell and Other Destinations
“I keep telling my children what I believe but I think they think I’m a sort of eccentric, because it’s not what they hear preached from the churches.” The Catholic Church in Britain: Piers Paul Read interviewed by ‘AD2000’
Here lies the problem. You teach your children one thing, and the Church teaches them something different, and even if you are living your beliefs which should influence them, they hear something entirely different from the ‘authorities’ in the Church.. They look at you like you are some dinosaur that somehow survived and living in a world completely foreign. (which for the most part we are)
This kind can go out by nothing, but by prayer and fasting.
And then katholycs come along and tell them their parents are closed-minded and old-fashioned and you lose the battle to keep your child and watch them follow the lies of the world.
Pretty much concrete evidence that the Church has been infiltrated by anti Catholics trying to destroy the Church from within.
The Holy Father speaks more clearly than he knows: it’s frequently that way with prophets, that they speak contrary to their own will and understanding, not grasping the import of what they say. The past half century has been a time of scandal for millions of Catholics, with most suffering great confusion and deception. Many have lost the faith. The Lord’s work is not there, but in the authentic liturgical renewal of the rediscovery and taking possession of the traditional Latin mass, and of the filled-out Catholic identity that it supports. What former generations possessed casually, without care or gratitude, the present generation and those following will cherish and enrich. This is the real way forward and surely something deserving our thanks. God writes straight in crooked lines.
I’m not exactly in one of the pictures above because, I can’t be seen. But I was there.
Would that he had chosen the name Pope Anthony.
Thank you for this!
It was truly a courageous gesture for the Church to draw near to the people of God so that they are able to understand well what they are doing.
There is not one in one hundred million Catholics who can tersely tell you what the Mass is.
The more it was made “rational” the less truth it conveyed.
It was a compete and utter failure but, as Chesterton said, nothing succeeds like failure
It was truly a courageous gesture for the Church to draw near to the people of God so that they are able to understand well what they are doing.
I was struck by Alcuin Reid’s observation on this over at NLM this weekend – struck, of course, because I have had the same experience:
“Indeed, apart from the committed and well-formed laity (who are few), there are numerous mute, extraneous spectators in our churches today who are just as disengaged from the vernacular liturgy as their forebears were from the liturgy when it was in Latin.”
We must go forward in the spread of the Usus Antiquior!
It was truly a courageous gesture [butchering the liturgy] for the Church to draw near to the
people of God so that they are able to understand well what they are
doing.
How are people prevented from understanding well what they are doing at the TLM?
And if by “courageous,” the Holy Father means ballsy in the very audacious sense, then yes, it was truly “courageous.”
Always forward! Even as more and more Catholics are persecuted around the world, as the Church bureaucrats become more and more corrupt, Mass attendance, baptisms, and weddings continue to drop, sin increases…always forward, you guys! More of the same couldn’t hurt, right?