Comments on "Fulfilling the Council: Sacrosanctum Concilium and the Traditionalist Movement"

Archived comments from the post: "Fulfilling the Council: Sacrosanctum Concilium and the Traditionalist Movement," by Michael Foley (Musings, January 15, 2007):

As for the remark about 'those of us who attempt to get the Novus Ordo back on track the way it SHOULD be celebrated. Sometimes I think that these "traditionalists" prefer the Novus Ordo to be replete with abuses so that they can hold it up as part of their ongoing grudgefest against the Magesterium.' This is in fact addressed in comments above, but it may be worth reiterating what these comments said.
1) the weakness of the NO rubrics means that the NO does not give a proper way in which it should be celebrated, and that in itself means that it is fundamentally deficient.
2) talk of a 'grudgefest against the magisterium' ignores the fact that the magisterium of the Church supports the objections to the NO and the case of the traditionalists. The traditionalists are thus the ones who are showing loyalty to the amgisterium, which is not restircted to the acts of Paul VI. This support is not a case of 'tacit judgments' of popes, but of their explicit teachings in bulls and encyclicals, which condemn the principles behind the formation of the NO.
John L | 05.02.07 - 8:30 pm | #

(previous post cont'd) The encyclical 'mediator Dei' is particularly important here, since it explicitly condemns the principles that inspired the composition of the NO. And the magisterial support for the traditional latin mass is not restricted to papal encyclicals. It is also found in Sacrosanctum Concilium, which demands that liturgical change be an organic development of the previous liturgy, a demand that the composers of the NO rejected and openly admitted that they were rejecting. We can also find an expression of distrust in the new mass in the reaction of the 1967 synod of Bishops to a draft version of it; ' October 1967, the Episcopal Synod called in Rome was required to pass judgement on the experimental celebration of a so-called "normative Mass" (New Mass), devised by the Consilium ad exsequendam Constitutionem de Sacra Liturgia. This Mass aroused the most serious misgivings. The voting showed considerable opposition (43 non placet), very many substantial reservations (62 juxta modum), and 4 abstentions out of 187 voters. [so much for collegiality!]' A further basic point is that liturgy is in fact part of Catholic tradition, a tradition that it is the job of the magisterium to defend and expound, not to change. What constitues liturgical practices as part of tradition is their organic evolution within the Church over the centuries; a fact that gives the status of tradition to the traditional mass (hence Sacrosanctum concilium's demand that change to it be organic), but not to the NO. The simple fact that the NO was a new creation made its promulgation an abuse of papal power, rather than a legitimate exercise of the magisterium. For exposition of all these points see J. Ratzinger, 'The Spirit of the Liturgy'.