Una Voce International President Gives Report of His Visit to Rome

On March 13th, I was in Rome where I had the opportunity to make a tour through the Vatican Dicasteries. You surely will be interested in learning what I heard there. So, here is my report:

At first, I visited Msgr Perl in the ED Commission. He told me - and Card. Castrillon Hoyos afterwards repeated it - that the Holy See authorities have dropped any plan to create a proper jurisdiction for faithful who prefer the Ancient Rite (i.e. Apostolic Administration or something similar). According to Msgr Perl, these Officials are afraid of protests from the local bishops and bishops' conferences. He also said that the Holy See was quite annoyed by Bishop Fellay's press conference on February 2nd and the document published on ecumenism at that occasion by the FSPX.

Afterwards I made a short visit in the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith. His Eminence the Cardinal Prefect was not allowed to see me. My purpose there had to do with a local Austrian problem that the UV Austria had asekd me to bring to the Congregation of the Faith and which has no significance for the FIUV. I succeeded to present it to a person of the Cardinal's personal staff.

Then, I met His Eminence the Cardinal President of the ED Commission in the Congregation for the Clergy. In my retinue were Dr. Riccardo Turrini Vita, President of UV Itala, Prof. Fabio Marino, President of the Coordinamento UV delle Venezie, Prof. Maurilio Cavedini, Chairman of UV Verona and the Right Honourable Federico Bricolo, Member of the Italian Parliament and of UV Verona. The three latter had a special problem of the Indult community at Verona which they brought the Cardinal to know in the last part of the audience. The Cardinal received us quite friendly and gave us a whole hour of his time. He made an emphasis that he loves the Ancient Rite which he had celebrated himself between his ordination in 1952 and 1965.

The Cardinal repeated that they dropped any idea to give us a proper jurisdiction. He mentioned that such a proper jurisdiction had only been granted to the Fraternity of St John Vianney at Campos, as the founder of that Fraternity, Bishop de Castro Mayer, had gone much farther than Archbishop Lefebvre. The Cardinal underlined that Archbishop Lefebvre had never founded a proper structure of his fraternity that could be considered as a concrete act of schism. In contrary, Bishop de Castro Mayer had founded a counter-diocese which had been a clear schism. In order to solve this schism, the proper jurisdiction had been granted to the Fraternity and to ist faithful at Campos. The Cardinal rejected the opinion to regard the Ancient Rite to be a rite for its own like f. e. the Byzantinian or the Armenian Rite. "There is only one Roman Rite", underlined the Cardinal verbally, "and this Roman Rite has different forms." So, according to him, the Ancient Rite is not a rite in its own right, but the Ancient Rite and the Novus Ordo are two forms of one and the same rite. In the same time, the Cardinal said that The Holy See is still looking for a solution for the easier application of the indult without granting us a proper jurisdiction, keeping in mind the above-mentioned opinion.

With regard to our Irish friends: I mentioned what had happened at St Peter's Basilica to Fr Nevin and announced the Cardinal that he would get a letter from Fr Nevin on this issue.

The Cardinal took this as an occasion to tell the reason why there are such enormous restrictions for the celebration of the Ancient Rite at St Peter's Basilica: St Peter's basilica is the very heart of the Church, he explained to us, and for that, there shall only one rite be celebrated in this basilica, and this is the rite that is celebrated everywhere in the Universal Church. And that is the Novus Ordo. (These words seem to be somehow a self-contradiction to the Cardinal's own words according to which both, the Nous Ordo and the Ancient Rite, were not two different rites, but one and the same rite. And besides, it is possible to remind that in 1992, the Holy Father has himself celebrated a Mass at St Peter's at the Feast of the Ascension of Our Lord in the Mozarabian Rite.)

When I asked the Cardinal that every priest celebrating in Latin should have the free choice between the Missal of 1962 and the Missal of 1970, the Cardinal just spoke something about the authority of the local bishops.

As the audience had started at 11 AM, it was high noon at the end of our meeting. The Cardinal invited the UV delegation to pray the Angelus together with him and the whole staff of the Congregation for the Clergy. The Angelus was prayed in Latin.

Not at all. I say only what Cardinal Ratzinger would say in loftier terms. Here is a segment of a recently posted article, "Reinstating Trent":

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The lex credendi-lex orandi relationship, which is implicit in the liturgical reform, should be viewed in the light of the new theology which prepared the way for the Second Vatican Council, and which above all tried to give direction to what developed from it. In this sense, the lex credendi expressed bv the Novus Ordo appears as a revision of the Catholic faith by refraction through the anthropological and secularist “turn” of the new theology – a theology, it must be emphasised, which not merely re-presents the themes of Modernism, but appropriates these themes in a Marxist sense, that is to say, by way of a system of thought which offers itself as a radical “philosophy of practice.”

This is a very serious and very radical criticism. Can it in any way be justified? Note in particular the reference to the fact that this new theology prepared the way for Vatican II. Cardinal Ratzinger certainly accepts that this is the case. He analyses the thinking of a representative selection of contemporary theologians and liturgists and concludes that: “A sizeable party of Catholic liturgists seems to have practically arrived at the conclusion that Luther, rather than Trent, was substantially right in the sixteenth century debate”, and adds: “one can detect much the same position in the post-conciliar discussions on the priesthood.” He refers also to theologians who share Luther’s opinion that it is, “the most appalling horror and a damnable impiety to speak of the sacrifice of the Mass”. The Cardinal then articulates a conclusion which many of us considered to be the case, but have not put forward for fear of provoking accusations of exaggeration:
"It is only against this background of the effective denial of the authority of Trent, that the bitterness of the struggle against allowing the celebration of Mass according to the 1962 Missal, after the liturgical reform, can be understood. The possibility of so celebrating constitutes the strongest, and thus (for them) the most intolerable contradiction of the opinion of those who believe that the faith in the Eucharist formulated by Trent has lost its value."

The fact that such theories are being propagated by Catholic theologians and liturgists would be bad enough if they were confined to their particular circles, but, insists the Cardinal:

"The serious nature of these theories comes from the fact that frequently they pass immediately into practice. The thesis according to which it is the community itself which is the subject of the Liturgy, serves as an authorisation to manipulate the Liturgy according to each individual’s understanding of it. So-called new discoveries and the forms which follow from them, are diffused with an astonishing rapidity and with a degree of conformity which has long ceased to exist where the norms of ecclesiastical authority are concerned. Theories, in the area of the Liturgy, are transformed rapidly today into practice, and practice, in turn, creates or destroys ways of behaving and thinking."

The Cardinal insists that this is an intolerable situation. We can, he insists, have confidence in the Council of Trent. “ Trent did not make a mistake, it leant for support on the solid foundation of the Tradition of the Church. It remains a trustworthy standard”. In his recent books Cardinal Ratzinger has made frequent references to the fact that, since the concept of offering the divine Victim has now been lost, the community is now celebrating itself, its own consciousness of what it is, which means that, in effect, it is celebrating nothing. He continues:

"One thing should be clear: the Liturgy must not be a terrain for experimenting with theological hypotheses. Too rapidly, in these last decades, the ideas of experts have entered into liturgical practice, often also by-passing ecclesiastical authority, through the channel of commissions which have been able to diffuse at an international level their “consensus of the moment”, and practically turn it into laws for liturgical activity. The Liturgy derives its greatness from what it is, not from what we make of it. Our participation is, of course, necessary, but as a means of inserting ourselves humbly into the spirit of the Liturgy, and of serving Him Who is the true subject of the Liturgy: Jesus Christ. The Liturgy is not an expression of the consciousness of a community which, in any case, is diffuse and changing. It is revelation received in faith ind prayer, and its measure is consequently the faith of the Church, in which revelation is received."

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The unspoken truth, however, is that this situation is tolerated by a Pope who is indifferent to underlying liturgical suppression or subversion of Catholic dogmas. In almost every instance in which the bishops have challenged Rome on liturgical issues attacking the very heart of Catholic worship itself, it has been Rome which has backed down, never the bishops.

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