Posted on 08/16/2004 12:28:39 PM PDT by Convert from ECUSA
Forced Latinization???????? Is the Vatican maintaining armies to persecute the Eastern Orthodox or something?
God bless.
God bless.
Which diocese are you in?
Fort Worth.
Sorry, I guess I was thinking of the bishop next door to you.
Not the Eastern Orthodox .... HELLO ... Eastern CATHOLICS.
"Devious Romans" is a phrase you will find among Melkites abroad, Syro-Malaberese to be sure, the Syro-Malankara, and especially the Ruthenian Catholic lay faithful. Admittedly most Ruthenians in America have gone back to the Orthodox Church. If you know the history, there is no surprise in that..
THere are mad-men in the USCCB who have repeatedly said that the "Eastern rites" in the US must undergo a thorough "renewal" in the "spirit of Vatican II".
Now, what is wrong with this picture. First, most of the Eastern Catholic Churches get called "rites" when they are not simply rites but are Churches properly constituted. There is even an USCCB document on this (borrowed from the Australians), but still the average USCCB Latin rite bishop is on a good day ignorant of the Eastern Catholic Churches and the Eastern Catholic rites or they are actually predisposed to furthering the anti-Eastern agenda of their forebears in order to keep out the Eastern Catholic married clergy -- even to this day..
The Eastern Catholic Churches don't need a "renewal" courtesy of their Latin rite "betters" in the USCCB or in Rome. They must have what is theirs under Canon Law and the Conciliar documents and the original agreements through which they entered Communion with the Holy Father.
A Tridentine apostolic administration would not suppress the Novus Ordo, but would provide an effective parallel rite.
Were such an infrastructure in place today, for instance, it could perhaps assume several of the parishes being closed in Boston.
Or at least one or two. As it is now, the Tridentine Indult is the red-headed stepchild of the Latin Rite, with Masses at 3:00 on a Sunday afternoon or 6:30 on a Sunday morning.
But, the SSPX has put its claw down, and will not accept a return based on a separate administration.
There will be no abrogation or suppression of the Novus Ordo. The insistence on such indicates the total lack of goodwill of the integrists who push this fantasy of a solution.
Since every cardinal in the next conclave will be a Novus Ordo bishop, your wishes that that will happen in the next Papacy are in vain.
My theory is that the next Pope, unlike John Paul II, will be much more dogmatic in his approach to governing: he will insist on adherence to the GIRM of the Novus Ordo, will make the Tridentine more widely available, and will cut the SSPX loose to finally drift off into the dustbin of history with other schisms.
That is why it will not happen.
Anyway, the article is wrong. All problems in the Church today are Bush's fault.
How do you know? Are you asserting that the current Mass is the "Mass of all-time?" How is that any different from what Pius V did? If Paul VI had the right to change the Mass, how are any future popes prevented from changing the Mass just as he was?
This well established fact occured during the Middle Ages. It was Pope John XXIII who put an end to this practice and enjoined the Eastern Catholic Churches to not only rediscover their authentic liturgical traditions but to restore them.
In the post-Vatican II Latin Church, the introduction of the vernacular language into the Roman liturgy has encouraged all nations to celebrate the unique sacrifice of the Lord in the language, music and symbolism proper to each people and culture. While the Latin Church is rediscovering, sometimes painfully, the riches of this liturgical renewal, the Maronites always celebrated a liturgy in which they can recognize their culture and history: their relation to Antioch, their monastic origins, their contact with the Latin Church. It is always with emotion that the Maronites listen to the words of consecration sung by the Maronite priest in Syriac, so close to the language in which our Lord, on the day before He suffered and died, pronounced these words for the first time.
The Maronite liturgy stresses these words with gestures which probably belong to a very old Christian symbolism. After the words, "He gave thanks and praise, and blessed the bread," the priest blesses the bread with the sign of the cross; and after the words "He broke the bread," he touches the four ends of the host. In the same way, the sign of the cross is drawn on the chalice, and after the words, "this blood is to be shed", the priest inclines the chalice to the four sides as if to shed it in reality. With these gestures, the Maronite liturgy likes to stress the universal character of the Eucharist, and the faithful, by their "Amen", participate in this universal gift and universal mission.
There is another important element in the consecration of the Maronite liturgy. While the Latin Mass brings the consecration to a close by the recitation of the words "Do this in memory of me," the Maronite liturgy continues with the biblical reference "Do this in memory of me . . . until I come again," a verse which always was a favorite text in the spirituality of Antioch.
In this addition, the eschatological character of the theology of Antioch, which the Maronite Church has inherited and enriched, clearly takes form. Once more this theology is situated between the theology of the East and that of the West, as the Maronite patriarch pointed out in one of his interventions at Vatican Council II. While the theology of the West has always stressed the actualization of the world, and while the theology of Byzantine Christianity continues to celebrate the divine liturgy which the Risen Lord accomplishes in His heavenly glory (compared to which all things of this world are vain and idle) the Maronite liturgy celebrates the Eucharist in expectation of the coming of the Lord.
The Maronites in their liturgy are painfully aware of the fact that we are actually not in the glory of the Lord and in the plenitude of His redemption. We are awaiting it. On the other hand, they realize in faith that this sacramental sign is really rahbouno, a pledge of glory to come, and zouodo, a viaticum which really transforms a simple terrestrial being into a pilgrim on the way to his or her home, the "house of the heavenly Father".
The interventions of the Maronite bishops at the Vatican Council and the publications of Maronite scholars show clearly that the Maronites are aware of the precious contribution that the realistic and biblical theology of Antioch can make, not only in the dialogue between Rome and Byzantium, but especially in the delicate interfaith relations with Islam and Synagogue for which the death of God and the divinization of a man remain a scandal.
Maronites Between Two Worlds By the Very Reverend Peter-Hans Kolvenbach, S.J.
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