Posted on 11/15/2007 8:30:59 PM PST by Petrosius
Two and a half years after the name "Josephum" came booming down from the balcony of St Peter's, making liberal Catholics weep with rage, Pope Benedict XVI is revealing his programme of reform. And it is breathtakingly ambitious.
The 80-year-old Pontiff is planning a purification of the Roman liturgy in which decades of trendy innovations will be swept away. This recovery of the sacred is intended to draw Catholics closer to the Orthodox and ultimately to heal the 1,000 year Great Schism. But it is also designed to attract vast numbers of conservative Anglicans, who will be offered the protection of the Holy Father if they covert en masse.
The liberal cardinals don't like the sound of it at all.
Ever since the shock of Benedict's election, they have been waiting for him to show his hand. Now that he has, the resistance has begun in earnest - and the Archbishop of Westminster, Cardinal Cormac Murphy-O'Connor, is in the thick of it.
"Pope Benedict is isolated," I was told when I visited Rome last week. "So many people, even in the Vatican, oppose him, and he feels the strain immensely." Yet he is ploughing ahead. He reminds me of another conservative revolutionary, Margaret Thatcher, who waited a couple of years before taking on the Cabinet "wets" sabotaging her reforms.
Benedict's pontificate moved into a new phase on July 7, with the publication of his apostolic letter Summorum Pontificum.
With a stroke of his pen, the Pope restored the traditional Latin Mass - in effect banned for 40 years - to parity with the modern liturgy. Shortly afterwards, he replaced Archbishop Piero Marini, the papal Master of Ceremonies who turned many of John Paul II's Masses into politically correct carnivals.
Cardinal Murphy-O'Connor was most displeased. Last week, he hit back with a "commentary" on Summorum Pontificum.
According to Murphy-O'Connor, the ruling leaves the power of local bishops untouched. In fact, it removes the bishops' power to block the ancient liturgy. In other words, the cardinal - who tried to stop Benedict issuing the ruling - is misrepresenting its contents.
Alas, he is not alone: dozens of bishops in Britain, Europe and America have tried the same trick.
Murphy-O'Connor's "commentary" was modelled on equally dire "guidelines" written by Bishop Arthur Roche of Leeds with the apparent purpose of discouraging the faithful from exercising their new rights.
A few years ago the ploy might have worked. But news travels fast in the traditionalist blogosphere, and these tactics have been brought to the attention of papal advisers.
This month, Archbishop Malcolm Ranjith, a senior Vatican official close to Benedict, declared that "bishops and even cardinals" who misrepresented Summorum Pontificum were "in rebellion against the Pope".
Ranjith is tipped to become the next Prefect of the Congregation for Divine Worship, in charge of regulating worldwide liturgy. That makes sense: if Benedict is moving into a higher gear, then he needs street fighters in high office.
He may also have to reform an entire department, the Pontifical Council for Promoting Christian Unity, which spends most of its time promoting the sort of ecumenical waffle that Benedict abhors.
This is a sensitive moment. Last month, the bishops of the Traditional Anglican Communion, a network of 400,000 breakaway Anglo-Catholics based mainly in America and the Commonwealth, wrote to Rome asking for "full, corporate, sacramental union".
Their letter was drafted with the help of the Vatican. Benedict is overseeing the negotiations. Unlike John Paul II, he admires the Anglo-Catholic tradition. He is thinking of making special pastoral arrangements for Anglican converts walking away from the car wreck of the Anglican Communion.
This would mean that they could worship together, free from bullying by local bishops who dislike the newcomers' conservatism and would rather "dialogue" with Anglicans than receive them into the Church.
The liberation of the Latin liturgy, the rapprochement with Eastern Orthodoxy, the absorption of former Anglicans - all these ambitions reflect Benedict's conviction that the Catholic Church must rediscover the liturgical treasure of Christian history to perform its most important task: worshipping God.
This conviction is shared by growing numbers of young Catholics, but not by the church politicians who have dominated the hierarchies of Europe for too long.
By failing to welcome the latest papal initiatives - or even to display any interest in them, beyond the narrow question of how their power is affected - the bishops of England and Wales have confirmed Benedict's low opinion of them.
Now he should replace them. If the Catholic reformation is to start anywhere, it might as well be here.
I’m not religious in any formal sense but it seems to me Christianity would do well to cooperate and work closely together given the face of radical islam.
“Pope Benedict is isolated,” I was told when I visited Rome last week. “So many people, even in the Vatican, oppose him, and he feels the strain immensely.”
just look at the Ratzinger effect Mr ‘anonymous source’...
‘The Ratzinger Effect’ http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/europe/article2039932.ece
how many divisions does the pope have? more than you libs do!!!!!
Makes sense to me to invite all Anglicans to the (back to) the Roman Catholic Church.
Huber, this looks eminently ping-able.
For those who may have read me here, I am in a province of Anglo-Catholics who find the TAC to be too liberal (not all of them reject female ordination and some who hold on that line do not adequately vet their ordinands). It is my prayer that we all may be one, though I would also dearly love to maintain the glorious English liturgy we have preserved.
The Pope is NOT isolated!!! He is a Man of TRUE Faith.
i hope you got the sarcastic nature of my post...
there have been record numbers heading to the vatican to see the pope. the faithfull support B16 not some liberal nut.
It was aimed at the Quote person, not you!!
ok...
sorry bout the mix-up.
Speaking as a former anglican and 10 year RC member - (didn't say convert) - Not all local bishops are politically correct basket cases. That said, most catholic religious institutionally underestimate the threat posed by Islam. It isn't on their radar yet. Not until lives are lost and the church is finally threatened (when it will be too late) will the happy catholics admit that Islam is not "An Abrahamic Faith or a People of the Book".
That's never going to happen, although it would certainly be wonderful if it did. But what he could start by doing is disbanding the national bishops' conferences, which see themselves as nothing but little Romes with their own completely independent powers (mostly to defy the Pope and tradition).
Messori is adressing a profile of Bertone that the paper had published, noting that it only contained two direct quotes from Bertone, both of which he claims could eaily misunderstood. He clarifies:
The second direct quotation from the incoming Secretary of State was: "(There is need) to turn back from the specificity of local churches to the universality of the Catholic church." And Bertone calls this turning back 'a Copernican revolution'. Again, the bare statement appears incomplete.
Or, at least, to understand it, one must perhaps situate it in the context of what I was told 20 years ago (and repeated several times after) by then Cardinal Ratzinger, as Prefect of the CDF, in the book which we co-authored, Rapporto sulla Fede [published in English as The Ratzinger Report].
The future Benedict XVI told me that among the unforeseen and contradictory effects of Vatican-II was the diminution in the importance of bishops, which on the contrary, the Council wished to re-emphasize. In fact, however, the autonomy and the freedom itself of a bishop over his own diocese were caged in and coopted by the establishment of national bishops' conferences. These conferences, Ratzinger pointed out, have no theological basis; they are not part of the Church structure as are parishes, dioceses and the papacy. They are simply institutions, of recent origin, which were created for practical reasons but which have gradually created a weighty structure of their own, becoming in effect "little Vaticans."
Because these conferences are governed by majority rule, with the inevitable compromises, pressure groups and maneuverings in the 'corridors of power' associated with what amounts to 'parliamentary democracy'! This has ended up suffocating the power of the individual bishop, who, from teacher of the Faith and pastor of his flock, has been reduced to membership in commissions and participation in discussions which end up being dominated by organized and powerful lobbies.
From this point of view, if I understood Ratzinger well, a 'revolution' was necessary, which consists simply in returning to Tradition: to the universal Church, as an organic union and agreement of bishops, therefore of responsible autonomous individuals, rather than a federation of 'states' as constituted by the national bishops' conferences.
Not an easy task, Cardinal Ratzinger pointed out, in view of the expected resistance from powerful clerical groups who subscribe to political correctness, namely, elections, referenda, majority rule (to make decisions).
However, such a 'revolution' is considered necessary by Joseph Ratzinger, and therefore, by his faithful collaborator. Who has the advantages of a character that is both cordial and firm, the DNA of a tough Piedmontese and the persuasive tenacity of a Salesian, trained to wield, if necessary, an iron fist in a velvet glove.
What is really going is that B16 is simply working, with the help of God get the message out that with the resurge of Islam and the threat it poses, Christians I believe, are called now to start closing ranks.
Start by getting rid of the American bishops conference.
Excellent observations in an excellent article! I think that sums up the situation perfectly.
One of the things that influenced this, I think, was the (left-wing) politicization of the Church after VatII. The liberals wanted to recreate the various "liberation" movements and the collectivist structure of leftist government within the Church. The bishops' conferences aren't even based simply on democractic approaches to decision making: they are aimed at enforcing what is clearly a party line emanating from the liberal, leftist bishops who seem to have been first in line to grab power in these organizations. Actually, I guess that's because they were the ones who dreamed up these "conferences," mainly as a way of imposing their agenda on reluctant, more orthodox bishops. They also saw it as a way of emulating Protestant churches, which are governed this way, and for some reason, the VatII bishops set up the failing Protestant churches as their ideal.
And the Vatican, under Paul VI and JPII (who may also have been somewhat sympathetic to the idea himself), simply did nothing and let them consolidate their power and develop themselves as institutions - even though they have no canonical basis and are something that has no foundation in tradition.
Yes, the USCCB is an expensive waste of time - and that’s on its good days.
We had a supra-episcopal hierarchy once upon a time, although it was not conferences, it was whichever bishop occupied the most important see in a region: primates, metropolitans, even “patriarchs” in some limited cases. And then whatever synods etc. grew out of that.
I guess in our case the main bishop in America was Baltimore....now I guess it’s New York?
That’s true, there were heirarchical structures where the bishop in question, usually of a large city, was responsible for overseeing the activities of other local bishops, and there were synods that were basically regional, etc.
However, I don’t think any of them were quite like the current bishops’ conferences, because in all cases there actually was one person - an archbishop, a metropolitan, etc. - responsible and it wasn’t an anonymous collective pressure group (like the USCCB!).
I don’t know what our most important see would be. When O’Connor was alive, it was definitely New York, but I’m not sure NY has that prominence anymore. Maybe it depends more on the personality of the holder of the see than the actual see itself. I’m not sure there has ever been any official designation of the “most important,” not since Baltimore stopped being the most important one because it was the only one!
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