Pope Francis on Feb. 14: "Old Mass? Just a kind of fashion!"

Yesterday (Friday, Feb. 14), Pope Francis held an audience with the Bishops of the Czech Republic who came to Rome for their ad limina visit. In the visit, as it usually happens in such cases, other than the formal address, the Pope heard the questions and comments of the bishops. Archbishop Jan Graubner, of Olomouc, told the Czech section of Vatican Radio what the Pope told him: [Abp. Jan Graubner speaks:] When we were discussing those who are fond of the ancient liturgy and wish to return to it, it was evident that the Pope speaks with great affection, attention, and sensitivity for all in order not to hurt anyone. However, he made a quite strong statement when he said that he understands when the old generation returns to what it experienced, but that he cannot understand the younger generation wishing to return to it. "When I search more thoroughly - the Pope said - I find that it is rather a kind of fashion [in Czech: 'móda', Italian 'moda']. And if it is a fashion, therefore it is a matter that does not need that much attention. It is just necessary to show some patience and kindness to people who are addicted to a certain fashion. But I consider greatly important to go deep into things, because if we do not go deep, no liturgical form, this or that one, can save us."

[Tip and translation: reader MC, from the Czech Republic.] _____________________________

Traditionalists are extremely stable and strongly fashion-averse. But as for the winds in Rome!... Roma è mobile, qual piuma al vento! Under seven years ago, the opinion of the then-reigning and still living Holy Father (one who was much more acquainted with the issue at hand) was quite different:

Immediately after the Second Vatican Council it was presumed that requests for the use of the 1962 Missal would be limited to the older generation which had grown up with it, but in the meantime it has clearly been demonstrated that young persons too have discovered this liturgical form, felt its attraction and found in it a form of encounter with the Mystery of the Most Holy Eucharist ... . ... 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. (Benedict XVI, July 7, 2007 Letter to Bishops)

Care to quote that criticism? Once you do, I'll give you some of Pope Benedict's criticisms of Bugnini's Mass.

In the preface of the Spirit of the Liturgy

I should like to suggest a comparison. Like all comparisons, it is I'm many ways inadequate, and yet it may aid understanding. We might say that in 1918, the year that Guardini published his book, the liturgy was rather like a fresco. It had been preserved from damage, but it had been almost completely overlaid with whitewash by later generations. In the Missal from which the priest celebrated, the form of the liturgy that had grown from its earliest beginnings was still present, but, as far as the faithful were concerned, it was largely concealed beneath instructions for and forms of private prayer. The fresco was laid bare by the Liturgical Movement and, in a definitive way, by the Second Vatican Council.

In defending Pope Francis, I was not trying to make an argument for or against either the TLM or the Novus Ordo. What I was trying to point out is that I believe the Pope believes he is faced with a much graver problem, summed up in a story Pope Benedict related about St. Therese of Lisieux in Introduction to Christianity:

"To her, "religion" really was a self-evident presupposition of her daily existence; she dealt with it as we deal with the concrete details of our lives. Yet this very saint, a person apparently cocooned in complete security, left behind her, from the last weeks of her passion, shattering admissions that her fortified sisters toned down in her literary remains and that have only now come to light in the new verbatim editions. She says, for example, "I am assailed by the worst temptations of atheism". Her mind is beset by every possible argument against the faith; the sense of believing seems to have vanished; she feels that she is now "in sinners' shoes. In other words, in what is apparently a flawlessly interlocking world someone here suddenly catches a glimpse of the abyss lurking - even for her - under the firm structure of the supporting conventions. In a situation like this, what is in question is not the sort of thing that one perhaps quarrel about otherwise - dogma of the Assumption, the proper use of confession - all this becomes absolutely secondary. What is at stake is the whole structure; it is a question of all or nothing. That is the only remaining alternative; nowhere does there seem anything to cling to in the is sudden fall. Wherever one looks, only the bottomless abyss of nothingness can be seen.

I think he believes Christianity faces and existential crisis and that focusing on the relative merits of the various liturgical forms is akin to fiddling while Rome burn. Neither do I have much sympathy for the offended classes.

P.S.

Personally, I am fan of both Latin and the TLM. I also get my personal daily readings from http://www.breviary.net, which is also Pre-Vatican II

Several years ago I was having an ongoing discussion over the course of multiple office visits with a former Franciscan priest (laicized and married) regarding the reintroduction of the TLM. At one point, he looked at me and asked, “Why do you hate the Novus Ordo mass?!?”

I was stunned. In talking about how much I loved the reverence and theology expressed in the TLM, I had never once said I hated the Novus Ordo. I replied, “I don’t hate the Novus Ordo! I attend it 6 days a week, and I attend the TLM on Sundays. How in Heaven’s name does that make me someone who “hates” the Novus Ordo?”

He was in turn stunned. He just assumed I hated and shunned the Novus Ordo because I loved the TLM.

There are lots of assumptions on all sides of this issue, many of them obviously false.

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