Vatican rumblings: Pope Francis aiming to end Latin Mass permission

LifeSite News ^ | July 26, 2017 | John Henry-Westen

[ebb tide]

Sources inside the Vatican suggest that Pope Francis aims to end Pope Benedict XVI’s universal permission for priests to say the Traditional Latin Mass (TLM), also known as the Extraordinary Form of the Mass. While the course of action would be in tune with Pope Francis’ repeatedly expressed disdain for the TLM especially among young people, there has been no open discussion of it to date.

Sources in Rome told LifeSite last week that liberal prelates inside the Congregation for the Doctrine of Faith were overheard discussing a plan ascribed to the Pope to do away with Pope Benedict’s famous document that gave priests freedom to offer the ancient rite of the Mass.

Catholic traditionalists have just celebrated the tenth anniversary of the document, Summorum Pontificum. Pope Benedict XVI issued it in 2007, giving all Latin Rite priests permission to offer the TLM without seeking permission of their bishops, undoing a restriction placed on priests after the Second Vatican Council.

The motu proprio outraged liberal bishops as it stripped them of the power to forbid the TLM, as many did. Previously priests needed their bishop’s permission to offer the TLM.

Additionally, Summorum Pontificum stated that wherever a group of the faithful request the TLM, the parish priests should willingly agree to their request.

The overheard plans are nearly identical to comments from an important Italian liturgist in an interview published by France’s La Croix earlier this month. Andrea Grillo a lay professor at the Pontifical Athenaeum of St Anselmo in Rome, billed by La Croix as “close to the Pope,” is intimately familiar Summorum Pontificum. Grillo in fact published a book against Summorum Pontificum before the papal document was even released.

Grillo told La Croix that Francis is considering abolishing Summorum Pontificum. According to Grillo, once the Vatican erects the Society of Saint Pius X as a Personal Prelature, the Roman Rite will be preserved only within this structure. "But [Francis] will not do this as long as Benedict XVI is alive.”

The plan, as related to LifeSite, involved making an agreement with the Society of St. Pius X and, with that agreement in place, sequestering those Catholics wanting the TLM to the SSPX. For most, that would strip them of access to the TLM since there would not be nearly enough SSPX priests to service Catholics wanting the TLM worldwide.

Moreover, LifeSite’s source suggested that the plan may explain a May 20, 2017 letter by the recently ousted Prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of Faith, Cardinal Gerhard Müller. Even though Cardinal Müller wanted the SSPX fully reconciled to help fight modernists in the Church, the May 20 letter seemed to scuttle an agreement between Pope Francis and the SSPX which would see them get a personal prelature. The letter includes provisions long known to be completely unacceptable to the SSPX, thus nullifying an understanding SSPX leader Bishop Bernard Fellay believed was imminent.

The LifeSite source suggested that the May 20 letter by Muller perhaps was written because he knows what Francis was up to and wanted to avoid the plan to bury Summorum Pontificum with Pope Benedict. “It’s directed not so much against Fellay but against the agreement,” said the source. “Pope Francis was very angry that document came out from Cardinal Muller and some say that’s why he made the decision to dismiss him.”

[ealgeone]

The origin of the Roman Mass, on the other hand, is a most difficult question, We have here two fixed and certain data: the Liturgy in Greek described by St. Justin Martyr (d. c. 165), which is that of the Church of Rome in the second century, and, at the other end of the development,

the Liturgy of the first Roman Sacramentaries in Latin, in about the sixth century.

The two are very different.

Justin's account represents a rite of what we should now call an Eastern type, corresponding with remarkable exactness to that of the Apostolic Constitutions (see LITURGY). The Leonine and Gelasian Sacramentaries show us what is practically our present Roman Mass.

How did the service change from the one to the other?

http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/09790b.htm

WHOA.....STOP THE TRAIN!!!!

They don't know the origin of the Roman Mass!!!!

It changed???

You've got to be kidding me!

We've been told it's exactly what the disciples did....and now a Roman Catholic authoritative source says the "origin of the Roman Mass is a difficult one"!

You honestly cannot make it up.

You, just on another thread, were giving non-catholics grief about not being able to find our "traditions" in the ECFs.

Well, it appears you can't even find the origins of the Mass. For that matter you don't even know if what you're doing today is correct based on the article.

[Mrs. Don-o]

A married man may be ordained. This is not only NOT, as the Catholic Church sees it, a theological impossibility, this is the reality of the Church doctrine and practice from Day One.

An unmarried priest, once ordained, may not subsequently marry and function as a priest. (A matter of timing: ONCE ordained, he is not to marry). If he wants to get married, it's possible he could be laicized, and then could marry but would not have faculties (permission) to function as a priest.

The Church has not the power or authority to invent Sacraments (they were instituted by Christ), but the Church may regulate by whom or when or where or in what order they may be received. This is one of the ways the Church exercises her authority, given by Christ, of "binding and loosing." Read your Bible. Who "binds and looses" in YOUR demurely unnamed denomination, by the way?

The Catholic Church comprises 22 churches in communion with the Pope. Their doctrines and sacraments are the same; their ceremonials (rites), customs, and disciplines may be different.

Therefore, it is wrong-headed to speak about "Roman" Catholic "doctrine," when in fact doctrine is something the whole Catholic Church has in common. A requirement that only celibates may be ordained is not a "doctrine" of the "Catholic" Church. It has been a "discipline" (one of those binding-and-loosing things) in the Western part of the Church for over 2,000 years, but even in the West it is not an exceptionless norm.

As for St. Peter, we know he had a mother-in-law. The text does not mention a wife on the premises, who, if living, would reasonably have been mentioned in connection of her concern or care for her own mother. So it's a fair guess Peter was a widower. I don't know: do you?

Of course "disciples" were married. Yikes! If they were not, the Church could have died out after one generation! God has highly honored Matrimony by making it a Sacrament, an effective and outward sign of a spiritual reality, at many levels and most sublimely as a "Magnum Mysterium" of the unity of Christ and the Church (cf Ephesians).

Interestingly, sexual intercourse is a constitutive element of a Sacrament (Matrimony) but celibacy is not a constitutive element of any Sacrament (not even Holy Orders.) Something to think about, y'know?

If a marriage was invalid, then God had not "joined them together." Because what God has joined together, no power on earth can dissolve. So there was something decisively wrong with invalid marriages from the git-go: force, or fraud, or some canonical delict or ineligibility of some kind. God does not join together null (invalid) marriages.

As for various sins and scandals, they are sins and scandals. Those responsible for them will have to answer for it to a just God Who does not tolerate sin at all: they are moral defects in these sinners, not defects in the doctrine of His Church.

Now again I implore you: as regards Catholic doctrine, ask, don't tell.

I go back to my Apricot Semifreddo. It is a metaphor, I hope, for my approach to life: all the taste, half the fat!! :o)

Have a good Saturday, and I'll send you the recipe if you want.

[Mrs. Don-o]

For over 1,000 years. One thousand years.

Typo. Yikes, more personal falliility.

Fallibility.

Whatever.

[Mrs. Don-o]

We were talking about the Sacrament of Holy Orders. Holy Orders is a Sacrament ordered to "priesthood," in three different degrees: deacon, priest, bishop. They are all ordained clergy.

Since the discussion was about the possibility or non-possibility of Catholic clergy to be married men and validly receive Holy Orders, this is not an apples-and-oranges comparison.

If you think it is, you have something lacking in your understanding of Catholic Sacraments and doctrine.

Which is why I implore you: as regards Catholic doctrine, ask, don't tell.

[aMorePerfectUnion]

Claud,

Here is a response to your long post:

Nothing before 100 ad that is an unbroken chain for half or more of what Rome teaches.

My point from an earlier post.

Besides the NT, there are precisely two works of Christian literature from the first century. The Didache ...

The Didache, it’s origins as a Jewish baptismal document and alterations throughout the centuries has been addressed on FR a number of times. As such, it shows no “unbroken chain for half or more of what Rome teaches.” Search, if interested. Not a valid place to hang your hat.

and the Epistle of Clement to the Corinthians.

The I Epistle of Clement to the Corinthians is an interesting document and certainly from an early date. We do not know if it was altered in any way. Let’s give it the benefit of the doubt.

Please show me these core Roman teachings from the Epistle of Clement to the Corinthians (hat-tip daniel1212).

You will need to do this to show an unbroken chain of things not found in Scripture that Rome claims were Apostolic Tradition - even though one of your most respected Popes disputes…

Fortunately, the I Epistle of Clement to the Corinthians contains chapters and verses., so you should be able to easily point them out, if you find them, which you will not. Meaning Clement is not evidence of an unbroken chain of teaching.

Please show these false teachings of Rome:

...ensured magisterial infallibility; 
...church looking to Peter as the first of a line of infallible popes reigning supreme over the church; 
...Lord's supper that is administered by priests changing bread and wine into "real" flesh and blood, which is offered as a sacrifice for sin, and consumed in order to obtain spiritual life, as the central supreme sacrament. 
...purgatory as the next experience for believers, commencing at death, whereby they become good enough to enter Heaven; 
...example of baptizing souls contrary to the stated requirements of repentant, wholehearted faith; (Acts 2:38; 8:36,37) 
...distinctive class of sacerdotal clergy/priests; 
...clergy which is normatively celibate; 
...regular confession to clergy in order to obtain forgiveness (neither Mt. 18 or Ja. 5 teaches this), or restriction to clergy of the power of spiritual binding/loosing, even as regards obtaining deliverance due to sin. The only exhortation to confess sins other than to God is to other believers in general, which may also be able to bind and loose as Elijah did, (Ja, 5:15-20) as being of holy fervent prayer (not that I claim this level of holy faith, sadly); 
...praying to created beings in Heaven; 
...distinction btwn "saints" and believers, nor btwn elder and bishops; etc. 
...reconciliation, in which all the believers normally need to come to "priests" to ask for and obtain forgiveness. 
...sacramental system that bestows merit

Why don’t you start there and demonstrate an unbroken chain from the Apostles to Rome today.

“And I'm going to continue pound this question into the ground that none of you will answer:

Here is where you go off the road, instead of actually providing facts and evidence about the main point - that what you've been taught and what Rome claims is a myth, a fairy-tale, a wonderful story that doesn't exist in history - as your Pope stated. But, you've decided to try to deride others instead of objectively looking at the foundation of your own beliefs. OK.

Where are your doctrines in the Church Fathers?

Quoted on FR all the time.

But since you brought up Clement of Rome: “And we, too, being called by His will in Christ Jesus, are not justified by ourselves, nor by our own wisdom, or understanding, or godliness, or works which we have wrought in holiness of heart; but by that faith through which, from the beginning, Almighty God has justified all men; to whom be glory for ever and ever. Amen” (1 Clement, 32).

Where is Sola Scriptura?

Answered on FR all the time - just this week.

Where is once-saved, always saved?

Only in the pages of Scripture, but most recently answered in July on FR.

You like to sit here and snipe about every tiny little doctrine we hold, from the Assumption on, but you won't even flipping admit what denomination or even ideological stream you inhabit so we can pick apart all the distinctively doofus ideas that you hold, and that some of which even your fellow Protestants will find ridiculous.

Histrionic attacks do nothing to further your cause or prove the myth you prefer.

I’ve been clear over more than 15 years on FR as to what the name of my church is and its precise identification. Others have as well. This however, is simply a "look over there" argument to distract from the simple truth that it is uncomfortable to examine one's own beliefs - particularly when their foundations cannot be proven - in the case of Rome.

Why don’t you begin a thread about what faith everyone belongs to and I’ll repost?

Whether you admit it or not, your theological ideas can be traced to this guy, who broke away from that guy, who disagreed with that other guy, who split a church led by another guy, and on and on for 500 years.

Having studies church history and the history of doctrine, all I can tell you is that you believe a falsehood.

[aMorePerfectUnion]

daniel, meant to ping you to 265, but hit post too soon!

Mea culpa.

[ealgeone]

A married man may be ordained.

On this we agree as we see this in the NT.

This is not only NOT, as the Catholic Church sees it, a theological impossibility, this is the reality of the Church doctrine and practice from Day One.

Maybe from day one, but it began to change in the 300s.

An unmarried priest, once ordained, may not subsequently marry and function as a priest. (A matter of timing: ONCE ordained, he is not to marry). If he wants to get married, it's possible he could be laicized, and then could marry but would not have faculties (permission) to function as a priest.

Of which there was no prohibition on this in the NT. This would be a change promulgated by Rome.....in other words...something not taught in the NT.

The church of change in other words.

The Catholic Church comprises 22 churches in communion with the Pope. Their doctrines and sacraments are the same; their ceremonials (rites), customs, and disciplines may be different.

You're telling me ya'll have made up with the Eastern Orthodox who don't recognize your pope?? BTW...that's a bit of a difference.

Therefore, it is wrong-headed to speak about "Roman" Catholic "doctrine," when in fact doctrine is something the whole Catholic Church has in common. A requirement that only celibates may be ordained is not a "doctrine" of the "Catholic" Church. It has been a "discipline" (one of those binding-and-loosing things) in the Western part of the Church for over 2,000 years, but even in the West it is not an exceptionless norm.

You're trying to hide behind words...doctrine, discipline to deflect the RCC has made a change to the requirements of the priesthood not found in the NT. You've had too many popes and councils that say otherwise.

As for St. Peter, we know he had a mother-in-law. The text does not mention a wife on the premises, who, if living, would reasonably have been mentioned in connection of her concern or care for her own mother. So it's a fair guess Peter was a widower. I don't know: do you?

I don't know and it really doesn't matter. The point of that passage was to note it was Jesus who did the healing.

If a marriage was invalid, then God had not "joined them together." Because what God has joined together, no power on earth can dissolve. So there was something decisively wrong with invalid marriages from the git-go: force, or fraud, or some canonical delict or ineligibility of some kind. God does not join together null (invalid) marriages.

Here we go again with the Clintonian parsing....the popes split up the marriages. Plain and simple. Urban II was a real loser.

As for various sins and scandals, they are sins and scandals. Those responsible for them will have to answer for it to a just God Who does not tolerate sin at all: they are moral defects in these sinners, not defects in the doctrine of His Church. Yet no one lifted a finger to oppose these actions. Why? They believed the pope had the "authority" to make that decision.

Or perhaps they were scared to oppose the pope for various reasons. The RCC does have a bad history of, shall we say, "disciplining" those who disagree with Rome.

Now again I implore you: as regards Catholic doctrine, ask, don't tell.

All I'm doing is providing Roman Catholic history from Roman Catholic sources to illustrate the point....the Roman Catholic church does indeed invent doctrines and has done so over time that are not in accord with the NT.

Hence the claim of Apostolic Succession and the claim of "Sacred Tradition" cannot be supported by Roman Catholic history.

[Elsie]

Now again I implore you: as regards Catholic doctrine, ask, don't tell.

Ok; I'll ask.

Is this still in force; word for word?

---

"One indeed is the universal Church of the faithful, outside which no one at all is saved, in which the priest himself is the sacrifice, Jesus Christ, whose body and blood are truly contained in the sacrament of the altar under the species of bread and wine; the bread (changed) into His body by the divine power of transubstantiation, and the wine into the blood, so that to accomplish the mystery of unity we ourselves receive from His (nature) what He Himself received from ours."

--Pope Innocent III and Lateran Council IV (A.D. 1215)

[Elsie]

We were talking about the Sacrament of Holy Orders.

"WE" were not.

You were.

---

Since the discussion was about the possibility or non-possibility of Catholic clergy to be married men and validly receive Holy Orders, this is not an apples-and-oranges comparison.

No; goalpost mover; 'we' were talking about PRIESTS.

[ealgeone]

If not that’s yet another big change for the group that claims it doesn’t change.

[Mrs. Don-o]

See, that's just what I was saying: if you don't understand the diaconate as partaking of the priesthood, you don't get the connection.

It's not me moving the goalposts. Its you not "getting" the definition: the Sacrament of Holy Orders as understood by Catholics, nor even what we mean by "Catholic" "Church".

This is not surprising, and I can't blame you, since (correct me if I'm wrong) none of this forms any part of your priestless, sacrament-less, canon-lawless religious gig, regardless.

It does make me wonder what motivation keeps you tirelessly jumping into and reiterating this discussion over and over again, since none of it matters, really, on your give-a-damn scale.

As I understand it.

[aMorePerfectUnion]

“This is not surprising, and I can’t blame you, since (correct me if I’m wrong) none of this forms any part of your priestless, sacrament-less, canon-lawless religious gig, regardless.”

You would have saved the life of countless electrons by just writing...

BIBLICAL

[aMorePerfectUnion]

“
It does make me wonder what motivation keeps you tirelessly jumping into and reiterating this discussion over and over again, since none of it matters, really, on your give-a-damn scale.”

Truth. It does a soul good.

[Mrs. Don-o]

"Truth. It does a soul good."

Big Amen. And Biblical, too.

But it's odd when a bunch of Protestants jump in to take over a thread that's about the Latin Mass --- which can be expected to attract the attention of people worried about the availability of a Latin mass in their Diocese --- when you have no Mass and no Diocese and no skin in the game. Any pretext to repeat the same old pre-packaged polemics, no matter how tedious.

So what attracts you? The word "Mass"? Or is it just "Hey, Catholic thread! Let's swarm!"

You can't think Catholic are attracted to your version of Truth, your point of view, by Attack Polemics, Sado-Evangelism spiked with contempt and ridicule, cut-and-pastes from belligerent websites featuring the Six Blind Men describing the Elephant.

It must be tedious even to you!

Or worse, an occasion of sin (for all of us: pride, anger, the various iterations of the Seven Deadlies) which I do worry about sometimes.

I don't get onto Protestant threads --- you may or may not have noticed --- for just that reason. Nor do I tell Protestants what they believe: I try to avoid that.

If I have done so in the past, it was through a lapse of good manners or sheer inadvertence. I ask your pardon for that.

Just tell me what YOU believe. That would be so much more interesting, refreshing, enlightening--- and without a doubt, more accurate.

[aMorePerfectUnion]

Your posts are sounding like:

A. Stressed out circumstances in life
B. Like perhaps you would enjoy an umbrella lady-drink or two
C. Woman issues (broad list - no pun on intended)
D. A&B
E. A&B&C

Really, don’t worry. Be happy FRiend.

I post on *open threads* concerning Christianity and the Scriptures.

If these open threads upset you, there’s always caucus threads... but life is too short to get all worked up about FR threads.

[aMorePerfectUnion]

“Just tell me what YOU believe. That would be so much more interesting, refreshing, enlightening-— and without a doubt, more accurate. “

Every time I post from the Scriptures I’m telling you what they teach, and consequently what I believe.

[Mrs. Don-o]

"Every time I post from the Scriptures I’m telling you what they teach, and consequently what I believe."

Same here. Keep up the good work.

[Mrs. Don-o]

Thanks for the observations kindly meant. Actually I’m pretty mellow after a moderate dosage of Apricot Semifreddo.

[aMorePerfectUnion]

Thanks for the observations kindly meant. Actually I’m pretty mellow after a moderate dosage of Apricot Semifreddo.

Sounds great! Still, those rum drinks...

[Elsie]

As I understand it.

I think you've explained your problem with answering questions directly.