Posted on 08/30/2003 10:58:53 AM PDT by Loyalist
VATICAN CITY, AUG. 29, 2003 (Zenit.org).- Four decades after the liturgical reform carried out by the Second Vatican Council, it is right to examine the way it has been implemented, in order to relaunch it, says Cardinal Angelo Sodano.
The Vatican secretary of state made that proposal in a letter to the participants in Italy's National Liturgical Week, held in the town of Acireale. The event ended today.
In the letter, which expresses the Pope's greetings to the participants, Cardinal Sodano reflected on the 1963 constitution "Sacrosanctum Concilium," approved by the council fathers.
"Forty years later, it is right to ask what the liturgical reform itself has represented for the renewal of Christian communities, to what degree the liturgy, reformed according to the indications of the council, is able to mediate between faith and life, so that it forms believers able to offer consistent evangelical testimony," the cardinal said.
At the same time, "it is useful to ask oneself with clarity and sincerity if the reform has experienced some weak point and where, and, above all, how it can be relaunched for the good of the Christian people," he added.
According to the cardinal, the challenge the Church faces today is "to translate the reform in the life of the believer, called to integrate himself in the communion that the Son desires to establish with each one, a communion that we celebrate constantly in the liturgy."
Cardinal Sodano presented these questions to the participants in the Liturgical Week and asked them to give thoughtful answers. At the same time, he offered guidelines for their answers.
"Although it can rightly be said that the conciliar reform has been carried out, the liturgical pastoral program represents a permanent commitment which enables one to draw from the richness of the liturgy the vital force that is spread from Christ to the members of the Body, which is the Church," he said.
In this connection, "perhaps some of the principles of the constitution have to be better understood and more faithfully applied," the cardinal added.
In particular, he said, "it is useful to analyze some specific topics such as, for example, the relation between creativity and fidelity, between spiritual worship and life, between catechesis and celebration of the Mystery, between liturgical presidency and role of the assembly, between formation in the seminaries and the permanent formation of priests."
Well, let's see. That would be a plummeting of Catholics attending Mass each Sunday - doesn't it hover around 20%? But wait another year or two and it will be an even smaller number than it is today. That, in a nutshell, is to what degree the liturgy, reformed according to the indications of the council, has represented for the renewal of CATHOLIC (Sodano forgot to use that word) Christian communities.
"Some weak point?" It's all weak in its present form, Cardinal.
"Relaunch the reform?" Isn't there some line about if you do something one way and you get a predictable but unsatisfactory outcome, you need to try another way?
"For the good of the Christian people?" Indeed. Don't relaunch the reform again, Cardinal. Let the Reform die its natural death.
Is Sodano a Mason?
In March 1998, Secretary of State Sodano, who was the papal nuncio in Chile from 1977 until 1988, attempted to raise his profile as a potential Papal successor by declaring that the Roman Catholic Church needed "urgent and continuous reform" under a strong papacy for the new millennium. He then astonished Vatican-watchers by praising Hans Küng, the Swiss theologian banned to teach by the Vatican. At the Second Vatican Council, from 1962 to 1965, Kung was one of two young theological stars advising the West German contingent - the other was Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger who is head of the Vatican's Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith - formerly The Holy Office of the Inquisition. Obviously, there is no connection between either Sodano or Ratzinger and Freemasonry at this time. (Sources: Pope's right-hand man stakes his claim to throne, Times of London, 2/26/98. + "Keeper of the Straight and Narrow. The Pope's chief enforcer of doctrine and morals, Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger is the most powerful prince of the Church and one of the most despised.", TIME, 12-06-1993,)
Oh yes, I remember now. This happened directly after Pope JPII disciplined Kung, and was a direct and vicious slap in the face to the Pope, as well as a pandering to the modernists infesting the Curia.
Card. Giacomo Graziani - Angelo Sodano, Vatican Sec./State
I never could make up my mind about Malachi Martin... I mean, the Art Bell Show? However... the guy was precient.
"Christian Gladstone's point of departure was dicier and gave no cause for laughter. Father Michael O'Reilly had been recently ordained for service in the New Orleans Archdiocese by none other than Gladstone's former superior, Cardinal John Jay O'Cleary. At the end of his first year as an assistant pastor, however, he had discovered that three fourth-year students in the Archdiocesan seminary were active homosexuals. Boldly, he had taken the information to Jay Jay O'Cleary. Even more boldly, he had told His Eminence that the three men should be expelled from the seminary."After a short inquiry during which the three seminarians in question had confirmed the truth of the allegations, Jay Jay had approved their ordination as priests of his diocese.
For O'Reilly, the whole affair had escalated into wholesale disaster. He was removed from his parish, placed on six months' probation and ordered to undergo a psychosexual evaluation. When he refused, he was sent to cool his heels in the seminary and was given no diocesan assignment. O'Reilly had decided to make the matter known to the Vatican's Congregation for the Clergy. The idea was to write a letter detailing the case and to use the diplomatic pouch of the Holy See's Apostolic Delegate in Washington, D.C., to transmit it to Rome.
Father O'Reilly's mistake had been to send that letter in strict accord with seminary rules: he handed it in to the Rector's office in the normal manner for transmittal to Washington through the mails. Not surprisingly, it made its way rapidly to the Archdiocesan Chancery, where it was intercepted by the Cardinal's red-haired junior secretary, Father Eddie McPherson, who had charge of whatever seminary mail might be sent through for His Eminence's attention. Jay Jay himself found that O'Reilly in his letter named names and gave dates and locations, and that he had complained that Cardinal O'Cleary had deliberately ordained three certifiably homosexual men, thus swelling the already growing ranks of pedophiliac priests.
O'Reilly had been called on the Cardinal's carpet, had been told he was a very sick young man and had been again ordered to submit to a psychological evaluation at the Raphael Institute in New Orleans. When O'Reilly had refused to obey, Jay Jay had declared him "insubordinate and psychologically undependable," and had told him he would be defrocked and expelled from the Archdiocese. Reduced by every circumstance to total frustration, O'Reilly answered by cursing Jay Jay to his face, flattening Father Eddie McPherson with a left hook to the jaw and storming out of the Chancery.
After that brouhaha, O'Reilly had dropped out of sight altogether for a couple of months. Finally, though, he had turned up on the long-abandoned Western Bordeaux Plantation in Louisiana, where, supported by a monthly stipend from his family, he now lived a hermit's life.
Unquote. Windswept House, pp 382-383.
Can one take aspirin while one has aluminium foil arranged on their cranium?
This makes me nervous.
It will go in the right direction: greater uniformity and consistency, and, hopefully, a strong emphasis on the liturgy as a platform for catechisis ABOUT the liturgy.
The two things it will NOT do is stop, or die.
The most immediate liturgical reform should be to form a Tridentine Rite, with a Patriarch all its own.
Why couldn't the Tridentine flourish (or not) right along with the NO? And why in God's name do we need another Patriarch?
The Novus Ordo is the normative Mass of the Latin Rite. Period. The Tridentine Mass is an exception, and will always be an exception.
A parish community divided by liturgy will be divided in other ways as well, since the Mass is the central unifying celebration of that parish.
That's why I've come to the conclusion there is simply no way to bring the two together.
What about daily Mass? Are ardent devotees of the Tridentine not going to demand, and have a right to, a daily low mass?
No. There has to be a separate rite, with all of its own celebrations, liturgies, and parishes. Then we'll see how genuine the Ferraras, and Woods, and Seattle Catholics' and Latin Mass Magazines' really are.
Do they want to build their own communities centered on the Tridentine Mass, or is their real objective to destroy the Novus Ordo?
The best thing for Catholic unity that could possibly happen, IMO, is to drive THE REMNANT and its clones out of business by giving them their own Rite, bishops, and clergy so that they could worship in the way they want to. Somehow, I suspect they would continue to troll the Latin Rite, however, sniping, and griping, and complaining of the Novus Ordos' very existence.
More Liturgical Mumbo-Jumbo from Vatican: Cardinal Sodano Proposes to Relaunch Reforms of Vatican II During Liturgical Week. Desperation or Inspiration?
Source: 8/30/2003 1:59:00 PM - Zenit.org
Zenit reports today, "Four decades after the liturgical reform carried out by the Second Vatican Council, it is right to examine the way it has been implemented, in order to relaunch it, says Cardinal Angelo Sodano." Huh? Did he say "relaunch?." We barely survived the first wave.
With vocations at an all time low, scandals, fewer than one of four Catholics attending Mass, and 70% of all Catholics believing the Eucharist is "symbolic," we couldn't agree more that the Liturgical trainwreck of Novus Orde be "rexamined."
Sodano's solution? Obviuosly, Catholics don't get it, so it's time to "relaunch" the reforms. This is like Coke deciding to relaunch "New Coke" (which was a classic marketing disaster) because consumers just didn't get it the first time around.
Anyone who suspsects that "conservatives" are in control of the Vatican is kidding themselves...
This is from that single, bogus Gallup poll that has been discredited on this site countless times.
Is your objective, as a traditionalist, to destroy the Novus Ordo? What would be your objection to a Tridentine Rite?
What do you want to do with the Novus? Try to "relaunch" it as Cardinal Sodano recommends? See if will "take" this time and produce some fruit? Sound's like another 5-year 40-year plan.
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