The rumors are heating up that the famed and legendary Motu Proprio on the "freeing" of the 1962 Missal is on its way this week or Holy Thursday at the latest. This, added to everything else, From Fr. Z.
Update: Hmm. How to say this?
No, not this week or next. But soon - and that is not just a rumor "soon." I'm not being coy, but I really can't say anything else except...relax. Spring has sprung.
I am working on the "Motu Proprio Tip Sheet" you folks gave input on a couple of months ago, and hope to have it ready in the next day or two. It will be in the form of a blog (because the template's there, easy to do), and will have comments so folks can elaborate, explain and correct as need be.
This is such a crucial moment, I think, for Benedict. Some folks scoff at my interest in the writings and words of Pope Benedict, but I do come by it honestly, I think. I was fairly unacquainted with him before his election, was brought up short, in a good way, by the homily he gave at his installation Mass, in which he went through the symbols with which he was being vested (the pallium, etc) and explained each one in this amazingly clear, pastoral and rich way. "There's a teacher," I thought.
What my husband says all the time is that the striking thing to him about Benedict is not just his understanding of theology and so one, but that he gets the problems. He understands what the core issues are, and not in any abstract way. He understands modern alienation, the temptation of secularization and relativism, as well as the very ordinary and constant problems Christians have as we attempt to live out our faith every day.
And for him, the answer is Christ. A recent editorial in the NCR(egister) lays it out: The Key to Benedict - which is not, as some would have you believe, nostalgia, a desire to "roll back" Vatican II, authoritarianism, control, or anything like that:
Pope Benedict, also, is simply and deeply devoted to the person of Christ, in all of his clarity and depth.
When secular newspapers write about Pope Benedict’s new post-synodal apostolic exhoratation Sacramentum Caritatis (The Sacrament of Charity), they say things like “Pope Refuses to Yield” or “Benedict Loves Latin” as if the Holy Father were merely imposing his personal preferences on the Church.
But, from the very beginning, Benedict has been telling us exactly what he would do, and why he would do it. He started before the conclave that elected him, when he spoke about friendship with Christ, a concept he has returned to several times.
Noting that Jesus defines friendship as “the communion of wills,” he cited the old Roman definition of friendship — Idem velle idem nolle (same desires, same dislikes) — as the model of our friendship with Christ.
In his first message after becoming pope, he applied that lesson to the Eucharist. “I ask everyone in the coming months to intensify love and devotion for Jesus in the Eucharist,” he said, “and to express courageously and clearly faith in the Real Presence of the Lord, especially by the solemnity and the correctness of the celebrations.”
He wanted us to show our friendship with Jesus in the Eucharist not just by good feelings, but by a communion of wills — “by the solemnity and correctness” of our Masses.
This love for Jesus, which is both practical and passionate — we should say practical because it is passionate — is the key to Pope Benedict’s thinking. It is front and center in is private works (such as “On the Way to Christ Jesus”), in his official works before becoming Pope (Dominus Iesus — “The Lord Jesus” — foremost among them), and in his first encyclical and latest document on charity and the Eucharist.
As challenging as it will be, I think it will be important to hold this up high and speak of it constantly if and when the MP appears.
Speaking of the MP...
Fr. Z in Rome has a few posts today, including a "Rules for Engagement" when the MP comes
and Jeffrey Tucker at the New Liturgical Movement has a really fine post on various possible - and fantasy - outcomes of a MP here, It is not about streams of people demanding and getting the 62 Missal everywhere across the land - not going to happen. It is not about bifurcation in dioceses or parishes - let's hope not. His best case scenario:
However you look at it, the Motu Proprio revives the classical ideal as a kind of religio-culture currency. Its status will be re-legitimated. This is hugely important because of one of the grave defects in the modern rite: it lacks rubrics that dictate a certain liturgical result. For this reason, it is too often used as a vessel in which the celebrant and the liturgy team's agenda. Some of this is tendency results from bad intentions but lots of it is entirely innocent. People don't have the model of the old Mass in their mind. Sometimes it takes only one attendance to create the epiphany: oh so that's how Catholic liturgy is supposed to sound and feel! This impact here could be huge, and, I think, overshadow the bifurcation tendency mentioned above. There is also this interesting possibility: pastors will be inspired to fix up the new rite and make it more solemn and correct precisely to forestall what they consider a worse choice of actually having to learn the old rite and put it in place as a parish option.
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