Mer om kardinal Ratzingers brev fra 2003

Father Z. har også lest brevet jeg nevnte for et par dager siden og skriver her noen interessante kommentarer til selve brevet (og så har leserne begynt en debatt). Bl.a. skriver han slik oppsummerende (bl.a. om å ha tålmodighet):

Joseph Ratzinger had the idea that side by side celebrations of the older form of Mass with the newer would eventually jump-start the organic growth of liturgy that was so artificially interrupted by the cut-paste job of experts at desks when the Novus Ordo was stitched together. Never had liturgy been impose in that manner, and harm has resulted.

Neverthless, we must be practical. At the Council there was perceived a need for some reform. Though we didn’t get the reform the Council Fathers though they were mandating, and the Consilium under Bugnini and Lercaro (with Piero Marini already a disciple in the cause) went way beyond its mandate in order to push a new ecclesiology on the whole Church, there are some elements that in retrospect we can reflect on as a Church as being positive. We can also learn from the problems we created.

So, what is envisioned here is a kind of tertium quid that slowly but surely there would emerge over time from the «dialogue» between the older form and the newer form. Ratzinger is saying that the older, traditional form must be the basis, the starting point, for any eventual single Roman Rite, not the Novus Ordo. The Novus Ordo is perceived as a kind of bump in the road, perhaps, in the long route of the liturgy’s development. But there are points in the Novus Ordo which might be useful… perhaps we be useful… over time. Not right away…. eventually, as a matter of organic growth, not artificial imposition. The elements he suggests as useful are also in part ancient.

Pope Benedict has a clear vision, thought though long and well. I used to pick his brains about this years ago when I had the chance to talk with him, fairly often, when I worked in the PC Ecclesia Dei, in the same building as the CDF. I wrote an article about this very point in the early ‘90s in Catholic World Report, (I would love a copy of that issue or article now!) and was taken to task about it by no less than Michael Davies and Eric de Saventhem, both of whom I esteem.

Papa Ratzinger, not they, will be proven right about this, however. Wait and see.

This is why I make so bold as to talk Benedict’s vision and work in terms of a Marshall Plan. This is why I repeat «brick by brick», to describe the slow process we need and the patience. This is why I say that the «liturgy is the tip of the spear», for it is truly the key to a long engaged thelogical war being waged. This is why I use the image of «gravitational pull» when I describe the way the older form will influence the newer form, and vice versa. Frankly, even the smaller moon exerts some pull on the larger earth. So too, the older Mass will influence the newer form much more than the other way around and eventually it will be the older form that prevails, in this vision. But that doesn’t mean that the effects will be either immediate or only in one direction.

2 hendelser på “Mer om kardinal Ratzingers brev fra 2003”

  1. Basert på at en slik sammenslutning skal være basert på TLM… Kan det da være at den reviderte Langfredagsbønnen ble lagt til TLM først med vilje, for så å bli implementert i Novus Ordo? Artig spekulasjon, i alle fall.

  2. Just want to make a point.

    Cardinal Ratzinger (now Benedict XVI) who says that he is so fond of the «old Mass» never celebrates the «old Mass»…

    You can speak but if you don’t act that’s almost zero !

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