På Chant Cafes nettsider leste jeg for noen dager siden om den liturgiske konferansen som ble avholdt i Roma i slutten av juni – les om den bl.a. her og se en del bilder. Fr Christopher Smith skriver i artikkelen på Chant cafe om hvor mye mer akseptert den tradisjonelle messen er blitt de siste årene, og at de som gjerne feirer denne messen ikke lenger er så tilbakeskuende til alt det gode, gamle, eller så kritiske til den moderne messen som de tidligere virket som:
A conference like Sacra Liturgia 2013, from which I have just returned, is the kind of thing that arguably could never have taken place during the Jubilee year of 2000 when I entered the seminary in Rome. In fact, it could not have been conceived of even in the wake of the election of Joseph Ratzinger to the throne of St Peter in 2005, just before I was ordained to the priesthood. I was reminded of just how much things have changed when I went this week early in the morning to St Peter’s to offer Holy Mass.
During my Roman years, which was really not all that long ago in a Church that thinks in centuries, I could easily walk into St Peter’s, and a few side altars would be busy at 7am with some few priests, mostly Vatican types or pilgrims, offering the Novus Ordo Mass in various languages. Every once in a while you could spot the Latin edition of the Missale Romanum 2002, but not very often. To even speak of the Missale di San Pio Quinto was to invite a reaction which could quite possibly result in expulsion from the Basilica of the Prince of the Apostles. …
You can imagine my surprise when I went this time. The sacristy of St Peter’s, which used to be so delightfully quiet on an early weekday morning, is now a hive of activity. Priests and pilgrims from all over the world find themselves at every single usable altar of the Basilica. Altar cards adorn several altars in the North Transept, and one can see several of the Pope’s ceremonieri and other Vatican officials going back and forth from those altars celebrating Holy Mass in the classical Roman rite. … …
I must confess that, going to the conference, I wondered whether some of the participants and speakers might see it as a “last hurrah” for the Benedictine liturgical party within the Church, and that it might be seen by its critics as the swan song for the Benedictine reform. I wondered whether we might lose time and energy in harsh denunciations of the liturgical practices of Pope Francis, and turn on each other in division and hatred.
Nothing could be further from the truth. This was a group which truly “thought with the Church”, not in a slavish manner, but as free men and women of God. We were able to raise serious questions about the liturgical reform without having them turn into gripe sessions or anticlerical bashes. There was a profound experience of communion, conviviality, prayer and study.
Why is this important? Well, I think that it is representative of what has happened in the Church because of the Pope in whose honor the conference was called. There are many people who have discovered the beauty of the liturgy conceived, not in restrictive terms as saying the black and doing the red of one particular Missal, but in terms of an ars celebrandi which respects legitimate diversity. ….
Liturgibloggen PrayTell har tatt opp denne tråden i et innlegg som så langt har fått 146 kommenterer (de fleste ganske nyttige). Innlegget har tittelen Toward the transformation of traditionalism, og dreier seg egentlig om at tradisjonalistene har blitt så mye mildere – og mer akseptert av andre teologer, prester, katolikker.
(For alle som ikke husker det; det er i dag 6 år siden pave Benedikt kunngjorde at det skulle bli mye lettere å feire den tradisjonelle messen.)
Frontene har nok myket seg opp. Men jeg lar meg fortsatt sjokkere over kommentarer i ulike tradisjonalistblogger. Spesielt i Rorate Cæli synes jeg det er mye drittkasting som befinner seg milevis fra korrekt kristen og katolsk verdier for oppførsel.