I can’t say I am surprised, but I am disappointed.
Pope Francis has made what can only be called disparaging comments about the Traditional Latin Mass and its adherents.
Rorate Caeli reports that the Pope made comments to a Czech Bishop during his ad limina visit those who value and esteem the extraordinary form of the liturgy are merely caught up in a momentary fashion and thus as Pope he does not need to pay attention to them. Yup.
[Abp. Jan Graubner speaks:] When we were discussing those who are fond of the ancient liturgy and wish to return to it, it was evident that the Pope speaks with great affection, attention, and sensitivity for all in order not to hurt anyone. However, he made a quite strong statement when he said that he understands when the old generation returns to what it experienced, but that he cannot understand the younger generation wishing to return to it. “When I search more thoroughly – the Pope said – I find that it is rather a kind of fashion [in Czech: ‘mĂłda’, Italian ‘moda’]. And if it is a fashion, therefore it is a matter that does not need that much attention. It is just necessary to show some patience and kindness to people who are addicted to a certain fashion. But I consider greatly important to go deep into things, because if we do not go deep, no liturgical form, this or that one, can save us.”
Besides being completely wrong, that the Pope is so disrespectful of the reasonable desires of so many good and faithful Catholics it is staggering in its coarseness and dismissiveness.
Not to mention, such an attitude is diametrically opposed to the attitudes and pronouncement of his Holiness Pope Benedict XVI.
I know that I have probably misinterpreted our humble Pope’s meaning and that the problem is me. For sure, the Pope seems to think that I am the problem. Please forgive me, I only speak Promethean.
February 15, 2014 at 7:12 pm
Disturbing if true. So some guy said he said…confirmation and would be nice.
February 15, 2014 at 7:21 pm
I fear their is MUCH our current Holy Father does not understand about his flock…
http://connecticutcatholiccorner.blogspot.com/2014/02/does-holy-father-understand-us-at-all.html
the above is from his "sad Christians" homily – perhaps we need to pray that he gain WISDOM and UNDERSTANDING because right now… I think he's lacking in those areas.
JMO
February 15, 2014 at 7:25 pm
I think Mr Laurence England may need to update his "Pope Francis's Little Book of Insults – at That the Bones You Have Crushed May Thrill blog. I told him not to go for hardback!
February 15, 2014 at 7:50 pm
Well,… let us pray for the Holy Father. It wouldn't be the first time a pope has not seen nor heard clearly the promptings of the Holy Spirit. I'm not suggesting any theological error on the part of Pope Francis or any pope, nor am I suggesting even for a moment that I know with absolute certainty, in advance of any development at least, the will of God. In retrospect, however, I'm a perfect Monday morning quarterback. 🙂
If, indeed, the celebration of the Extraordinary Form of Holy Mass is an essential part of the renewal of the liturgical life of the Church according to the will of God—and we surely need liturgical renewal, starting with a reclamation of the sense of the sacred—then we had better pray, and pray hard. It might be more useful to see this recent event as a challenge to our resolve to foster liturgical renewal in the Church.
I suggest we enlist the intercession of Saint Catherine of Sienna, a saint who knew how to get a pope's attention.
In the meantime, we should not allow our disappointment to get the better of us.
February 15, 2014 at 10:19 pm
I hope you won't get fired. Folks who question Vatican II or the Holy Father, even if respectfully and legitimately, seem to be in the bull's eye.
February 15, 2014 at 10:44 pm
why is this surprising???
February 15, 2014 at 10:55 pm
I think you could get a different aspect of what he said by reading it in the context of the last sentence. On the surface it can seem that the TLM movement is a bit of a fad. Besides, this quote is not straight from the Pope's mouth.
February 15, 2014 at 11:21 pm
This comment has been removed by the author.
February 15, 2014 at 11:22 pm
Yes, it's ambiguous as to whether the last line is the Pope talking or the Czech Bishop who's reporting the Pope's words.
Talk is cheap. What matters are actions. We'll see whether the Franciscans of the Immaculate get a reprieve or not. Equally, we'll see what happens at the Synod on the Family. If Beach Ball Bergoglio makes a staunch defense of family values, most trads will put up with his liturgical views – after all Paul VI and JPII were no saints on that score.
February 16, 2014 at 1:57 am
I totally see his point.
WHy? BEcause I was ripped apart this week, online, by a set of Traddies who thought that the NO was a horrible mass, and that there were total points for how Traddy you were.
Let me tell you, I love the TLM, I have even considered wearing a head covering for mass, I am drawn to the holy and the reverent. But I will NEVER be a part of a group like that. Ever. They were absolutely nasty and awful. This ex protestant has seen a lot of division. And it deeply saddens me to see that same divisive spirit alive and well in the Catholic Church.
February 16, 2014 at 2:19 am
This is pretty much in line with the previous statements of pope awesome the first.
February 16, 2014 at 2:44 am
I just find it bizarre that a man who was so deeply impacted by the Divine Liturgy in Argentina seems to dismiss beautiful liturgy in the West. I think it's best to wait for direct quotes from the Pope instead of hearsay, although it's sad that so many of us (myself included) can find these comments believable. Having married a woman from Costa Rica, there is a bigger desire in certain parts of Latin America for Masses that seem more like Charismatic prayer groups – tambourines, keyboards, acoustic guitars, more contemporary songs – far beyond my cup of tea. The last time I visited Costa Rica, during Mass the priest didn't even LOOK at the Missal until after his marathon homily. Don't understand why the Liturgy went so far south down South.
February 16, 2014 at 8:48 pm
The reason the liturgy has become so degraded and removed from the deposit of Faith, is that it was planned. There have been many enemies high up in the Church for many, many decades. There was even a big formal programme of infiltration of Catholic seminaries in the 1930s by the communists (there is a lot of information available on this, and how successful it was for the communists). Dissenters, heretics, apostates have controlled most seminaries, Catholic universities, schools, dioceses for decades. The smoke of Satan … Malachi Martin and many others investigated and wrote about the infiltration by enemies of the Faith and how freemasonry and satanism got to high levels in the Church. The priesthood and the Mass were the focus of the first attacks – how people pray, worship determines what they believe, which determines how they live.
February 16, 2014 at 4:04 am
But…it is just a fashion, a particular "mode" of doing the mass. And "addiction" is not too strong a word. The Catholic Church was doing liturgy just fine for 1570 years before the Tridentine Mass—which I will not call the "Traditional Latin Mass" because it is no more traditional than the Novus Ordo for any part of the Church except the Diocese of Rome. More to the point, Anglicans had been doing their liturgy for 21 years before the Tridentine was published; the Book of Common Prayer was published in 1549. I'm sorry, I'm a Catholic, I don't regard something promulgated in the same year as a Spanish war with the Philippines and a French treaty with the Huguenots as being particularly old.
I have no particular beef against the Tridentine, but the fetish people make of it is nonsensical idolatry, basically the same thing as the Russian Raskolniky—and those who support the newer liturgy aren't burning anyone alive or deporting people en masse to Siberia, so kindly knock off the theatrics.
February 16, 2014 at 4:27 am
^Sophia's Favorite, the "Tridentine Mass" did not just pop out of thin air in 1570. It was celebrated for many, many centuries prior. In fact, it arguably has the most venerable history of any rite of the Mass. So your views are based on an inadequate understanding of liturgical history.
If true I'd be saddened for Pope Francis to have that attitude toward those attached to the traditional Latin Mass. But of course it may be that when he's "searched more thoroughly" he's found some love for the liturgy and love for the Faith but perhaps also a fair dose of crabbing and carping, lack of joy and lack of charity. Not saying that there isn't plenty of that in your regular, local parish crowd. But as traditionally-minded Catholics who have the ancient liturgy we're supposed to be a leg up (by our own arguments). Not better, perhaps, but at least better off. The lack of joy and charity that some have experienced at times in traditionalist circles (see "justamouse"'s comments above) may be what's coloring his own views.
February 16, 2014 at 4:46 am
We've been Catholic for 9 years, coming from a pentecostal denomination where my husband was a pastor. I understand Pope Francis' comments, as well as the ex-protestant commenter above. I have found in my (admittedly few) years of being Catholic, that the Latin Mass people tend to be snobbish sorts. I don't know what to call myself. While I love the grand, old music, I find myself defending modern songs when the Latin people tell me that that type of music doesn't lift the mind to heaven. How do they know what's in my mind and where it's lifted? While I can't stand to see muffin tops and cleavage at Mass, I don't want to be where people roll their eyes at those without mantillas and long dresses. While I wonder about the logistics of hand-holding, I refuse to be counted with the people who say it takes away from the holiness of the Mass. Really? The Mass is corporate worship, meant to be with others; it's not my private morning prayertime. Anyway, I submit this comment as a saddened, confused convert.
February 16, 2014 at 5:43 am
Keep in mind three things: 1) He's a Jesuit; 2) ordained in 1969, and; 3) whatever we read has been translated and filtered through the lens of the Czech Abp.
I don't see it as disrespecting the older form of Mass but preferring the newer form and not understanding what the attraction is to the older form.
Different strokes for different popes.
February 16, 2014 at 5:44 am
Sophia's Wisdom – the peace of Christ be with you.
I have to correct this statement of yours: "which I will not call the "Traditional Latin Mass" because it is no more traditional than the Novus Ordo for any part of the Church except the Diocese of Rome."
That is simply not true. For instance, the mass in most of England for half a millennia before the Council of Trent was the Sarum Rite. It is available for download here:
https://archive.org/details/sarummissaledite00cathrich
It is in Latin and looks very similar to a 1962 missal. It was in fact the missal used to create the Common Book of Prayer during the Protestant revolt.
The rites used throughout the Continent (the Mozarabic and Gallican family of rites) were also in Latin. Latin, though it had mutated into the Romance languages, was still the language of law throughout the old empire, and the law of worship – the several rites that existed – were also in Latin from the beginnings of the Faith in most of Europe. Exceptions were the Celtic and Saxon rites, but they fell into disuse in most places in favor of the rites in Latin.
Your distortion of the affection and reverence held for the ancient Latin Rite is bewildering. Calling it an addiction, a fetish, a nonsensical idolatry is heart-wrenching to hear. I wonder if you are aware that the very same language was used during the Protestant revolt about the mass in Latin as Churches were burned, nuns beaten, and priests hung from their steeples. Many saints died to practice this form of the mass in England. The author of the hymn 'Faith of Our Fathers', Fr. Faber an Anglican convert, called it "the most beautiful thing this side of heaven".
And so it is that the love of the liturgy practices by our fathers is ridiculed… not by Protestants or Muslims or Atheists, but by fellow Catholics. Something is seriously wrong.
February 16, 2014 at 6:51 am
Not surprised. He's a modernist through and through.
February 16, 2014 at 10:16 am
I agree with those who here who point out the snobbishness of the TLM crowd. I'm also a newish Catholic and go to a NO mass here in Switzerland. It's respectful, totally orthodox and yes, the priest's sermon enlarges upon the bible readings and castigates sin. Then I come on blogs like this and feel as though I'm a second class catholic because I don't know Latin. By all means have your TLM and I find it beautiful too, but those who defend it too stridently are missing the wood for the trees.
February 16, 2014 at 10:17 am
I agree with those who here who point out the snobbishness of the TLM crowd. I'm also a newish Catholic and go to a NO mass here in Switzerland. It's respectful, totally orthodox and yes, the priest's sermon enlarges upon the bible readings and castigates sin. Then I come on blogs like this and feel as though I'm a second class catholic because I don't know Latin. By all means have your TLM and I find it beautiful too, but those who defend it too stridently are missing the wood for the trees.