Stopping the Liturgical War
The wish for an end to liturgical polemics is repeated in an open letter published in La Croix on June 6, under the pen of Jean Bernard, collaborator of La Nef, which advocates a renovation of the St. Pius V missal according to two objectives borrowed from Sacrosanctum Concilium (SC), the conciliar constitution on the liturgy.
“First, the restoration of a more abundant, more varied, and better adapted reading of Sacred Scripture” (SC 35), by adopting the rich lectionary of the Paul VI Mass if necessary; and second, strengthening the “active participation of the faithful” (SC 48), for example, “by allowing the community to sing together the common of the Mass and the Pater Noster.”
In this way, according to John Bernard, “This updated traditional missal would enable the implementation of Vatican II inspirations, in accordance with the rule of organic development of the liturgy, so that it could no longer be reproached for ignoring this last council?” And he proceeds with caution:
“Of course, the above-mentioned proposals alone cannot constitute a miracle solution to the crisis the Church is experiencing, a crisis which, theologically speaking, has to do with the relationship between Christianity and modernity and, morally speaking, to the disaster of the scandals. Their purpose is only to nourish the necessary debate on ways of putting an end to liturgical warfare between Catholics. For this war, which began more than 50 years ago and is now in the third generation of faithful, has definitely lasted too long.”
Fr. Benoist de Sinety, parish priest of St. Eubert in Lille, also wished for an end to the liturgical war, but in a more radical way. On the Aleteia site on June 4, 2023, he wonders why the Notre-Dame de Chrétienté pilgrimage to Chartres is still allowed to forbid the celebration of the new Mass during the three day march.
He writes, “What troubles me is not that we can celebrate Mass in a form that is outside the ordinary. No, what disturbs me is that it is forbidden to celebrate it in the ordinary. As if the ordinary were unworthy or indigent.” As Fr. Gabin Hachette rightly points out on La Porte Latine on June 9: “Fr. de Sinety raises the unspoken there; he tries to push the organizers to explicitly give the real reason for their refusal.”
Will the organizers respond? In La Nef on June 6, Elisabeth Geffroy gives – under the title: “An outdated polemic?” – an element of response that can only make Fr. de Sinety rejoice: “It seems that a diocesan priest who came to walk and pray alongside his pilgrim brothers, who came to teach them and give them the sacraments, was ‘authorized’ to celebrate his private Mass during the pilgrimage in the ordinary form of the Roman Rite.”
“Quotation marks are important because canon law is clear: no authority has the power to prohibit a priest from celebrating his Mass in the ordinary form. Nevertheless, Notre-Dame de Chrétienté had previously refused to allow priests participating in the pilgrimage to celebrate in private according to the rite of their choice: the extraordinary form was imposed on them.”
“The organizers cannot be reproached for their attachment to the traditional liturgy, which is a keystone of this pilgrimage, and their intransigence regarding the three public Masses. But what about private Masses held in the strictest privacy? This was an incomprehensible practice, which did not resemble an attitude of the Church, and which amounted de facto to casting an intolerable suspicion on the ordinary form of the Roman rite, on how the universal Church has been celebrating Mass every day for decades now.”
Moving from hypothetical information to a given fact, Elisabeth Geffroy continues: “We do not know what is going on behind the scenes, the compromises found in good faith, the probable arm-wrestling that a bishop engaged with the organization of the pilgrimage to give ground, but this precedent now exists, and we can’t be too happy about that.”
And, once again, Fr. de Sinety must also rejoice with La Nef. But what do the organizers say? It is not certain that all the participants of the pilgrimage rejoice in unison.
Lex Orandi, lex Credendi
On the Catholic Renaissance site on June 6, Jean-Pierre Maugendre responds to Fr. de Sinéty, deploring a “refusal to address the fundamental question of the fruits of liturgical reform and the lawfulness of expressing reservations or asking questions about acts of the magisterium.”
And he recalls that the conciliar reform “more than 50 years after the publication of the ‘Brief Critical Examination of the New Mass’ by Cardinals Ottaviani and Bacci, continues to pose formidable questions to the Catholic conscience when we recall the observations of the two Cardinals: “The Novus Ordo Missæ… departs in an impressive way, both overall and in detail, from the Catholic theology of the Holy Mass as formulated at the twenty-second session of the Council of Trent.”
And he goes on to add: “The worry can only grow when Cardinal Arthur Roche declared, on March 19, 2023, regarding Mass that: ‘The theology of the Church has changed.’ There are therefore in the Church advocates of the old theology and those of the new.”
This unprecedented statement by Cardinal Roche, Prefect of the Dicastery for Divine Worship and the Discipline of the Sacraments, was also noted by Fr. Davide Pagliarani, Superior General of the Society of Saint Pius X, in an interview posted on FSSPX.News on May 12.
“Whether we like it or not, since the motu proprio Traditionis Custodes, this Mass has been practically forbidden in the Church. As Cardinal Roche reminded us just recently: with the Council ‘the theology of the Church has changed’ [on BBC Radio 4, 19 March 2023], and consequently so has its liturgy, since the liturgy is the expression of the Church’s theology.”
Considering the communities of the former Ecclesia Dei, Fr. Pagliarani said: “The members of these institutes, like many other priests who wish to celebrate the Tridentine Rite, live in such fear that they condemn themselves to silence in the face of current events in the life of the Church. Alas, they know very well that the day they begin to express reservations about what is happening in the Church today, the very same day, the sword of Damocles could fall upon them – and Cardinal Roche is ready to remind them of this at any time! I say this in all charity: this situation provokes a permanent dichotomy between the liturgical sphere and the doctrinal sphere, which risks making these priests live in a permanent state of deception, paralyzing them irremediably, when faced with the necessary public profession of their faith.”
Rather than seeking to “overcome” pragmatically, even surreptitiously, the liturgical quarrel that has lasted for 50 years, it is wiser and more effective to try to resolve it, each in his modest place, starting from doctrinal causes. It is so true that the same doctrinal causes will always produce the same liturgical effects.
The adage “lex orandi, lex credendi” expresses a close connection between the law of faith and that of prayer; this profound coherence is a vital necessity for every soul. It cannot be satisfied by the hybridization of heterogeneous elements.
The Paris to Chartres Pilgrimage, the chaplaincy of which is provided by priests from the Fraternity of St. Peter (FSSP), brought together 16,000 participants for Pentecost 2023. This exceptional turnout was presented by the organizers as a resounding response to the motu proprio Traditionis custodes (July 16, 2021), which severely reduces the possibility of celebrating the Tridentine Mass. The first part showed the ambiguities behind this influx.