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JMJ
After the death of Benedict XVI, I noticed this article on the LMS website and thought it useful for the Chronicle.
I especially like the final sentence:
If it is collapsing, it is collapsing under the weight of its own contradictions.P^3
Source LMS: The Mandatum: Let's Not be hard on Pope Francis
It is tempting to see the decree allowing women's feet to be washed on
Maundy Thursday as an indication of an acceleration of liturgical decay
underway with Pope Francis, following his breaking of the rule up to
now. However, what has happened is no different from what happened under
his predecessors.
Bl Pope Paul VI gave in to the pressure of endemic abuse when he
allowed the reception of Communion in the hand. But there are other
examples too from his troubled reign. One of the most peculiar documents
of the Papal Magisterium is his Sacrificium laudis, an Apostolic
Letter directed to religious superiors, begging, cajoling, and ordering
them to preserve Latin in the Office. You won't find this document in
the Acta Apostolicis Sedis, and only in Italian on the Vatican website.
The speed of its transformation into waste-paper gives new meaning to
the phrase 'dead on arrival'. (You'll find an English translation on the
LMS website.)
Pope St John Paul II gave way, again because of the pressure of
abuses, on Altar girls. It was he, also, who permitted another set of
countries to take up Communion in the hand. It was on his watch, again,
that the restrictions on Communion under Both Kinds fell by the wayside -
this was forbidden on Sundays, in theory, and for 'large
congregations', but the American bishops defied him, and he gave in. It
was under him that major investigations of American seminaries and women
religious were turned into whitewash, liturgical abuses were
established on an industrial scale at the World Youth Days, and being
blessed by witch doctors, kissing the Koran, and putting Buddha on
altars became de rigeur. Religious sisters not wearing their
habits sat right in front of him at a Papal Mass of beatification in
Australia in 1995. That day, liturgical discipline was dead.
Pope Benedict XVI allowed Communion in the hand in Poland, where
Pope John Paul II never had. Did Pope JP know something his successor
did not? It was Pope Benedict who chose to continue JPII's Youth Day
Masses, and Assisi ecumenical gatherings, at a moment when it would have
been perfectly possible to let both series stop, and merely tried to
make them less awful. But he did not continue JPII's series of
Instructions lambasting liturgical abuses: he must have realised it was
pointless. It was under Pope Benedict that the investigation of the
American women's religious lost its conservative mojo: yes, he was
the one who appointed João, Cardinal Braz de Aviz as Prefect of the
Congregation for Religious, in 2011, with entirely predictable results.
There is, however, an important difference between the actions of these
three Popes and Pope Francis. As far as one can tell, Paul VI, John Paul
II, and Pope Benedict believed that poor liturgical discipline was a
bad thing. Paul VI lamented Communion in the hand and the loss of Latin.
John Paul II apparently dislike Altar girls, and condemned abuses
vigorously before permitting them. Pope Benedict surely had no sympathy
with the ghastly things which were happening in American convents. There
is no reason to think that Pope Francis is similarly conflicted when he
allows the washing of women's feet on Maundy Thursday.
And another thing: to be crass about it, the Mandatum is not all that
important. It happens once a year, and it is optional. It is not an
integral part of the Maundy Thursday service - despite its name.
Allowing Altar girls and EMHCs and syncetistic pagan rites during Mass
are far more serious issues.
Let's not get on a high horse about Pope Francis at this juncture. This
is just another step, and not a particularly large one, in the
development of the Ordinary Form away from Tradition, and it is not
happening because of the personality of the Pope. It is happening
because the Novus Ordo Missae of 1970 was unstable. It included a series
of compromises which were never going to last. Given the direction of
pressure, these compromises were always going to unravel the same way.
This is the real lesson to be learnt. Attempting to shore up the
tottering edifice of the Novus Ordo with ferocious-sounding rules has
failed. JPII and Pope Benedict didn't manage it, and obviously -
obviously - Pope Francis, though not a liturgical 'meddler', is not
going to succeed in a project in which he has no interest. If it is
collapsing, it is collapsing under the weight of its own contradictions.
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