Letter to the Motu Proprio "Summorum Pontificum," Pope Benedict XVI
On the Celebration of Holy Mass


Dear Priests and Deacons,

It is with much bitterness of spirit that I have found that many of you have not taken up or made a right attitude of mind and heart toward the possibility given to the faithful by the motu proprio "Summorum Pontificum" of Pope Benedict XVI, of the celebration of Holy Mass "in the extraordinary form" according to the Missal of Blessed John XXIII, promulgated in 1962.

In the "Three days of the Clergy" of September 2007, I indicated with strength and clarity what is the value and the true meaning of the Motu Proprio, how we should interpret it and how we should accept it, with a mind that is open to the magisterial content of the document and with a ready willingness of a convinced obedience. The position taken by the Bishop was not missing its calm authority, strengthened by his full concordance with a solemn act of the Supreme Pontiff. The position of the Bishop was founded by reason of his theological argument on the nature of the Divine Liturgy, the immutability of the substance in its supernatural contents, and was also based on surveys of the practical, concrete, good sense of the Church.

The adverse reactions to the motu proprio and the theological and practical guidance of the bishop are almost always dictated by emotional and superficial theological reasoning, i.e. a rather poor and shortsighted "theological" vision, that is not part of and which does not reach the true nature of the things which concern the Faith and the work the Church's sacramental life, that is not fed by the perennial Tradition of the Church, which looks at rather marginal aspects or at least incomplete issues. Not without reason, had I, in "Three Days" cited above, prefaced with the operational guidelines and principles to guide action a doctrinal exposition on the "Unchanging Nature of the Liturgy".

I understand that in some areas, on the part of several priests and pastors, there was also the manifestation almost of ridicule toward faithful who have asked to make use of the option, and indeed of the right, for the celebration of Holy Mass in the Extraordinary Form; there is also an expression of contempt and almost of hostility toward Brother Priests who are well prepared to understand and respond to the requests of the faithful...

I ask that you put away every attitude not in conformity with ecclesial communion, the discipline of the Church and the convinced obedience due to important acts of the magisterium or government.

I am convinced that my call will be accepted in a spirit of filial respect and obedience.

[...]

The letter carries with it all my desire that it might help to reawaken and a strengthen our ecclesial communion and of our common desire to fulfill our ministry with a renewed fidelity to Christ and his Church.

Finally, I would ask you for much prayer for me and for my apostolic ministry, and I cordially bless you all.

Albenga, 1 January 2012, Solemnity of the Mother of God

Monsignor Mario Oliveri, Bishop

Allowing the Old Latin Mass is just “a first step” according to Kurt Cardinal Koch, an official of the Roman Curia. The time is however not yet ripe for the next steps Koch said on the Weekend in Freiburg. Liturgical questions are overshadowed by ideology especially in Germany. Rome will only be able to act further when Catholics show more readiness to think about a new liturgical reform “for the good of the Church.” The Cardinal spoke at a conference on the theology of Joseph Ratzinger, which also considered Ratzinger’s pontificate as Pope Benedict XVI. In July 2007 Pope Benedict decreed that Tridentine Rite Masses according to the Missal of 1962 may once again be celebrated world wide. The Missal of 1970 is however still the “normal form” of the Eucharistic Celebration in the Roman Church. Koch is the President of the Pontifical Council for Christian Unity. He tried to refute the charge that Pope Benedict is going against the Council [i.e. Vatican II] in liturgical questions: “the Pope suffers from this accusation.” On the contrary, the Holy Father’s intention is rather to implement conciliar teachings on the liturgy which have been ignored up till now. Present day liturgical practice does not always have any real basis in the Council. For example, celebration versus populum was never mandated by the Council, says the Cardinal. A renewal of the form of divine worship is necessary for the interior renewal of the Church: “Since the crisis of the Church today is above all a crisis of the liturgy, it is necessary to begin the renewal of the Church today with a renewal of the Liturgy.

Musical highlights include Tournemire’s office from L’Orgue Mystique for the day (Purificatio B. Mariæ Virginis), played by Mr. Thomas Schuster, Organist and Director of Music at Church of the Epiphany, as well as a Missa Brevis by Zachary Wadsworth, and a commissioned motet by Dr. Paul Weber (Franciscan University of Steubenville.) Choral works will be sung by the Schola Cantorum of the University of Florida under the direction of Dr. Edward Schaefer. The Gregorian propers of the day will be sung by a Women’s Schola Cantorum under the direction of Dr. Jennifer Donelson of NOVA Southeastern University.

A St. Brigid's Cross

Virgin, abbess of Cill-dara. She was of the race of Eochaidh Finnfuathairt, son of Feidhlijidh Reachtmhar, son of Tuathal Teachmhar, monarch of Erinn. Broiccseach, daughter of Dallbronach, son of Aedh Meamhair, was her mother, and she was the sister of Ultan of Ard-Breccain, and it was Ultan that collected the virtues, and miracles of Brighit together and who commanded his disciple Brogann to put them into poetry as is evident in the Book of Hymns, i.e., The victorious Brighit did not love, etc.

When Moling was returning from the king of Erinn after obtaining the remission of he Borumha (the tribute of oxen) from Fionnachta, king of Erinn, the people of the king were seized with regret, and they followed him to kill him. When Moling saw this he had recourse to the protection of the saints, and he implored Brighit first, and said: O Brighit, bless our path, etc.

A very ancient old book of vellum, in which is found the Martyrology of Maelruain of Tamhlach and the saints of the same name, and the names of many of the mothers of the saints, states that Brighit was following the manners and the life which the holy Mary,mother of Jesus had.

It was this Brighit, too, that did not take her mind or her attention from the Lord for the space of one hour at any time, but was constantly mentioning Him, and ever constantly thinking of Him, as evident in her own life, and also in the life of Saint Brenainn, bishop of Cluain-fearta. She was very hospitable and very charitable to guests and to needy people. She was humble, and attended to the herding of sheep and early rising, as her life proves, and as Cuimin of Coindeire states in the poem whose beginning is, Patrick of the fort of Macha loved, etc. Thus he says:---

The blessed Brighit loved Constant piety, which was not prescribed: Sheep-Herding and early rising Hospitality towards men of virtues. She spent indeed 74 years diligently serving the Lord, performing signs and miracles, curing every disease, and sickness in general as evident in her own life, until she yielded her spirit, after having completed seventy-four years as we have said before, A.D. 525, and she was buried at Dun in one tomb with Patrick, where Colum Cille was afterwards interred. The life of Ciaran of Cluain states, chapt. 47, that the Order of Brighit was one of the eight Orders that were in Erinn.

It is exceedingly difficult to say what was the origin of this ceremony. Baronius, Thomassin, and others are of the opinion that it was instituted toward the close of the 5th century, by Pope Gelasius, in order to give a Christian meaning to certain vestiges still retained by the Romans of the old Lupercalia. St. Gelasius certainly did abolish the last vestiges of the Lupercalia, which in earlier times the pagans used to celebrate in the month of February. Pope Innocent III, in one of his sermons for the feast of the Purification, attributes the institution of this ceremony of Candlemas to the wisdom of the Roman Pontiffs, who turned into the present religious rite the remnants of an ancient pagan custom, which had not quite died out among the Christians. The old pagans, he says, used to carry lighted torches in memory of those which the fable gives to Ceres, when she went to the top of Mount Etna in search of her daughter Proserpine. But against this we have to object that on the pagan calendar of the Romans there is no mention of any Feast in honor of Ceres for the month of February. We therefore prefer adopting the opinion of Dom Hugh Menard, Rocca, Henschenius, and Pope Benedict XIV; that an ancient feast that was kept in February, and was called the Amburbalia, during which the pagans used to go through the city with lighted torches in their hands, gave occasion to the Sovereign Pontiffs to substitute in its place, a Christian ceremony, which they attached to the Feast of the sacred mystery, in which Jesus, the Light of the world, was presented in the temple by His Virgin-Mother.

The mystery of today's ceremony has frequently been explained by liturgists, dating from the 7th century. According to Ivo of Chartres, the wax, which is formed from the juice of flowers by the bee, always considered as the emblem of virginity, signifies the virginal flesh of the Divine Infant, who diminished not, either by His conception or His birth, the spotless purity of His Blessed Mother. The same holy bishop would have us see, in the flame of our Candle, a symbol of Jesus who came to enlighten our darkness. St. Anselm, Archbishop of Canterbury, speaking on the same mystery, bids us consider three things in the blessed Candle: the wax, the wick, and the flame. The wax, he says, which is the production of the virginal bee, is the Flesh of our Lord; the wick, which is within, is His Soul; the flame, which burns on top, is His divinity.

Filled with holy joy, radiant with the mystic light, excited, like the venerable Simeon, by the impulse of the Holy Spirit, the Church goes forth to meet her Emmanuel. It is this meeting which the Greek Church calls the Hypapante, under which name she also designates today's Feast. The Church would imitate that wondrous Procession, which was formed in the Temple of Jerusalem on the day of Mary's Purification.

[...]

The holy Church opens her chants in this Procession with the following Antiphon, which is found, word for word, in the Greek Liturgy of this same Feast.

ANT. Adorn thy bride-chamber, O Sion, and receive Christ, thy King. Salute Mary, the gate of heaven; for she beareth the King of glory, who is the new Light. The Virgin stands, bringing in her hands her Son, the Begotten before the daystar; whom Simeon receiving into his arms, declared to the people as the Lord of life and death, and the Saviour of the world.

The feast of the Purification, which, like the Annunciation, was originally a feast of our Lord, was observed in Jerusalem with a solemn procession as early as the end of the 4th century, although there is no mention of candles. The... Presentation... was, however celebrated with lights in the following century, a usage which Cyril of Scythopolis ascribes to a Roman lady of the name of Ikelia. It was thus a Christian practice borrowed from Jerusalem that was introduced at Rome, not an imitation of the pagan Lupercalia. (p. 451)

May not the explanation lie in the fact that the practice of using candles in celebrating the traditional Feast of the [Presentation] was introduced at Jerusalem in the fifth century by the Roman lady named Ikelia? An ancient Roman custom would thus have been brought to Jerusalem and there become attached to a Christian Feast... Later it would have returned to its place of origin as an element in the Christian celebration when this was established at Rome. (p. 150-151)

At dawn on February 2, each title and deaconry in the city [of Rome] sent out its own parochial procession, which wended its way towards the Forum Romanum to the church of St Adrian. In order to guide their steps in the darkness through the ruins of the ancient buildings of Imperial Rome, the faithful carried lighted candles, whilst the clergy chanted psalms and sang antiphons, to which the people replied with the customary cry: Kyrie eleison. As soon as the Pope arrived with his deacons at the basilica of the martyr he entered the Secretarium and assumed the black Paenula as a mark of penitence, those immediately accompanying him doing the same.

Then the clergy and the various scholae of cantors were admitted into the presence of the Pontiff that they might each receive a candle from his hands. This distribution being ended, the cantors intoned the antiphon of the Introit: Exsurge, Domine, which is still preserved in our present Missal, and the Pope made his solemn entrance into the church of St Adrian. After the Introit followed the Kyrie eleison, as in all Masses. Next came the Collect -- now preserved only in the Gregorian Sacramentary -- after which the procession commenced.

... even in the ninth century the people divided themselves into seven companies, each one of which was preceded by its own cross...

The Pope walked barefoot and was preceded by two acolytes with lighted candles in their hands. These walked on each side of the subdeacon who swung a thurible from which arose clouds of incense. Two staurophori, each bearing a cross, walked before the Pope, who was followed by the scholae of cantors in ordered ranks, chanting psalms.

I spoke with religious communities that are striving for renewal, in part by restoring the use of the extraordinary form of the Mass. The Holy See entrusted the Monks of Norcia in San Benedetto, Italy, the birthplace of St. Benedict, with the special apostolate of celebrating the Eucharist in both forms. Their Novice Master, Fr. Benedict Nivakoff, referred to the first aim of the Motu Proprio when he said, “Well, monks are those who care for the treasures of the Church. So it seemed most fitting.”

The Canons Regular of St. John Cantius, an order in Chicago, Illinois, celebrated both Masses before the Motu Proprio. Their founder, Fr. Frank Phillips, said, “Years ago in the initial formation of our community, I happened to meet ‘Cardinal’ Ratzinger and briefly spoke to him about our charism and he said – not exact words – ‘finally a community that does both.’” This order desires to “Restore the Sacred” and seeks to nurture a continuing renewal of the Christian life as fed by the liturgy.

I visited the Canonry of St. Leopold in Long Island, New York to talk to them about these developments. They are a new foundation of the Canons Regular of St. Augustine, a very old order in Europe. Their Prior, Fr. Daniel Nash, said, “We give everyone a little bit of everything. We want to open the treasury of the Church, so people get everything that is theirs….not just what has been on the common market for the past 40 years.” Fr. Elias Carr said that it should be “normal” for both Masses to be available, and believes that when the Pope’s words are really heard, this is the direction we’re being led in.

...after all of the interviews I did to understand this new phenomenon, I noticed some resistance. Some religious orders view this shift as a calling for some to embrace, and not others. Some Catholic media people I’ve spoken with view too much emphasis on liturgy as misguided. Liturgical renewal, they say, won’t solve all of the problems in the Church, so the emphasis doesn’t quite make sense to them.

When you speak to a priest, it becomes clear why so much energy is spent on liturgical issues. Fr. Daniel said, “Well, what does it mean to be a priest? To help people, to serve God? That’s vague. It’s to say Mass – to celebrate the liturgy.”

Today’s Mass, Candlemas, takes place 40 days after Christmas. Thus, this Feast of Lights which recalls our Lord’s Presentation in the temple completes our celebrations of the birth of our Lord: the Word made Flesh, the light that has come into the world.

Mary, purest Mother and Virgin undefiled, goes to the temple to be “purified” in accordance with Mosaic Law. She carries in her arms the true light of the world. Enlightened by faith in her Divine Son, we, too, should carry a light for all to see.

Mary comes with her husband, Joseph, to hand over the child Jesus to the Lord; yet, through the eyes of Simeon, we learn that something even greater is happening here. We learn that it is God himself who has handed over his only begotten Son to us. Today’s Presentation of the Lord is prelude to another, future presentation – to that presentation that will take place on Calvary, in our Lord’s sacrificial death on the cross, of which every Mass is a re-presentation.

Guided by and filled with the Holy Spirit, Simeon embraces the Child. His hope fulfilled by the presence of Promised Messiah, he begs the Lord to release him from earthy cares and to go from this life in peace. For his eyes have seen “salvation”, “light” and the “glory of Israel.” These prophetic words uttered by Simeon and repeated by the Church in prayer at Compline give us a brief catechesis on the mystery of Jesus: he is the salvation of humanity, a light to the nations and the glory of Israel.

Yet, as we are reminded in the reading of the Last Gospel at the end of today’s Mass: The true light has come into the world “yet the world knew him not.” Or, as Simeon would tell Mary, “This child is destined for the fall and rise of many… and to be a sign that will be contradicted and you yourself a sword will pierce so that thoughts of many hearts may be revealed.”

Mary’s life – and our own lives – if we, like her, follow Jesus to the end, will be lived under the sign of the cross. For in a fallen world, in a world that has turned its back on God, those who live “ad orientam,” that is, looking, in joyful expectation, towards the coming of Our Lord, Jesus Christ, inevitably will encounter opposition and resistance. Such was the life of Christ – and such was the life of his mother who at Calvary shared in his sufferings; such is the life of the Church.

The “thoughts of many hearts” have been revealed in the betrayals and apostasies of the Church’s sinners but also in the constancy of her confessors, in the purity of her virgins and in the courage of her martyrs. Blessed John Paul II, when as Karol Wojtyla he preached a Lenten retreat to Pope Paul VI, said that “sign of contradiction” maybe be the “distinctive definition of Christ and his Church.”

Today, the witness of the Church on behalf of the dignity and right to life of the human person from the first moment of conception till natural death is itself a “sign that will be contradicted” – and is in fact contradicted in the present mandate of the Obama administration’s Department of Health and Human Services’ mandate to deny a religious exemption to Catholic institutions and thus force us to violate our consciences and to make us accomplices in evil.

Today’s feast of the Presentation of the Lord – thanks to the initiative of Blessed John Paul II – is also observed as the World Day of Prayer for Consecrated Life. Those who live their Christian baptism through vows of poverty, chastity and obedience as religious sisters, brothers and priests, should see the oblation of the Son of God presented today in the temple as the model for religious life. We pray for them – may their perseverance in seeking first the Kingdom of God above all else inspire all of us to seek to live holy lives in fidelity to the promises of our baptism.

The lighted candles carried in procession this evening are a sign of the divine splendor of the Christ who comes to expel the dark shadows of evil. May our lives as Catholics reflect the light of Christ to all who meet us; and may that same light guide us, as it guided that righteous and devout man, Simeon, when we go forth from this life to meet Christ.

Catholic University Students Embrace the New Missal

The student newspaper at The Catholic University of America ran an informal poll asking students about their thoughts and feelings about the new missal. The response was overwhelmingly positive.

In fact, according to The Tower, those students who attended Mass regularly seemed to support the new translation more than those students who didn’t attend Mass regularly.

Through interviews conducted throughout January, The Tower found that regular Mass attendees were more likely to support the new translation than those who attended Mass less than once a week.

“It’s a really beautiful way to celebrate Mass,” said Catholic University sophomore Shannon Ballou, who said her Mass attendance as “pretty regular.” She described the new translation as “more authentic.”

Such responses seem typical of the University’s students. Of the recorded responses (of which about 65 percent were from past or present Catholic University students) more than half were positive, while 26 percent were negative and the remaining 15 percent were indifferent.

“I think we’re all settling into hearing things for the first time,” says David Pennington, Associate Campus Minister for Liturgy and Worship at the University’s Office of Campus Ministry. “[The responses] haven’t become part of our DNA yet. We’ll get there.”

In the months leading up to the change, CUA’s Campus Ministry attempted to educate University students on the changes and the reasoning behind them.

Most of the students quoted in the piece were positive including these:

“It’s going to the heart of what the Mass is as the pinnacle of the Catholic faith,” says University student Christina Heifferon.“I love it,” adds James Clement, a sophomore. “It gives us a fuller understanding of what is going on in the biggest celebration.”

In addition, proponents argue that a translation that brings the English text closer to the original Latin brings it more in line with all of the other translations, furthering the Church’s intention of unity.

“If we no longer know the mother tongue of our Church, then a translation is very valuable for putting us in touch with the mind of our Church and of the whole Church,” says Reverend Bernard Mulcahy, O.P., a theologian and contributor to the widespread Catholic publication Magnificat.

University graduate Nedjée Saint-Fleur seems to agree. “My first language is French, so the new translation actually is closer to what we say [in France],” she says.