A series of two free lectures on "The Meaning and Prayers of the Mass" will be presented in the Undercroft of the Church of Our Saviour on consecutive Saturdays, January 14 and 21 from 1:30-2:30 PM.

Thomas Vaniotis will use the texts of the new translation of the Roman Missal to explore the historical, spiritual, and theological content of the prayers of the Mass as a guide to greater understanding and deeper participation. The first lecture will focus on the Liturgy of the Word, the second on the Liturgy of the Eucharist.

Thomas Vaniotis is one of the Masters of Ceremonies overseeing the altar servers at liturgies at the Church of Our Saviour and is a parish catechist. He studied music, philosophy, and medieval studies at the University of Rochester.

The Church of Our Saviour is located at 59 Park Avenue at the corner of East 38th Street, two blocks south of Grand Central Terminal in New York City. The parish website is http://www.oursaviournyc.org/

Please feel free to share this announcement with other interested parties.

"Placet" or "Non placet"? The wager of Carmen and Kiko

The founders of the Neocatechumenal Way aim to obtain definitive Vatican approval for their "convivial" way of celebrating the Mass. The document is ready. But it could be modified or blocked in extremis. The verdict on January 20

by Sandro Magister

ROME, January 13, 2012 – As on other occasions in the past, this January as well, on Friday the 20th, Benedict XVI will meet in the audience hall of the Vatican with thousands of members of the Neocatechumenal Way, with their founders and leaders, the Spaniards Francisco "Kiko" Argüello and Carmen Hernández.

One year ago, at the audience of January 17, 2011, the pope told the enthusiastic audience that the thirteen volumes of the catechism in use in their communities had received the longed-for approval, after a very lengthy examination begun in 1997 by the congregation for the doctrine of the faith, and after numerous corrections had been introduced, with about 2000 references to parallel passages of the official catechism of the Catholic Church.

Next January 20, however, the leaders and members of the Way expect from the supreme authorities of the Church an even more ardently desired "placet." The official and definitive approval of what is their most visible, but also most controversial, distinctive trait: the way in which they celebrate the Mass.


THE FOUR ELEMENTS

The Masses of the Neocatechumenal communities have always been distinguished by at least four elements.

1. They are celebrated in small groups, corresponding to the different stages of advancement on the catechetical journey. If in a parish, for example, there are twelve Neocatechumenal communities, each at a different stage, there will be twelve Masses, celebrated in separate places more or less at the same time, preferably on Saturday evening.

2. The surroundings and furnishings trace out the image of a banquet: a table with the participants seated around it. Even when the Neocatechumenals celebrate the Mass not in a parish hall but in a church, they ignore the altar. They put a table in the middle and sit around it in a circle.

3. Each of the biblical readings of the Mass is preceded by an extensive "monition" on the part of one or the other of the catechists who lead the community and is followed, especially after the Gospel, by "resonances," or personal reflections by a substantial number of those present. The priest's homily is added to the "resonances" without being distinguished from them.

4. Communion also takes place in banquet form. The consecrated bread – a large unleavened loaf, two thirds white flour and one third whole wheat flour, prepared and baked according to detailed rules established by Kiko – is broken and distributed to those present, who remain in their places. After the distribution, it is eaten at the same time by all, including the priest. After this, the priest goes from one person to the next with the chalice of consecrated wine, which everyone drinks.

There are also other peculiarities, but these four are enough to understand how different in form and substance the Masses of the Neocatechumenals are from those celebrated according to the general liturgical rules. A difference that is certainly more pronounced than that between the Masses in the ancient Roman rite and in the modern rite.

The Vatican authorities have repeatedly sought to bring the Neocatechumenals back to greater fidelity to the "lex orandi" in effect in the Catholic Church. But with a weak pulse and almost no results.

The strongest reminder came with the promulgation of the definitive statutes of the Way, approved in 2008.

In them, at article 13, the Vatican authorities established that the Masses of the communities must be "open also to other faithful"; that communion must be received "standing"; that for the biblical readings, only "brief monitions" of introduction are permitted, apart from the homily.

There is no trace of the "resonances" (permitted in the previous, provisional statutes of 2002) in this same article 13 dedicated to the celebration of the Mass. It is mentioned only in article 11, which, however, concerns the weekday celebrations of the Word, which each community holds with its own catechists.

The fact is that there has been very little change between the way in which the Neocatechumenals celebrate the Mass today and the way in which they celebrated it until a few years ago, when, moreover, the cups of consecrated wine were passed festively from hand to hand.

It is only in theory that their group Masses have been opened to other faithful as well.

Standing or seated, their convivial way of distributing communion is still the same.

The personal "resonances" of those present continue to invade and overwhelm the first part of the Mass.

Not only that. Kiko, Carmen, and their followers are counting on coming out of the audience with Benedict XVI next January 20 with explicit approval of all of this.

An approval with all the official blessings. Promulgated by the Vatican congregation for divine worship.


RATZINGERIAN AND ANTIPAPAL

With a Francis Arinze as cardinal prefect of the congregation, and above all with a Malcolm Ranjith as its secretary- as it was until a few years ago – such approval would have been unthinkable.

Cardinal Arinze, now retired, was the protagonist in 2006 of a memorable clash with the heads of the Way, when he enjoined on them by letter a series of corrections, which they blatantly disobeyed.

As for Ranjith – now back in Sri Lanka, as archbishop of Colombo – it is difficult to find a cardinal more seasoned in defending fidelity to the liturgical tradition. In the field of the liturgy, Cardinal Ranjith has the reputation of being more Ratzingerian than Ratzinger himself, his mentor.

At the head of the congregation for divine worship today is another cardinal who also passes as a staunch Ratzingerian, the Spaniard Antonio Cañizares Llovera.

But to judge by the document that he is believed to have ready for next January 20, this would not seem to be the case at all.

In fact, his giving the go-ahead to the liturgical "creativity" of the Neocatechumenals would only harm the wise and patient work of reconstruction of the Catholic liturgy that Pope Benedict has been carrying out for years, with a courage equal to the great solitude that surrounds him.

And it would provide another point for the accusations of the traditionalists, not to mention the Lefebvrists.


BETWEEN SHREWDNESS AND INDULGENCE

There is a shrewdness that the Neocatechumenals adopt when popes, bishops, or cardinals participate in or are present at their Masses: that of adhering to the general liturgical rules.

Cardinal Cañizares is not the only one to have fallen into this trap. Or to have believed that the liturgical excesses of the Way, if any, are minimal and forgivable, in comparison with the fervor of faith of those who participate in them.

Like him, many other cardinals and bishops look kindly on the Neocatechumenals, particularly in Spain. In the Vatican curia, they have a fiery supporter in the prefect of "Propaganda Fide," Fernando Filoni, previously the substitute secretary of state.

Thus, while with the other Catholic movements the Vatican authorities are inflexible in demanding respect for the liturgical norms, with the Neocatechumenals they are more indulgent. For example, it is tolerated that, in their Masses, the "resonances" should continue to overflow, when instead the more powerful Community of Saint Egidio was ordered, years ago, to have the homily delivered exclusively by the priest, and no longer – as took place previously – by the founder, Andrea Riccardi, or by other lay leaders of the community.

This widespread indulgence toward the liturgical licenses of the Neocatechumenals has an explanation that stretches back to the beginning of the movement, and that it is helpful to recall.


"LUTHER WAS RIGHT"

In the liturgical field, more than Kiko, it has been the co-founder Carmen Hernández who has shaped the Neocatechumenal "rite."

During the years of Vatican Council II and immediately afterward, when she still wore the religious habit of the Misioneras de Cristo Jesús and was studying to obtain her degree in theology, Carmen became an enthusiast of liturgical renewal. Her teachers and inspiration were the liturgist Pedro Farnés Scherer in Spain and Fr. Luigi della Torre in Rome, also a prominent liturgist, pastor of the Church of the Nativity on Via Gallia, which was one of the movement's first locations in Rome, and Archbishop Annibale Bugnini, at the time the powerful secretary of the Vatican congregation for divine worship and the main architect of the postconciliar liturgical reform.

It was precisely Bugnini, at the beginning of the 1970's, who congratulated himself over the way in which the first communities founded by Kiko and Carmen celebrated the Mass. He wrote about it in "Notitiæ," the official magazine of the congregation for divine worship. And it was again him, together with the co-founders, who decided to call the newborn movement "Neocatechumenal Way."

From visiting with these liturgists and from loosely reworking their ideas, Kiko and Carmen drew their own personal conception of the Catholic liturgy, which they put into practice in the Masses of their communities.

There is a book by a Ligurian priest of the Way, Piergiovanni Devoto, that uses previously unpublished texts of Kiko and Carmen to make public this bizarre conception of theirs.

The book, published in 2004 with the title "Il neocatecumenato. Un’iniziazione cristiana per adulti," and given a warm presentation by Paul Josef Cordes, at the time the president of the pontifical council "Cor Unum," now a cardinal, was printed by Chirico, the Naples-based publishing house that also published the only work translated into Italian by Farnés Scherer, the liturgist who was the first to inspire Carmen.

Here are some of the passages of the book, taken from pages 71-77.

"Over the course of the centuries, the eucharist has been fragmented and crusted over, repackaged to the point at which we did not see anywhere in our mass the resurrection of Jesus Christ . . .

"In the 4th century, with the conversion of Constantine, the emperor and his court also went to church to celebrate the eucharist: thus were born the rites of entrance solemnified by songs and psalms which were eliminated over time, leaving only the antiphon, which constitutes a real and true absurdity . . .

"Analogously, place was made for offertory processions, in which there emerged the conception of natural religiosity, which tends to placate the divinity through gifts and offerings . . .

"The Church has tolerated inauthentic forms for centuries. The 'Gloria,' which was part of the liturgy of the hours recited by the monks, entered into the mass when a single celebration was made of the two actions, and that the 'Credo' emerged with the appearance of heresies and apostasies. Even the 'Orate Fratres' is a culminating example of the prayers with which the mass was stuffed full . . .

"With the passage of the centuries, private prayers were inserted into the mass in notable quantities. The assembly was no more, and the mass had taken on a penitential tone, in stark contrast with the paschal exultation from which it had emerged . . .

"And while the people lived out the privatization of the mass, the erudite elaborated rational theologies which, although they contain the essence of revelation ‘in nuce,’ are wrapped in philosophical garments foreign to Christ and the apostles . . .

"So it is understandable why Luther emerged, making a clean break with everything he believed was a purely human addition or tradition . . .

"Luther, who never doubted the real presence of Christ in the eucharist, rejected 'transubstantiation,' because it was bound to the Aristotelian-Thomistic concept of substance, which is foreign to the Church of the apostles and the Fathers . . .

"The rigidity and fixity of the Council of Trent generated a static mentality in the liturgy, which has persisted to our day, quick to be scandalized by any change or transformation. And this is an error, because the liturgy is life, a reality of the Spirit living among men. For this reason, it can never be bottled up . . .

"Having emerged from a legalistic and rigid mentality, we witnessed at Vatican II a profound renewal of the liturgy. The cloaks that had covered the eucharist were removed from it. It is interesting to see that originally, the anaphora [the prayer of consecration] was not written, but was improvised by the presider . . .

"The celebration of the eucharist on Saturday evening is not intended to facilitate Sunday recreation, but to go back to the roots: the day of rest for the Jews begins with the sighting of the first three stars on Friday, and the first vespers of Sunday for the entire Church have always been on Saturday evening . . .

"On Saturday, we join the feast with our whole being, to sit at the table of the Great King and taste even now the banquet of eternal life. After the supper, the day concludes with a cordial and friendly celebration . . ."


A QUESTION

Is this supposed to be "the spirit of the liturgy" – the title of a key work by Joseph Ratzinger – that the Vatican authorities are believed to be about to confirm, with the practice that derives from it?

There will no doubt be some clashes with liturgical committees, when pastors, choosing to follow Roman custom, begin taking their altar crosses out of the closet. In order to forestall precipitous reactions in these debates, we would like to establish the larger context in which the discussion belongs. There are a number of liturgical practices that have disappeared from use over centuries. Without a reflective look at these rituals, however, it could easily happen that even the loveliest of liturgical directives would shrivel into meaningless formalism.

The sacrificial action of the Eucharist takes place on the altar, within a continuous current of prayer: from the prayer over the gifts, through the Eucharistic Prayer, to the Our Father. In this respect, the Eucharistic action is markedly different from the liturgy of the Word that precedes it. The ambo is, strictly speaking, not a place of prayer; the Opening Prayer is better placed at the celebrant’s chair. In the usus antiquior, the priest is always standing at the altar, and almost always praying! The silent prayers are neither private prayers nor mere time-fillers (i.e., horror vacui), but rather to make the altar a place of unceasing prayer.

Once this point has been acknowledged, the implication is that the priest at the altar takes on a different attitude, or mindset, than he has anywhere else. Here he stands, first and foremost, as one who prays. Christianity recognizes this distinctive prayer posture where the priest raises his hands, as well as his eyes. The raising of hands and eyes belongs, inseparably, to the gesture of early Christian prayer, just as Jesus himself practiced in the Jewish tradition. Standing in prayer is also part of this tradition, seen as a fundamental posture for one in prayer; on one’s knees praying, likewise, uses elevated hands and eyes, all dating back to early Christianity. Since the Middle Ages, this prayer posture, with hands and eyes raised, has faded somewhat from practice. Now, it is only the priest raising his hands (and eyes for only a few short moments) because he is reading prayers. He does look up, for instance, in the Roman canon at the time of the consecration while speaking the words: “et elevatis oculis in coelum”. Therefore, Jesus inaugurates the Eucharist “with eyes raised to heaven.”

Even in the ordo novus, the rubric at this point reads: “He (the priest) raises his eyes.” But where exactly is the priest supposed to be looking, at the church ceiling? So when the priest in reciting a prayer is required to look upward, rather than simply staring into space, the obvious focal point is a high-standing cross on the main altar.

Of course, the practice of having a cross on the altar facing the priest is not only needed for a few isolated moments. It has a more general purpose. When the priest stands at the altar in unceasing prayer to God, he will be gazing at God’s Son, through whom his every petition, his every word of praise, is, in fact, offered.

Since God is creator, the world is not chaotic, but a universe divinely fashioned and providentially ordered. There is an “above” and a “below,” or in scriptural terms, upon the heavens his throne is set, earth is his footstool. (Source.)

Finally, it is further objected that an altar cross creates a doubling of crucifixes, in the case that a cross already hangs above or behind the altar. However, the cross on the altar is for the priest, facing him with its corpus, while the faithful look at their cross above the altar.

By pure chance, we recently came across the beautiful work of the American liturgical illustrator and designer Matthew Alderman and it immediately struck us how perfectly suited his illustrations would be as cartoons from which to produce stained glass. Having made contact with the [...] artist, who admitted to being greatly inspired by renowned Irish stained glass artist Harry Clarke, Matthew was extremely excited at the prospect of seeing one of his original works physically transformed into stained glass and immediately gave his permission for us to begin work on a producing a sample panel.

The result which can be seen on the right is taken from Matthew’s original illustration entitled St. Cecilia.

[...]

Having completed this initial sample, we are now jointly promoting the work with a view to securing future stained glass commissions in both the UK and USA. Such commissions, having been designed by Matthew and produced by Lightworks, will proudly bare the makers mark “MAS – LSG”.

A former Anglican priest and member of the Personal Ordinariate of Our Lady of Walsingham gave the Latin Sermon at the University of Oxford this weekend. John Hunwicke, who is well known for his erudite writing on liturgy and Classics, gave the sermon -­‐ not a sermon in the usual ecclesiastical sense -­‐ in the University Church of St Mary the Virgin on Sunday 15 January, the first anniversary of the establishment of the Personal Ordinariate of Our Lady of Walsingham, with the permission and blessing of the Ordinary. Whilst still an Anglican, Blessed John Henry Newman (who is the patron of the Ordinariate) was the Vicar of St Mary's and it was from the same pulpit that he preached and John Keble gave his Assize Sermon, that the Latin Sermon is given. John Hunwicke joins other Catholics, including Professor Richard Parish, in giving the Latin Sermon.

A SPANISH PRIEST AT THE SERVICE OF THE MOTU PROPRIO

A few months ago in Spain the superior of the Fraternidad de Cristo Sacerdote y Santa María Reina, Padre Manuel María de Jesús, published a little book titled "Motu Proprio Summorum Pontificum, Problem or Asset?" This work was soon translated into Portuguese, showing the interest it has garnered in the Iberian peninsula.

This self-published book goes straight to the crux of the issue and is actually breaking the silence surrounding Benedict XVI's liberation of the traditional Mass in Spain as in Portugal. This great silence has been quantified in the survey polls conducted in those countries: in Portugal, according to the 2010 Harris Interactive survey, 74% of Catholics had never heard of the Motu Proprio; in Spain, according to the 2011 Ipsos survey, the proportion reaches 81.7%.

Father Manuel's work is deserving. For this reason, we propose the following interview for you to discover the spirit that motivates him; it is deeply concerned with obeying the Holy Father and is filled with joy and gratitude for the discovery of the traditional liturgy.

The Portuguese cover of Fr. Manuel's book

I – INTERVIEW WITH PADRE MANUEL

1) Father Manuel, would you introduce yourself to our readers?

Father Manuel: My name is Manuel Folgar Otero--Father Manuel María de Jesús in religion. I was ordained in 1988 for the diocese of Santiago de Compostela where for ten years I was an assistant priest at Saint Joseph of Pontevedra, as well as a hospital chaplain, director of the Legion of Mary Curia and spiritual director of a section of the Ladies' Night Adoration. I taught Religion in middle school for twelve years. I have also been the administrator for a number of rural parishes for the past fifteen years and, finally, founder of a private lay association, the Fraternity of Christ the Priest and of Saint Mary Queen (Fraternidad de Cristo Sacerdote y Santa María Reina). From this fraternity came the Missionaries of the Fraternity of Christ the Priest and of Saint Mary Queen, a public clerical association (editor's note: like the Community of Saint Martin) which is also in formation. It is located in Toledo and I have been its superior since 2009.


2) What is your experience of the extraordinary form of the Roman rite and of the place held by the Motu proprio Summorum Pontificum in your life as a priest?

Father Manuel: Given my age--I was born in 1962--I have no memory of the traditional Mass in my childhood, not to mention my youth or later. The first time I ever attended a celebration of holy Mass according to what is now called the extraordinary form was after the year 2000. It was only from 2004-2005 that I got to know the traditional liturgy, during my visits to the monastery of Le Barroux. And in 2007 I was also able to discover the international seminary of the Institute of Christ the King, in Gricigliano, and Cardinal Cañizares who was conferring priestly ordinations there at the time. In fact, it was only after 2007, when the Motu Proprio Summorum Pontificum was published, that I began regularly celebrating the extraordinary form. In October of that year, during an unforgettable audience, Cardinal Castrillón Hoyos, president of the Ecclesia Dei commission, encouraged us.

Today the extraordinary form is a characteristic of our community and is acknowledged as such in our statutes.

My experience has been very positive and, in certain respects, even exciting. I have travelled along the path of discovery of this marvelous treasure that had been hidden from us in the company of my community's brothers as well as with my parishioners. For the older ones it was a rediscovery; for the younger ones, a total novelty. In my various parishes I have never encountered the slightest aversion or resistance against the traditional Mass. This may surprise some people, but it is so. My faithful and I, together, have lived in our own flesh the experience mentioned in the Gospel of the father, a householder, "who bringeth forth out of his treasure new things and old" (Mt 13:52). For us this father was His Holiness Benedict XVI, who opened up to us this marvelous treasure, old yet always renewed, that is the Church's 2000-year-old liturgy, an authentic monument of faith and piety.

In my priestly life it has meant an enrichment at all levels: in doctrine, prayer, identification with Christ priest and victim, etc. And also in so many other aspects I need not get in to today. I'll take this opportunity to point out an error. Some people acknowledge that the traditional liturgy can enrich the priest who celebrates it, but deem it to be detrimental to the faithful on the grounds that it would impoverish them spiritually by markedly decreasing or even preventing their participation and understanding of the liturgy. I must humbly say that this does not correspond to my own experience, quite to the contrary.

The celebration of the traditional liturgy compels the priest to give greater pastoral attention to the faithful, in the sense of devoting more time and energy to their doctrinal and spiritual formation. This permanent formation rests on teaching the true meaning of "actuosa participatio": the interior disposition to uniting oneself to Christ the Victim through the priest as the intermediary who, as minister of Christ and the Church, renews and offers the Holy Sacrifice. It also rests on the greater care with which one forms one's faithful liturgically and mystagogically. What right or basis do we have to underestimate the laity's capacity to participate in the Church's twice-millennial liturgy worthily and fruitfully? There are laymen with little education from simple backgrounds who could tell a thing or two to any number of those who think themselves learned. These are laymen who have never set foot in a school of theology yet who know by heart the content of the faith and who live out the Eucharistic mystery incredibly deeply and in profound union with Christ the Priest. They draw from their participation in the Holy Sacrifice the force and the inspiration to offer themselves up in turn, in their daily life, as living hosts, holy and agreeable to God.

Today, thank God, the faithful can read and follow the texts of the Holy Mass in their missal. They thus associate themselves more perfectly to the Prayers of the Holy Liturgy. This demands a greater concentration and attention than among those who rest content with listening.

Behind many of the objections to the Motu Proprio, one finds more ideology than legitimate reasons.


3) In the introduction to your book, you justify your work by the lack of knowledge regarding the Motu Proprio among Spanish priests and, to an even greater degree, laymen. So you are not surprised by the result of the Ipsos survey that Paix Liturgique commissioned just before the WYD, which indicates that 69.5% of Spanish practicing Catholics had never heard of it?

Father Manuel: I am not surprised at all. As a matter of fact I find that the result seems to fall short of the reality. I am convinced that the overwhelming majority of the faithful has never heard of the Motu Proprio. And that those who have heard something of it, including priests, do not know its content. There is little to be read about it. The idea that predominates, which is totally distorted, is that the Pope has authorized the Latin mass for Bishop Lefebvre's followers, period. Many are those who spread this equivocation with a view to soft-pedaling the Pope's teaching and to minimizing the importance of the Motu Proprio which, by the way, has force of law for the universal Church and which, as such, dictates authentic rights and duties to be respected by all.

Unfortunately, many people satisfy themselves with the sensational headlines that certain media offer and which distort the reality and truth of the report's content.


4) So your book--and its form as well as its content bear this out--principally seeks to make the text of the Motu Proprio and the Pope's desire in liturgy better known. What reception did it have in Spain?

Father Manuel: I've tried to do my best. The reception among those whom the book could reach has been very good, even though our means were limited. I self-published the book and, beyond my personal contacts, the book did not elicit much response besides a few sites on the internet.

For this type of subject you cannot count on Catholic publishers. They are not interested, it doesn't fit in with their editorial line . . . . Think only that when Bishop Schneider's fabulous book, Dominus Est--which is said to have been so pleasing to the Holy Father--was offered to different Spanish editors for minimal copyrights, none was willing to publish it. I don't know how that would go today . . . . And I am here speaking of Catholic publishers, some of whom are reputed to be "conservative". There again, ideology prevails. It's as though they wanted people not to know too much, not to think for themselves, and to bow to the dominant way of thinking. As sad as it is, it is so. Benedict XVI has often denounced the dictatorship of relativism. Well, one could just as well, I suppose, say that there is a dictatorship of single thought that is present and very powerful in certain circles.

Why do some people show so much fear at the idea that people might know, experience, and decide for themselves? Hasn't there been, for many years, a much-proclaimed notion that the laity are now adults? Couldn't we let the faithful decide, and stop throwing spanners into the Holy Father's decisions?


5) In your chapter 9,you insist on the necessary unity of local churches with Rome. Only one Spanish prelate, Bishop Ureña Pastor, has celebrated the extraordinary form in his diocese yet. Can one hope that other bishops will soon follow his example?

Father Manuel: To date, two other Spanish bishops seem also to have actually celebrated the extraordinary form, although this took place in near-secrecy: during WYD. No announcement, no reports. Nearly the only ones who attended were those who were sure to do so as they belonged to groups linked to the extraordinary form. I do not know whose responsibility this situation was, but I won't allow myself to believe that this was done in bad faith.

I don't imagine that other bishops will soon celebrate the traditional Mass in their dioceses, especially since there does not exist any significant demand on the part of the faithful, the religious, or priests. Yet many priests acknowledge that they dare neither learn nor celebrate it out of fear of uncomprehending criticism. In Spain, we are at the Nicodemus stage: we learn to celebrate secretly . . . .

There is no arguing against facts. And the facts tell us that it is up to the most determined and convinced laymen and priests to move things along. I do not know the Holy Father's innermost thoughts, but it seems that with the Motu Proprio the Pope has freed the argument from bishops' arbitrary decisions. These last years Rome has consistently insisted on the "right of the faithful" to participate in the traditional liturgy, not on the right of the bishops to authorize it or not. The highest liturgical authority is the Pope. It is Benedict XVI who promulgated the Motu Proprio and seized the occasion to recall that the traditional Mass was never officially forbidden. This leads me to think that wherever it was in effect forbidden, this was in defiance of the law.

Local churches are called to live in affective and effective communion with the Mother Church of Rome. This communion is expressed and manifested in an excellent way through the liturgy. Without a doubt, in every diocese, the bishop is the supreme responsible person for the liturgy, an office he must fulfill in perfect communion and harmony with the Apostolic See. This is precisely why the Motu Proprio in no way diminishes the bishops' authority.

Another monumental outrage consists in claiming that the coexistence of different liturgical forms jeopardizes ecclesial communion. This argumentation is easily refuted both from an historical point of view and from concrete reality. It is enough to consider the richness of the diverse Oriental and Latin rites. Who can seriously claim that such diversity jeopardizes the unity of the Church? On the contrary, the unity of the Church is under attack when truths of the Faith are denied, when the Magisterium is questioned, when the Vicar of Christ is disobeyed or whenever someone appropriates the liturgy for himself as though it belonged to him, "making it up" for himself outside of the Church's laws.

There are also some bishops who explain that in reality there isn't a sufficient number of the faithful requesting celebration in the extraordinary form. This sometimes happens to be true, at least in Spain. It is also true, however, that one cannot ask for what one does not know. Now, today, many are those who are unaware of the very existence of the extraordinary form and, for that reason, cannot freely express an opinion.


6) Getting back to the Ipsos survey conducted for Paix Liturgique: what do you think of the figure of 50.4% of practicing Catholics who declare themselves ready to attend the extraordinary form at least monthly if it were celebrated in their parish, without taking the place of the ordinary form?

Father Manuel: It does not surprise me per se. I even believe that the actual percentage of attendance might be higher, as I have noticed that wherever the extraordinary form is celebrated--after forty years!--the faithful are filled with wonder and ask to be able to attend again. They do not understand how such a treasure can remain hidden behind a bolted door. And I am speaking of laymen of all ages. It is very strange to see how much children like the extraordinary form. The traditional Mass is especially attractive to altar servers; likewise to young people who are particularly sensitive and disposed to beauty, the sense of mystery, adoration and contemplative silence.

I must also say that a preliminary formation and a veritable liturgical catechesis are required to rediscover all the symbolic, doctrinal, and spiritual wealth of this liturgy. The faithful are delighted by it.


7) Any last comments?

Father Manuel: I'd like to thank Paix Liturgique for this interview. As its name indicates, it seeks to attain liturgical peace and, above all, peace among hearts, which is the fruit of justice. And it is a work of justice to respect the rights of the faithful and to give the traditional liturgy its rightful place! This is how our dearly beloved Pope, Benedict XVI, puts it in the letter accompanying the Motu Proprio Summorum Pontificum: "What earlier generations held as sacred, remains sacred and great for us too, and it cannot be all of a sudden entirely forbidden or even considered harmful. It behooves all of us to preserve the riches which have developed in the Church’s faith and prayer, and to give them their proper place."


To obtain the book (in its original Spanish version), you can send an email to: santamariarenet@hotmail.com or call at: 0034 619 011 226.