18 February 2011

Summorum pontificum

Well, there's no reason why anyone should be interested in Anglican opinions. But, for what it's worth, I have enthusiastically signed that petition. I am not an integralist but a gradualist; little moves in the right direction are, to my simple mind, a good thing; little moves in the wrong direction are a bad thing.

But I have to say - sorry if this is a breaking of ranks - I would find it hard to condemn (exempli gratia) a clarification which gave the Archbishop of Milan control over the Ambrosian Rite. The Ambrosian Rite is not the Roman Rite. The Bishop of Rome has the right to say what the rite of his Church is; so does the Successor of S Ambrose. Even if the b****r gets it wrong.

I would be a trifle less categorical about (exempli gratia) the Dominican Rite. It is, after all, but a dialect of the Roman Rite. On the other hand, S Pius V gave those older dialects of his rite exemption from papal legislation; perhaps they are morally entitled to keep that autonomy. Dunno.

I am perplexed, as one who takes the long view, about the suggestion that bishops might not have an inherent right to confer orders according to the old pontifical. There would be a quaint irony if those 'liberal' bishops all over the world who have been concerting with each other the expression to Rome of their 'concerns' about SP turned out to have achieved ... a restriction upon episcopal independence of action! Additionally, the Pontifical was the last book of the Latin Rite to be rendered uniform. Until well after the invention of printing, bishops were using manuscript ponrtificals inherited from their predecessors which differed quite considerably from each other. Where is the necessity for uniformity?

By coincidence, I had already prepared, and timed to begin on Monday, a series on the post-conciliar Rite for the Consecration of Bishops. I had a go at the Rite of Deaconing a little while ago.

It's all Go, isn't it?

8 comments:

Rubricarius said...

John,

Although you are a valued friend I believe you are profoundly wrong to have supported this petition.
P.

The Liturgical Pimpernel said...

Come now Rubricarius, explain your reasons for saying Fr Hunwicke is wrong, get a petition of your own going and show us all how many support your stance. Patricius would sign.

William Tighe said...

Yes, and it would be a petition against the pope and papacy as the cause of all liturgical evil in the Catholic Church. What is that but "no popery" galvanized into a weird simulacrum of life? On the other hand, it ought to find a lot of quasi-kensitite subscribers.

Anonymous said...

Rubricarius, I once, ONCE, addressed a priest of my acquaintance by his Baptismal name alone - over his dinner table and in front of fellow guests. Never again been tempted, I can assure you.

As I recall, I was about your age at the time...

To everyone else, I heartily commend the petition.

Rubricarius said...

William Tighe,

I take you as seriously as the Bobby Sands' appreciatian society.

Get real!

Joshua said...

Rubricarius, I too feel that your comments need explanation - for what is gratuitously asserted can be as gratuitously rejected.

I tend to agree with Dr Tighe as to the relative sanity of the actual and the potential petitions; for which I adduce the remarkable similarity between the 1962 and earlier editions of the Roman Missal, saving the unfortunate Holy Week modifications and the deletion of certain feasts (unfortunate, but hardly sufficient to radically alter the liturgy).

Stating that Summorum Pontificum was unfortunate, in that it regulated what custom still permitted (tell that to most priests and bishops, who only grudgingly acknowledge even S.P., and give not a fig for any "preconciliar" custom), and moreover made the 1962 liturgical books the standard, while these themselves were products of the ongoing liturgical changes (true to a point, but still the '62 is substantially the same as the first printed edition of the Missal of the Roman Curia, issued almost a century before Trent), is an understandable but I think an unproductive position to take.

I am afraid that the sort of extreme anti-'62 sentiment manifested by that poor young Patricius (as mentioned above) betrays a strange lack of proper perspective (writing as one resident in a remote island, who would be very glad indeed even to have a Reform of the Reform style Mass, let alone the '62, available regularly).

Joshua said...

Oh, and Rubricarius, seeing as you once lambasted another priest for his misspellings, I notice that you showed scant respect for Dr Tighe above (have you a Ph.D.? a professorship?), and in process managed to misspell a fairly common word: it may be time to apply to yourself the judgements you issue regarding others.

Why are Traddies so very uncharitable and ill-mannered?

Fr John Hunwicke said...

Rubricarius: with respect, I believe that you are profoundly wrong in your belief that the Novus Ordo is better than 1962. I have many faults to find in 1962, but I cannot even begin to understand how it can be so diabolical to treat it as the the beginning of a recovery of the old Tradition. NO is committee-liturgy and that, for me, is IT.