The latest document from the DDF, Gestis verbisque, is a breath of fresh air. It addresses a pressing situation long in need of papal attention, stretching back decades, and does so with some uncharacteristic clarity. After Traditionis custodes was issued many in the Church wondered if Pope Francis would clamp down with equal force on liturgical abuses in general or if he really just wanted to suppress the old Mass and to leave it at that. Well, here you go.
I recently interviewed Bishop James Conley of Lincoln, Nebraska; both of us took note of the fact that the so-called “reform of the reform” of the liturgy seems to have lost its steam and is need of reinvigoration. Left unsaid was the fact that this slowing down of the reform has happened primarily under this papacy; Pope Francis has not indicated a deep desire for the Church to do much of anything with the liturgy and he seems happy with the status quo.
It has always seemed to me that liturgy has never been of much interest to Pope Francis. I believe that even Traditionis Custodes was not so much about liturgy as it was about combatting the theological currents that often attended the groups that promoted it. And I still think that is true.
The problem of clericalism
The cynic in me did wonder initially if Gestis is not merely an empty gesture toward the conservative wing of the Church in an effort to demonstrate the “orthodox” credentials of the DDF following the Fiducia fiasco. But I choose not to look a gift horse in the mouth. I trust the sincerity of the document based on the fact that its contents seem well thought out and in no way display a cursory examination of the topic that bespeaks a superficial exercise in virtue signaling. In short, I think Pope Francis is neither a liturgical traditionalist nor an advocate for liturgical experimentation in a free-wheeling style. It seems to me that this document represents the sobriety of a pope who is a bit of a liturgical minimalist who has little regard for more “high church” forms of liturgy but who also has no patience for the avant-garde liturgical abuses of the “low church” folks.
Therefore, I take the new DDF text at face value and as such I think it signals in a most welcome way an important new initiative on the part of Pope Francis to reform the liturgy by at least reining in the worst of the liturgical abuses. And the worst of those abuses involve the very validity of the sacraments. The document makes the point with some bluntness that the sacraments are not valid unless they strictly adhere to their proper matter and form which are of divine origin. More on that in a bit.
First, I think it important to identify a theme that, to me, is probably nearer and dearer to this Pope’s heart than liturgical abuses as such. And that is the issue of clericalism. The key to seeing the fingerprints of this pope’s theology in Gestis is its emphasis upon liturgical abuse as a manipulative form of clericalism. In his introduction to the document Cardinal Fernandez emphasizes that priests are not “proprietari della Chiesa” (“The owners of the Church”). He further emphasizes that, “il Capo della Chiesa, e dunque il vero presidente della celebrazione, è solo Cristo” (“The head of the Church, and therefore the true president of the celebration, is Christ alone”). Too few priests from the progressive wing of the Church seem to understand how deeply clericalistic it is for them to change the Church’s liturgy on their own initiative. As Gestis verbisque makes clear, the faithful have a right to the Church’s liturgy and should not have to endure the ad hoc constructions of priestly innovators. It is very clear on this point, which I think reflects in a direct and unfiltered way the deep concerns of this pope over the distorting effects of clericalism.
So, despite the fact that this point seems like a no-brainer to most of us, it is important that the DDF has chosen to highlight the issue of clericalism as a key component in liturgical abuse. Because there are still many priests, and not a few bishops, who seem to have not gotten the memo and who still treat the sacraments as proprietary possessions that they alone control. The affirmation, made clear in Gestis, that the Church’s authority over the sacraments ends with their matter and form which, as Cardinal Fernandez reminds us, are of divine origin, is of utmost importance.
Some historical context
Many Catholics are probably blissfully unaware of the fact that two or more generations of priests in the post-conciliar era were formed by a progressive theology of the sacraments that viewed them humanistically and globally as pure constructs of the mythopoetic imagination of human beings alone. Therefore, in this view, Catholic “worship” is simply one iteration among many other religious constructions of “worship rituals”. The entire topic was dealt with on a sociological level, which was itself a kind of theological statement that the sacraments are not of direct divine origin in their matter and form, and that these things gradually evolved historically in tune with the cultural conditions of the times.
This led to a deep reduction of the matter and form of the sacraments to their contextualized cultural matrix, which in turn formed the theological justification for all manner of liturgical “experiments” in order to make the sacraments “relevant” to our own times. Catholics need to understand that these abuses did not happen out of the mere whim and arbitrariness of Father Skippy Longstockings, but had decidedly theological roots–roots shared by many bishops who turned a blind eye to the abuses on the very grounds that these kinds of “experiments” were precisely the fruit of the Spirit working to contextualize liturgy for modern Catholics. Those of us who objected to these abuses were declared to be opposed to the Holy Spirit.
There was, in that era, a liturgical reign of terror in many dioceses, with full episcopal encouragement. I think this is hard to comprehend for those who did not live through it. It was painful, demoralizing, and infuriating. It inflicted a wound on the souls of faithful Catholics. It was a wound that was made deeper and more gangrenous in its longevity owing to the fact that the reign of terror more often than not had its roots in the episcopacy itself.
This was the era often referred to as the post-conciliar “silly season”. But, as a friend of mine who teaches Scripture in a seminary told me, the designation of those times as a “silly season” belittles the grave evil of what was happening. This was no mere silliness, but a deep apostasy expressing itself in sacraments now celebrated as mere human constructs devoid of supernatural verticality.
This is why those who often express impatience with scholarly theology and who seek a return to a “simple Catholicism” of Denzinger and devotions need a healthy dose of reality. This is the Church we are talking about and the Church is a divine–i.e. theological–reality. Therefore, bad theology has consequences for an institution grounded in a supernatural claim and the antidote to this sickness is not to ignore theology altogether as a misbegotten enterprise for pinheads, but to do better theology.
Tradition, abuse, and validity
Gestis verbisque gives us a better theology. The text takes note of the fact that for some sacraments their matter and form clearly comes directly from the Lord Jesus, but that for others there is no clear direct linkage to Jesus (#15-16). This linkage happens over time as the Church’s Tradition evolves in its understanding of the matter and form for some sacraments. The sacrament of Confession comes to mind in this regard. Nevertheless—and this is key—Gestis does not then conclude that the Church has the power to change the matter and form of these sacraments. Rather, it affirms that the Holy Spirit was present in the tradition, guiding it to this understanding; therefore, this tradition is normative and binding on the Church for all time. In other words, Gestis acknowledges that the tradition can give us access to forms of Divine Revelation that go beyond what is explicit in Scripture.
This is key because the notion that some sacraments “evolved” is precisely the point, noted above, that progressive post-conciliar theologians used to justify sacramental plasticity. And it is this point that Gestis verbisque is calling out and explicitly rejecting. (As a side note, which is not entirely unrelated to the topic at hand: one wonders if this same notion of a binding tradition is going to be enforced with equal fervor in matters pertaining to moral theology?)
But now we come to an issue of even graver importance. Namely, that liturgical abuses can become so severe that they render a sacrament invalid. Cardinal Fernandez notes in his introduction that the proximate provocation that occasioned the need for this document was the many reports submitted by bishops to the DDF of invalid baptismal formulas being used. This was especially egregious with regard to priests who had been invalidly baptized with formulas such as “We baptize you…” or “I baptize you in the name of the Creator, the Redeemer and the Sanctifier…”. This, in turn, made the priest’s ordination invalid—and all of the subsequent Masses he said or Confessions he heard invalid. This would further mean that the invalidity of a single baptism for a single priest had downstream effects in the Church that are beyond measurement. It would be like trying to gather up all of the feathers of a pillow caught up into a hurricane.
When we consider that these kinds of invalid baptisms were happening with an alarming frequency, what opens up before us is quite simply the stuff of ecclesial nightmares. But invalidity is not confined to the realm of baptisms and confirmations alone. It also includes abuses in the Eucharistic liturgy that are so severe as to render Masses invalid. This only deepens the nightmare and, if anything, Gestis verbisque understates the scope of the problem by limiting itself to the formal complaints the DDF has received in just the past few years. But these complaints are clearly the tip of an iceberg that has been free-floating in the ecclesial shipping lanes for around sixty years now.
There is also the fact, mentioned in the document (#27), that there has been a misunderstanding of liturgical rubrics as constituting a mere “etiquette” to be loosely followed rather than a deeper spiritual “discipline” oriented toward the full participation of the faithful that must be followed with devotion. This deepens our understanding of the crisis, for even beyond the potentially millions of faithful being given invalid sacraments, there is the far more pervasive reality of the thwarting and blunting of the movement of efficacious grace by priests whose liturgical shenanigans create obstacles to the full appropriation of the liturgy by the faithful.
Such priests–who are far too many even today—treat the rubrics as the constricting ligatures of Victorian parlor room prudery, and who treat those rubrics as in need of transgressive comeuppance in the name of some vague “Spirit” of “freedom”. In so treating the liturgy as representative of a stodgy status quo that they need to transgress in the name of an abstract “people”, they make themselves into the liturgical equivalent of adolescent urban taggers who spray paint their own graffiti over architectural beauty, thus obscuring it with a defacing ugliness that distracts. And the ugliness is the point, because beauty is elitist and classist and hegemonically racist—or something.
My seminary professor friend, mentioned above, wondered if we cannot therefore see the chaos and crisis in the Church of the past sixty years as directly related to the loss, caused by all of the liturgical abuses, of the sanctifying grace that the sacraments bring. This is a profound insight and something that is greatly overlooked. If we really believe what we say we believe about the necessity and importance of the sacraments in the entire economy of salvation, then the loss of the graces associated with those sacraments cannot be without real effects in the life of the Church.
As many a saint and theologian have pointed out, the real life of the Church resides precisely in the many ways that the graces of the sacraments penetrate into her members, thereby creating saints who alone are the true source of any reform or renewal.
A crisis of abuse and a crisis of sanctity
The crisis the Church currently finds herself in is precisely a crisis of sanctity, as in, a crisis in both a dismissive disregard for the validity and/or efficaciousness of the sacraments, as well as a disbelief in the truly transformative power of grace. Both of these things taken together argue for a Church engaged in the dumbing down–indeed the numbing down–of the universal call to holiness as the one and only true goal of every Catholic. It is at least worth pondering if all of the liturgical aberrations of the past decades have not led directly to the collapse of the very notion of sacramental grace and the sanctity it engenders. Indeed, to the collapse of the presence of grace as such. Perhaps sacramental grace can best be viewed as St. Paul’s “katechon” (2 Thess 2:6-7) which, now removed, opens the doors to the spirit of the antichrist.
What is therefore lacking in Gestis verbisque is precisely a more explicit linking together of liturgical abuse with the generalized falling away from the faith of millions, as well as more specific crises such as clerical sexual abuse. I do not mean here that liturgical abuses create “scandals” in a superficial sense that drive some souls away from the Church in exasperation. I mean that the deficit in sacramental graces created by liturgical abuses needs a more specific theological treatment from Rome as a direct cause of the spiritual malaise that grips the Church, the symptoms of which are everywhere.
The only “reform” of the Church is the reform brought by the saints. And a focus on changing “structures” while ignoring this deeper reform is a sign of a bureaucratic and functionalized Church that no longer believes in her own message.
Gestis verbisque is an excellent document. But will Rome now connect the dots between the crisis of liturgical abuse and all the other crises that currently afflict the Church?
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This is very encouraging, especially coming from Dr. Larry Chapp, but about Cardinal Fernandez, does a leopard change its spots?…But we ALSO read: “As a side note, which is not entirely unrelated to the topic at hand: one wonders if this same notion of a binding tradition is going to be enforced with equal fervor in matters pertaining to moral theology?”
About sacramental theology (the current Gestis Verbisque) ALONGSIDE moral theology (Amoris Laetitia’s Chapter 8 and fn. 351, and now the predictable Fiducia Supplicans), instead of a reset, are we being groomed into a world of parallel universes? In the domain of moral theology are the theologians still overreaching and displacing the Deposit of Faith with speculative theologies?
YES, what has been divinely self-disclosed is never exhaustively understood, true, but as our finite understanding expands and deepens, the REVELATION is still definitive enough and, therefore, cannot “walk together” into self-contradiction (the 4th-century Vincent of Lerins, the 19th-century John Henry Newman, and even the artful 20th-century von Balthasar).
So, what about the WEDGE being driven between natural law and “pastoral” accompaniment/ accommodation, as clearly warned against by the Council’s Catechism—and by the sidelined Veritatis Splendor (VS) which explicitly incorporates (!) moral absolutes into the Magisterium? As in: “This is the first time, in fact, that the MAGISTERIUM of the Church [caps added] has set forth in detail the fundamental elements of this [‘moral’] teaching, and presented the principles for the pastoral discernment necessary in practical and cultural situations…” (VS, n. 115).
With all of its very welcome and overdue merit, with Gestis verbisque are we seeing a new trend toward fidelity and clear guardianship of the living Deposit of Faith? OR simply the second shoe falling in a half-clericalist and oscillating Vatican power struggle?
One swallow does not a summer make.
Larry Larry Larry, KISS
Keep it short and simple. This isn’t a college theology class, just normal everyday readers trying to know the Truth.
Thank you very much
Samuel
Why shouldn’t CWR readers be able to read at a college level and to understand theology? Serious question.
Sounds like the DDF is throwing us a bone in Gestis, but who knows. Best to not try too hard to explain it away.
Yo, Samuel, your comment is indented under my entry…
Yours truly never attended Catholic schools, neither K-8, nor in high school, nor my too many years at the university level. (By some research findings, this seeming deprivation might actually explain why I’m Catholic!)
So, no pretense here at conducting a “college theology class,” but functionally literate and still learning as I go…
Amen!
My Amen! Was a reply to Samuel.
If we accept the possibility that millions of Catholics had invalid baptisms, and that their subsequent sacraments were thus invalid, how do we do anything other than call for the wholesale re baptism of all Catholics done the right way. I’m not joking. I was born in 1970, during the “silly season” which was very alive in my diocese. I dont know if my baptism was valid. I wonder if thats behind some of my struggles despite regular practice of daily prayer, daily Mass, and frequent confession. Do we need a “Year of Baptismal Coherence”? It would be a pain to rebaptize everyone but its doable.
A conditional baptism would render verification of the original baptismal formula unneccessary.
How would one today know of their Baptism was valid? Is a Baptism given by a proponent of Liberation Theology valid?
video recording of invalid words
Which makes the more interesting question: how does one know that their baptism was valid?
How many priests inventing new liturgy do we need before it’s safer to just get a conditional Baptism in the absence of evidence? There’s kind of a lot of people without recordings of their Baptisms.
Good point.
Tens of thousands could be consigned to Hell through no fault of their own because of invalis sacraments.
I agree that this is a welcome document, but sadly, the major liturgical abuse is still in play, and it was instituted by this papacy: that “conscience” has nothing at all in common with what John Paul II said, but was entirely inside a person’s head (ANY person, including those with no formation). This has an effect on the sacraments of Penance and Communion. Someone who is divorced can stroll up for communion while the family he or she abandoned sits in the pews. It is considered “bad taste” to refuse communion to those living in habitual sin (while NO ONE can judge the occasional sinner, and we do not know if he or she went to confession and vowed to sin no more, it’s another story when it involves someone in a sinful RELATIONSHIP, including homosexual ones (this happens in my church every week) e which continues. It is a scandal because they are PUBLICLY proclaiming that they have no intention of changing their ways).
I have read several documents from Rome that were not publicly released on the reasoning behind the idea that a person himself or herself can decide what to confess. Even if unformed, their “conscience” is supposed to be their guide. Even if the priest in the confessional informs them of the teachings of the church, so what? They still get to decide.
THAT is another REAL sacramental abuse.
As always, a tremendously thoughtful and instructive article from Dr. Chapp. Perhaps someone can address a question I have: since “baptism by desire” can occur for those who truly desire it but have no access, what about those who presented themselves for that sacrament or another with sincere desire for the true sacrament and had no knowledge that it was not going to be performed in a legitimate way?
Professor Chapp’s analysis of the recent DDF document is on-point, as is the document itself. That said, will that document be enforced? Paul VI was famous for promulgating texts, which ended up dead on arrival (here one can think of Humanae Vitae).
Having been a seminarian during the worst of the liturgical lunacy (no, “silliness” is not an appropriate descriptor), I can attest to the damage done then, with its ripple effects still being felt through that generation of priests still among us.
One final point: IT has been my considered opinion that it was precisely due to the liturgical outrages of that era that interest in the Usus Antiquior got its sea-legs.
With respect, Fr., your opinion about sea-legs has absolutely no evidence behind it – and your usual “post hoc ergo propter hoc” or “one can’t disprove a negative” shouldn’t work for such a stretch of a claim.
The interest in the Vetus Ordo (or whatever y’all choose to call it now) is what it was for Ottaviani et al., for Agatha Christie and her fellows (cf. the recent book), for von Hildebrand (Senior) and his cultivated crew, and for so many more as they examined the actual history of the liturgy and its documents: the N.O. was what Gamber and Ratzinger called it, and the TLM was truly “traditional” because it was – as even Fortesque admitted to his chagrin – what was in effectively *all* the ancient sacramentaries and Ordines.
I mean, come on: NLM has shown this for the Ordinarium Missae, for the Orations, and for the Calendar. What more do we – or you – need?
Well, maybe I do get it: some folks have a very hard time saying, “Mea [maxima] culpa” – “I missed the boat on this!”
Of course, the same could be said of the author of this article: all this electronic ink and it was really resolved in the intelligent critiques of the Europeans in the late 1960s. They saw the ill-effects of the liturgical play-thing and prophesied exactly what would come about.
BRAVO.
That era? There are outrages in the past 3 years with Masses being interspersed with a woman or offered on a raft or bicycle. I am a product of that “era” in the 2000s. When confronted with Pope John Paul II’s Redemptionis Sacramentum, the priests, with the backing of the bishop of the diocese from Vatican II onward was more concerned with donations than following that instruction. Lunacy season hasn’t ended.
The Usus Antiquior got its sea legs because Pope Benedict XVI realized that you can’t reason with the unreasonable. One can justify everything with the “Spirit of Vatican II” including blessing homosexual couples.
YES.
“The cynic in me did wonder initially if Gestis is not merely an empty gesture toward the conservative wing of the Church in an effort to demonstrate the “orthodox” credentials of the DDF following the Fiducia fiasco. But I choose not to look a gift horse in the mouth. I trust the sincerity of the document…”
If this were the first year of this papacy I might be tempted to trust the sincerity of this document myself, but not now. We have had almost eleven years of, for example, saying something very pro-life, which is then followed by appointing some very pro-abortionists to Vatican commissions.
” I think it signals in a most welcome way an important new initiative on the part of Pope Francis to reform the liturgy by at least reining in the worst of the liturgical abuses.”
Reining in liturgical abuses will require more than a document. Let us see if any individual liturgical abusers are actually disciplined.
This document says nothing really new – this has always been Church teaching. The Vatican II document on the liturgy says that no one, not even a priest can add, subtract, or change anything in the liturgy on his own authority. For over fifty years we have seen how effective that document has been on reining in liturgical abusers.
Chapp believes the document could represent “an important new initiative on the part of Pope Francis to reform the liturgy by at least reining in the worst of the liturgical abuses”
The very idea makes me wonder what evidence supports that belief! I suppose it could be true IFF Chapp has inside info that Francis plans to depose himself. Maybe Chapp here prophecies a miraculous papal conversion which nevertheless does defy all natural forms of knowledge, experience, and logic.
Just a comment on comments regarding invalid sacraments, which directly pertains to the ‘excellence’ of predictable Gestis verbisque. A terrifying possibility for some [although if true it is terrifying if it were not possible to rectify?] that one’s baptism may have been invalid. Should we be rebaptized and technically recorded? No. God will provide.
Why do I have confidence that he would, and did? Because God is not a legalist, he’s our infinitely good savior. There were quite likely a multitude of unbelieving, non caring, malevolent, incompetent, personalist, just plain slipshod priests through the 2000 years since we had the sacrament of baptism. Presently, how would any of us know, with absolute, apodictic certitude that ours wasn’t valid simply due to human error? Or worse as alluded to? Have faith in God’s goodness.
Thank you for having written this. I was born in the early ‘50s, so I have no fear that my baptism and confirmation are invalid, but allow me to put forth a hypothetical: Mr. X commits a mortal sin, comes to his senses, confesses, is given a penance and absolution, says his penance, and a day or two later dies. Later, it’s discovered that the priest who absolved him was invalidly baptized, thus invalidly ordained, and therefore in no position to grant absolution (to say nothing of the dozens of marriage ceremonies he’s performed). Is Mr. X now suffering eternal damnation because his sin was invalidly absolved by a man whose priesthood is technically invalid? Are all those couples he married living in a state of fornication? I’m no theologian, but to answer “yes” to either of the foregoing questions seems to turn the loving Father into a monster from a Jansenistic nightmare. (Believe me: I believe that in any Church ceremony, the priest should “read the black, do the red,” and not wing it according to mood, but there *is* such a thing as legalism.)
Well said Ken. And yes. The rites are formed to be exacting to prevent error of meaning. Clergy must be as exacting in conferring the sacraments. And the reason why if error is suggested or detected we’re indebted to make correction.
You are quite right, Fr. Peter.
Fr. M:
I agree 1000%.
Frankly, to think otherwise seems nothing except a vote of confidence in pure, unadulterated clericalism.
As I cancel my registration to this site, I wish to lament how conspirational it is. This tendency to look for «hiding aims and causes» treats the life of the Church as another political issue, the same as Marx and Lenin. It might be just a projection of the blogger or writer’s lack of transparency because appropriating the ability attributed to God to read inside others’ hearts is just sheer narcissism on the writer’s part. The dialectic approach of the new document on liturgical deviations is well represented in the new document of Cardinal Fernández as it uncovers the fundamental nature of such distortions as a not-so-obvious manifestation of clericalism, and its clarity in so doing surprises you because you are doubtful about whatever Francis might do: You are, by default, a critic of his ways, because your theology is tainted with ideology, extreme ideological distortions. You seem to mistrust the dogmatic affirmation of the assistance of the Holy Spirit to the Pope in matters of doctrinal definitions and magisterial teachings. It was promised according to Tradition and the Word; therefore, a rigid Catholic like you must always have difficulty trusting, believing, and understanding, as St. Augustine did. His proclamation, «It is not the Bible, but my lack of understanding,» should be like the golden rule for you. Doubting and surrendering is the right way to hope, leading to faith. Pretending to know without doubt seems, instead, evidence of a narcissistic, ideological way of discerning the truth. The problem is not relativism. The real arrogant attitude is the capricious willingness to remain imprisoned in it, for relativism is the place of doubt and thus of surrendering to the truth unconditionally. I joined this site with high hopes and trusting it was created in good faith. I am saddened by the fact that it seems inspired by radical mistrust.
Some thoughts here from a peasant in the back bleachers…Consider the possibility that you have completely misread Chapp’s analysis.
That he actually compliments Fernandez in this instance for clarifying and calling out past sacramental abuses, decidedly not endorsing them….From speed-reader Bjorn370 we read: “You seem to mistrust the dogmatic affirmation of the assistance of the Holy Spirit to the Pope in matters of doctrinal definitions and magisterial teachings.”
On the possible implication of private revelations (!) under one pope or another, are we suddenly to believe that the Holy Spirit indwelling the Church licenses any pope to positively (?) invent novel truths, or exemptions from truths?
OR, instead, as the guardian of the Deposit of the Faith, in deepening our understanding is the vicar of Christ negatively protected from promulgating contradicting errors when he formally teaches? In the definition of papal infallibility, the Church defines this latter meaning and avoids the former (as an open door to gnostic ideology):
“The Roman Pontiff when he speaks ex cathedra [not press interviews on airplanes, or dangling footnotes!], that is, when exercising the office of pastor and teacher of all Christians, he defines with his supreme authority a doctrine concerning faith or morals [only these] to be held by the universal Church, through the divine assistance promised to him in St. Peter, is possessed of that infallibility with which the divine Redeemer willed [all of] his Church to be endowed in defining [not obscuring or confusing] doctrine concerning faith and morals [both together rather than separated; see Veritatis Splendor, n. 115, my entry above]: and therefore such definitions [not any merely enabling verbosity] of the Roman Pontiff are irreformable of themselves (and not from the consent of the Church)” (Vatican I). [And, even less replaceable by any consent/consensus from a synodal/”inverted-pyramid” church].
A bit dramatic.
“My seminary professor friend, mentioned above, wondered if we cannot therefore see the chaos and crisis in the Church of the past sixty years as directly related to the loss, caused by all of the liturgical abuses, of the sanctifying grace that the sacraments bring.” Welcome to club Ottoviani!
It is exactly the graces of the rite codified by Pope St. Gregory the Great, added to throughout the ages, and purified of Protestantism by the Council of Trent that are not found in the Missal of Pope Paul VI that I am after for my own sake and that of my children. Pope Paul VI’s missal doesn’t ask for much–if you don’t ask, you don’t receive.
Having left the NO some five years ago, if God wills, I shall NEVER return. Neither a sedevacantist nor attendee of SSPX service, I consider myself blessed and blessed beyond blessing.
Chapp may deride traditionalism, love of Aquinas’ scholasticism, and the Usus Antiquior as a useless fossil. He may hope and believe that hell is empty, so what matter is the form of worship so long as one does some catholic work in one’s lifetime?
Pity that some people know not what they do not know. Pray God touch us and bless us, sinful fools that we are.
“Gestis verbisque is an excellent document. But will Rome now connect the dots between the crisis of liturgical abuse and all the other crises that currently afflict the Church?”
Here is a suggestion for connecting the dots:
The Developing View: From Liturgy to Solidarity
In the beginning of the first document promulgated by the Second Vatican Council on Dec. 4, 1963, The Constitution on the Sacred Liturgy, we read:
“For the liturgy, through which the work of our redemption is accomplished, (1) most of all in the divine sacrifice of the eucharist, is the outstanding means whereby the faithful may express in their lives, and manifest to others, the mystery of Christ and the real nature of the true Church.”
At the end of the last document promulgated by the Council on Dec. 7, 1965, The Pastoral Constitution on the Church in the Modern World, we read:
“Christians cannot yearn for anything more ardently than to serve the men of the modern world with mounting generosity and success. Therefore, by holding faithfully to the Gospel and benefiting from its resources, by joining with every man who loves and practices justice, Christians have shouldered a gigantic task for Fullment in this world, a task concerning which they must give a reckoning to Him who will judge every man on the last of days.”
The Council seems to suggest that we take seriously the scripture passages:
“Therefore if thou bring thy gift to the altar and there rememberest that thy brother hath aught against thee, leave there thy gift before the altar, and go thy way. First be reconciled to thy brother, and then come and offer thy gift.” Matthew 5:23-24
“Believe me, woman, the hour is coming when you will worship the Father neither on this mountain nor in Jerusalem.” John 4:21
“Let me have no more of your stumming on harps. But let justice flow like water, and integrity like an unfailing stream.” Amos 5:23-24
The Catholic Bishops of the U.S.A. made a mistake in calling for a Eucharistic Revival. They should have called first for a Synodal Church.
We should emphasize social justice over liturgy; and a Synodal church over a Eucharistic revival?
Do you ask the last question or does the question reflect your thought and firm idea? I don’t understand what you are saying. Can you explain more?
Justifiable mistrust, my dear Bjorn.
I think that one thing we would have to acknowledge is that none of this was a problem when the Mass and the sacraments were in Latin.
It is extremely odd that the “ddf” (which might, at this decadent stage, be aptly called the “demoted dicastery of the faith), should find time in its very busy schedule of dismantling the faith, to make it’s personal opinion known about liturgical matters.
One might ask that the “presiding official” of the ddf, referring to him by his royal-court-title “Eminence” Fernandez, that given the fact that he doesn’t teach ir profess “the Catholic faith handed down to us by the apostles,” why we should in turn care one iota about his opinions about “the liturgy.”
But in one regrettable sense, it is understandable, that in the decadent bureaucracy administered by “The Pontiff of the McCarrick Establishment,” the erstwhile author of “inconvenient-theological-porno” would feel unconstrained in “gracing” the Church with his opinions in anything.
And to think, despite the effluvia emanating from the Buenos Aries carnival, that some contemporary Catholic theologians insist that there is no such thing as Purgatory?
I happen to be a victim. of this sort of abuse. My upbringing was Southern Baptist and at the age of 14 was “baptized” in that denomination. The teaching I had was spotty due to intermittent Sunday school attendance which ceased during high school .Later during collage I took instructions in the Catholic faith. Monsignor “C” who instructed me one on one asked if if I had been properly baptized. I honestly told him that I was not really sure. He quite properly asked another priest who had once been Baptist about this.The fellow assured him that it most certainly was and so it went. Later after encountering various aggressive (or just curious ) protestants I seriously began to study more and decided that Baptists don’t really baptize. They get around the obviously abundant references to it in the Bible by claiming that is merely one giving his “testimony”. Accordingly I asked our otherwise conservative priest if I could be properly baptized. He was furous and told me not to bring it up again and not to mention it to other clergy.At a loss as to what to do, I mentioned it to a friend who advised me to see one of the two traditionalist preists in the diose who were not separatist but in union with Rome and offering TLM with the bishop’s permission. Father “D” was elderly,near retirement and living alone. He received me very kindly and we talked about it during three sessions but he seemed to always beat around the bush. I decided that he was very lonely welcomed company and thought that I was an interesting specimen but did not take me seriously. by Making a trip to the library to photocopy from a book”WHY I AM A Baptist”.I showed him a few pages from Baptist theologians,evangelists,Denominational conference leaders,and seminary heads They all spoke of baptismal regeneraion as an “abomination””,heredical”,”diabolic” and many similar such comments. Shocked and horrifided,Father “d” coditionally baptized me.
“Gestis verbisque is an excellent document.”
With all due respect, whether or not “Gestis verbisque is an excellent document”, is a non sequitur, because according to Jorge Bergoglio, “If there is a union of a private nature, there is neither a third party, nor is society affected”.
It is important to note:
“Accordingly, the Catechism teaches that the Holy Spirit does his work in and to us through the Sacraments, which are themselves “actions of the Holy Spirit at work in his Body, the Church.”15 Also, “This gift of grace through the action of the Holy Spirit implies a participation in the very life of God—the life of the …May 14, 2019”
– The Holy Spirit’s Dynamic Role in the Mystery of the Eucharist
This is what Jorge Bergoglio said,
prior to his election as pope, on page 117 of his book, On Heaven And Earth, demonstrating that he does not hold, keep, or teach The Catholic Faith, and he continues to act accordingly:
“If there is a union of a private nature, there is neither a third party, nor is society affected. Now, if the union is given the category of marriage, there could be children affected. Every person needs a male father and a female mother that can help shape their identity.”- Jorge Bergoglio, denying The Sanctity of the marital act within The Sacrament of Holy Matrimony, and the fact that God, The Most Holy And Undivided Blessed Trinity, Through The Unity Of The Holy Ghost, Is The Author Of Love, Of Life, And Of Marriage, while denying sin done in private is sin.
“For the Holy Spirit was not promised to the successors of Peter that by His revelation they might make known new doctrine, but that by His assistance they might inviolably keep and faithfully expound the Revelation, the Deposit of Faith, delivered through the Apostles. ”
It is precisely because Jorge Bergoglio, Cardinal Fernandez, and a multitude of other Baptized Catholics, deny The Unity Of The Holy Ghost, and our Call To Be Temples Of The Holy Ghost, that we can know through both Faith and Reason that the “separatist” are apostates from the Catholic Faith, they are certainly not those who remain in communion with Christ, Through The Unity Of The Holy Ghost (Filioque).
No doubt, a denial of The Unity Of The Holy Ghost, will lead to a denial of The Divinity Of The Most Holy And Undivided Blessed Trinity, thus it is foolish of Jorge Bergoglio to even suggest that The Mass Of The Ages is “The Perfect Storm”, that led to all the various abuses that have occurred in Christ’s Church. I am old enough to know, that when The Trident Mass changed to the vernacular, they did not just change the language, they changed the whole Liturgy. In particular to the matter and form of “ The Sacrament Most Holy, The Sacrament Divine”, and Jorge Bergoglio stands in contradiction to every previous Pope in this regard, and in regards to all The Sacraments, because The Sacraments, including The Sacrament Of Holy Matrimony, serve as a confirmation of The Sanctity of all Human Life.
“Canon 188 §4 states that among the actions which automatically (ipso facto) cause any cleric to lose his office, even without any declaration on the part of a superior, is that of “defect[ing] publicly from the Catholic faith” (” A fide catholica publice defecerit“).
Charitable Anathema
Let us take another example besides my own experience. Back in JP2’s reign I read an article in a conservative Catholic publication that the Holy Father said all Mormon converts had to be baptized. Not “rebaptized” mind you or conditionally baptized but baptized period. He pointed out that the Mormon idea of the Godhead is completely different from ours so the church could not accept their notion of baptism. I had to wonder why this obvious necessity had to go all the way to Rome to settle. It is astonishing that so many clergy should be indifferent to the proper forms of the sacraments and also ignorant of the facts about the other religions around them that can create problems about administering those sacraments to converts. That our Holy Father Pope Francis should even have to write Gestis verbisque about something so basic is beyond me. The cases mentioned in this post and my previous one did not occur in his pontificate but still are ongoing. The entire focus the Vicar Of Christ has had during the past eleven years has been on mercy and the sacraments are all important to having it. Thank you Pope Francis.