[ Emphasis and {commentary} in red type by Abyssum ]

Clearly it is not flour from his own mill, the speech that Pope Francis delivered on August 25 to participants in the annual week of the Italian Center of Liturgical Action. A speech rich in historical references, in scholarly citations with their respective footnotes, on a subject that he has never mastered.

In it, however, it is easy to grasp the silences and words that faithfully reflect his thought.

What made the most news was this solemn declaration of his in regard to the liturgical reform begun by Vatican Council II:

“We can affirm with certainty and with magisterial authority that the liturgical reform is irreversible.”

Most interpreted the declaration as a halt ordered by Pope Francis to the presumed reverse course signaled by Benedict XVI with the 2007 motu proprio “Summorum Pontificum,” which restored full citizenship to the preconciliar form of the Mass in the Roman rite, allowing it to be celebrated freely as an “extraordinary” second form of the same rite.

And in effect, in the long speech delivered by Pope Francis there are abundant citations of Pius X, Pius XII, and Paul VI. But for Benedict XVI, a tremendous scholar of the liturgy, there is not so much as a nod. Much less for his motu proprio, in spite of the fact that this summer marks its tenth anniversary.

Also very marginal is the reference to the massive degenerations into which the postconciliar liturgical reform has unfortunately fallen, fleetingly denounced as “partial receptions and practices that disfigure it.”  {e.g. the tango Mass he celebrated in Buenos Aires with a couple dancing the tango in the sanctuary during the Mass,  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HIaI666yUYg }

Total silence also on Cardinal Robert Sarah, prefect of the congregation for divine worship, and above all on his sabotaged battles for a “reform of the reform” that would restore to the Latin liturgy its authentic nature.

What follows is precisely the counterstatement on the state of the liturgy in the Church that Cardinal Sarah published this summer, shortly before the speech from Pope Francis. A counterstatement centered on none other than Benedict XVI and the motu proprio “Summorum Pontificum.”

The complete text of it can be read, in French, in the July-August issue of the Catholic monthly “La Nef”:

> Pour une réconciliation liturgique

An extract from it is reproduced below.

In it, the cardinal enunciates a highly noteworthy future objective: a unified Roman rite that would incorporate the best of the two rites, preconciliar and postconciliar.

There is no lack, naturally, of references to issues to which Sarah is particularly attentive: silence and prayer addressed “ad orientem.”

But there is also a setting aside of the formula “reform of the reform,” rejected by Pope Francis himself and turned useless. In its place, Cardinal Sarah prefers to speak of “liturgical reconciliation,” in the sense of a liturgy “reconciled with itself, with its profound being.”

A liturgy able, indeed, to embrace the “two forms of the same rite” authorized by Pope Benedict, in “mutual enrichment.”

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FOR A LITURGICAL RECONCILIATION

by Robert Sarah

“The liturgy of the Church has been for me the central activity of my life, it has become the center of my theological work,” affirms Benedict XVI. His homilies will remain incomparable documents for generations. But it is also necessary to emphasize the great importance of the motu proprio “Summorum Pontificum.” Far from concerning only the juridical question of the status of the old Roman missal, the motu proprio raises the question of the very essence of the liturgy and of its place in the Church.

What is at stake is the place of God, the primacy of God. As the “pope of the liturgy” emphasizes: “The true renewal of the liturgy is the fundamental condition for the renewal of the Church”: The motu proprio is a capital magisterial document on the profound meaning of the liturgy, and consequently of the whole life of the Church. Ten years after its publication, it is necessary to take stock: have we put these teachings into practice? Have we understood it in depth?

I am deeply convinced that we have not yet finished discovering all the practical implications of this teaching. I would like to draw forth some of its consequences here.

TOWARD A NEW COMMON RITE

Since there is profound continuity and unity between the two forms of the Roman rite, the two forms must necessarily illuminate and enrich each other. It is urgent that, with the help of the Holy Spirit, we examine in prayer and in study how to return to a reformed common rite, always for the sake of reconciliation within the Church.

It would be nice if those who use the ancient missal would observe the essential criteria of the Council’s constitution on the sacred liturgy. It is indispensable that these celebrations integrate a correct conception of the “participatio actuosa” of the faithful present (SC 30). The proclamation of the readings must be understandable for the people (SC 36). So also, the faithful must be able to respond to the celebrant and not content themselves with being extraneous and mute spectators (SC 48). Finally, the Council appeals for a noble simplicity in the ceremonial, without useless repetitions (SC 50).

It will be up to the pontifical commission “Ecclesia Dei” to proceed in this manner with prudence and in an organic form. It may be hoped, where it is possible and if the communities ask for it, that the liturgical calendars may be harmonized. The ways toward a convergence of the lectionaries will have to be studied.

THE PRIMACY OF GOD

The two liturgical forms are part of the same “lex orandi.” What is this fundamental law of the liturgy? Permit me to cite Pope Benedict again: “The misinterpretation of the liturgical reform that was long propagated in the heart of the Catholic Church has led ever more to putting in first place the aspect of instruction, and that of our activity and creativity. The ‘doing’ of man has almost provoked the forgetting of the presence of God. The Church’s existence takes life from the correct celebration of the liturgy. The Church is in danger when the primacy of God no longer appears in the liturgy, and as a result in life. The deepest cause of the crisis that has shaken the Church is found in the obscuring of the priority of God in the liturgy.”

{ What is the Liturgy?  The Liturgy is the complexes of sacred signs instituted by God or by His Church which both signify and convey sacramental grace. }

Here then is what the ordinary form must rediscover first of all: the primacy of God.

Allow me humbly to express my fear: the liturgy of the ordinary form could make us run the risk of distancing ourselves from God on account of the massive and central presence of the priest. He is constantly in front of his microphone and without interruption has his gaze and attention turned toward the people. He is like an opaque screen between God and man. So when we celebrate the Mass, we always place a big cross on the altar, a cross in plain sight, as a point of reference for all, for the priest as for the faithful. Thus we have our Orient, because ultimately the Christian Orient is the Crucifix, as Benedict XVI says.

“AD ORIENTEM”

I am convinced that the liturgy can be enriched with the sacred attitudes that characterize the extraordinary form, all those actions that manifest our adoration of the Holy Eucharist: keeping the hands together after the consecration, genuflecting before the elevation or after the “Per ipsum,” receiving communion while kneeling, receiving communion on the tongue and allowing oneself to be fed like a child, as God himself says to us: “I am the Lord your God. Open your mouth and I will fill it” (Psalm 81:11).

“When the gaze upon God is not decisive, everything else loses its orientation,” Benedict XVI tells us. The opposite is also true: when one loses the orientation of the heart and body toward God, one ceases to determine oneself in relation with him, one literally loses the sense of the liturgy. Orienting oneself toward God is first of all an interior reality, a conversion of our soul toward the one God. The liturgy must effect within us this conversion toward the Lord who is the Way, the Truth, the Life. For this it uses signs, simple means. Celebration “ad orientem” is one of these. It is a treasure of the Christian people that permits us to keep the spirit of the liturgy alive. The oriented celebration must not become the expression of a partisan and polemical attitude. It must on the contrary remain the expression of the most intimate and most essential movement of every liturgy: turning ourselves toward the Lord who comes.

LITURGICAL SILENCE

I have had the occasion to emphasize the importance of liturgical silence. In his book “The spirit of the liturgy,” Cardinal Ratzinger wrote: “Anyone who experiences a community united in the silent prayer of the Canon knows that this represents an authentic silence. Here the silence is at the same time a powerful, penetrating cry lifted up to God, and a communion of prayer filled by the Spirit.” In his time, he had forcefully affirmed that the recitation of the whole Eucharistic prayer out loud was not the only means to obtain the participation of all. { The worst example of lack of silence occurs when a priest sings the whole Canon,  It then becomes a musical performance by the priest } We must work for a balanced solution and open spaces of silence in this field.

THE TRUE “REFORM OF THE REFORM”

I appeal with my whole heart for the enactment of the liturgical reconciliation taught by Pope Benedict, in the pastoral spirit of Pope Francis! The liturgy must never become the standard of a party. For some, the expression “reform of the reform” has become a synonym for the dominion of one party over another, so this expression risks becoming inopportune. I therefore prefer to speak of liturgical reconciliation. In the Church, the Christian has no enemies!

As Cardinal Ratzinger wrote, “we must rediscover the sense of the sacred, the courage to distinguish that which is Christian from that which is not; not in order to raise barricades, but to transform, to be truly dynamic.” Rather than a “reform of the reform,” this is a matter of a reform of hearts! This is a matter of a reconciliation of the two forms of the same rite, of a mutual enrichment. The liturgy must always be reconciled with itself, with its profound being!

Illuminated by the teaching of the motu proprio of Benedict XVI, strengthened by the audacity of Pope Francis, it is time to come to grips with this process of the reconciliation of the liturgy with itself. What a magnificent sign it would be if we could, in a forthcoming edition of the reformed Roman missal, insert in an appendix the prayers at the foot of the altar of the extraordinary form, perhaps in a simplified and adapted version, and the prayers of the offertory that contain such a beautiful epiclesis that completes the Roman Canon. It would finally be manifest that the two liturgical forms illuminate each other, in continuity and without opposition!

(English translation by Matthew Sherry, Ballwin, Missouri, U.S.A.)

*

In this month of August, Pope Francis has found himself facing opposition on two of the best-known points of his preaching. And opposition in an unusual form: because the critiques have not come from inside the Church, but from outside, from authoritative voices of secular opinion; and also because he has never been explicitly named in the controversy, although it is evident that the criticisms were aimed against him as well.

*

The first point concerns the phenomenon of migration. In recent days, a ruling from the Italian judiciary and an appeal signed by a certain number of intellectuals of the far left have compared the reception centers for immigrants sailing from Libya for Italy to “concentration camps,” and the rejection of their indiscriminate admittance to a “mass extermination” analogous to that of the Jews on the part of the Nazis.

These comparisons are not new. Frequent recourse has been made in recent times to words like “lager,” “extermination,” “holocaust” to denounce the treatment reserved for immigrants by those who do not want to accommodate them without reservation.

But this time, in conjunction with the joint decision of the Italian government and the Libyan authorities to put the brakes on the shipments of migrants carried out until now by criminal organizations at the expense of many lives, and in conjunction with the resolute support for this decision from the president of the Italian episcopal conference, Cardinal Gualtiero Bassetti, the aberrant association of the “non-welcome” of immigrants with the extermination of the Jews has not passed by in silence, but has generated a healthy flare-up of criticisms.

Properly speaking, none of the critics has mentioned Pope Francis by name. But he too not long ago had referred to as “concentration camps” the camps for receiving immigrants in Greece and Italy.

He did so in a homily given on April 22 at the Roman basilica of St. Bartholomew on the Tiber Island, during a ceremony commemorating the “new martyrs” of the 20th and 21st centuries.

And this sally of his reinforced even more the standard storyline on Pope Francis when it comes to immigration: as a pope of unlimited welcome for all, always and at all costs.

Because it is true that Francis, in this regard, has also occasionally said the opposite. For example, during one of his inflight press conferences, on the way back from Sweden last November 1, he praised the “prudence” of leaders who put limits on accommodation, because “there is not room for all.”

Just as it is true that Cardinal Bassetti spoke with the prearranged approval of the pope – who had himself just come from a private meeting with Italian prime minister Paolo Gentiloni – when last August 10 he supported the hard line of the government of Rome against “those who exploit the phenomenon of migration in an inhumane manner” by organizing crossings from Libya to Italy.

But the fact remains that these correctives have not made a dent in the image of Francis that has been built up in the media, as a champion of indiscriminate accommodation. And one may wonder if this is the work of the media alone or his as well, considering the overwhelming preponderance of his appeals for welcome full stop, compared with the paltry number of his commendations of “prudence” in governing the phenomenon of migration.

*

The second point of the preaching of Pope Jorge Mario Bergoglio that has ended up under fire from criticism has to do with his overall political vision, hostile both to globalization, in which he sees the perverse effects prevailing, and to free market policies, which he has often branded as “economy that kills.”

In an editorial in “Corriere della Sera” of July 26, no less an economist of internationally recognized authority than Francesco Giavazzi, a professor at Bocconi University in Milan and at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, identified precisely these two hostilities as the root of the current wave of populism: which are on the right when the origins of the malaise are identified in globalization (Donald Trump in the United States, Geert Wilders in Holland, Marine Le Pen in France…) and on the left when instead the malaise is traced back to free market policies (Syryza in Greece, Podemos in Spain, Bernie Sanders in the United States…).

The “perfect storm” of recent years – in Giavazzi’s view – is that both the populism on the right and that on the left have joined together in a shared “rejection of the élite,” meaning both the political and economic institutions.

Giavazzi has not written so, but this rejection is the same one that vitalizes the overall political vision of Pope Francis, enunciated above all in those “manifestos” of his which are the speeches he has given to the “popular movements.” A rejection that he also systematically extends against the ecclesiastical establishment.

A rejection that, however, has no future, according to Giavazzi. Because both the populists on the right and those on the left “have in common a lack of staying power, a short-term view that, when it works well, limits itself to putting problems off until tomorrow, which simply makes them more acute.” And he cites the example of the “revolt against the free market policies implemented in Argentina during the Menem presidency during the 1990’s, which brought Peronism back into power.”

He did not name Bergoglio, but he too is implicated here. Who knows if he has taken note.

*

It can be added that in recent days, after the terrorist attack in Barcelona, Pope Francis has been criticized for a third reason: for his refusal to speak of the Islamic roots of this terrorism, which for the umpteenth time he has reduced to a simple act of “blind violence.”

In this case, however, the criticisms have been explicitly aimed against him, by name. Just as had been done before, for opposite reasons and from the opposite side, against Benedict XVI, who in the memorable lecture in Regensburg had identified and denounced the roots of violence inherent in Islam. And they made him pay dearly for it.

(English translation by Matthew Sherry, Ballwin, Missouri, U.S.A.)

*

“The writing is very good and fully explicates the meaning of chapter VIII. . . There are no other interpretations.” With these words Pope Francis, in a letter dated September 5 of last year, approved a note from the bishops of the region of Buenos Aires who in interpreting the postsynodal apostolic exhortation “Amoris Laetitia” admitted the possibility of Eucharistic communion for the divorced and remarried who continue to cohabit “more uxorio.”

But this was a matter of a private letter to an Argentine monsignor employed in the secretariat of that group of bishops. And even the note approved by the pope was not initially intended for publication and does not bear the names of the signers. Too little and too poorly done to clarify in a definitive way the authentic meaning – that is, attributable with certainty to its author – of “Amoris Laetitia.”

An attempt has been made in recent days by the theologian closest to the pope, the Argentine Víctor Manuel Fernández, to settle this question, with the tepid assistance of “L’Osservatore Romano.” But without success.

And it could not have been otherwise. Because the confusion is at the origin. It is within the very text of “Amoris Laetitia,” which never says fully, in a clear and incontrovertible way, what Pope Francis limits himself to hinting at.

The passage that gets closest to it is in paragraph 305:

“Because of forms of conditioning and mitigating factors, it is possible that in an objective situation of sin –which may not be subjectively culpable, or fully such – a person can be living in God’s grace, can love and can also grow in the life of grace and charity, while receiving the Church’s help to this end.”

And in the connected footnote 351:

“In certain cases, this can include the help of the sacraments. Hence, ‘I want to remind priests that the confessional must not be a torture chamber, but rather an encounter with the Lord’s mercy” (Apostolic Exhortation Evangelii Gaudium [24 November 2013], 44: AAS 105 [2013], 1038). I would also point out that the Eucharist ‘is not a prize for the perfect, but a powerful medicine and nourishment for the weak’ (ibid., 47: 1039).”

As is very well known, Francis has been asked in various forms and a number of times to bring clarity on such a confused and bungled text. In particular on the part of four cardinals, to whom the pope did not want to give a response or even grant an audience.

But here comes Fernández to sermonize that the letter to the bishops of Buenos Aires is enough and then some for those who “want to know how the pope himself interprets what he has written.”

And to those who object that a letter of that sort is too little, Fernández makes his rebuttal by dusting off a precedent concerning the interpretation of Vatican Council I, when Pius IX, in 1875, clarified a controversial point by endorsing a letter from the bishops of Germany to chancellor Bismarck.

“If the pope has received a unique charism in the Church at the service of the correct interpretation of the Word of God,” Fernández writes peremptorily, “this cannot rule out his capacity to interpret the documents that he himself has written.” It does not matter how and when he does so, the important thing is that it should be known that the “war” against him is over.

“What is left after the storm:” this is the title that the pope’s trusted theologian decided to give to the essay that he published in the latest issue of “Medellín,” the theology journal of the Latin American Episcopal Council, in the run-up to Francis’s journey to Colombia in September and to Chile and Peru next January:

> El capítulo VIII de “Amoris Laetitia”: lo que queda después de la tormenta

Since the author of the article is not only very close to Jorge Mario Bergoglio but also the de facto architect of much of “Amoris Laetitia,” to such an extent that it contains entire sections of articles of his from a decade or so ago, this statement of his was immediately interpreted as inspired by the pope himself.

Whose intention would have been to clarify once and for all – through Fernández as his chosen spokesman – two things above all.

The first is that the interpretation of the Argentine bishops is also his, and is the right one.

The second is that if Francis preferred to make way for communion for the divorced and remarried not in the body of “Amoris Laetitia” but only in skimpy footnotes, it is because he wanted to do so “in a discreet manner,” because he does not consider this the center of the document, but rather the capitals “dedicated to love.”

But the question remains: what level of authority can be attributed to an article like the one that appears in the journal “Medellín,” signed by a theologian universally considered less than mediocre?

An attempt was made to raise it to a higher level, at the Vatican, with two consecutive steps: one before and one after the publication of the article.

Even before Fernández’s article came out, in fact, both the note from the bishops of the region of Buenos Aires and the letter from Francis to their “delegate” Sergio Alfredo Fenoy had been promoted on the official website that presents the entire collection of papal writings and discourses:

> “Querido hermano…”

While after the release of the article it was “L’Osservatore Romano,” the newspaper of the Holy See, that covered the story on August 22, and above all declared that “when the eighth chapter of ‘Amoris Laetitia’ is interpreted, particularly in reference to access to Eucharistic communion on the part of the divorced who find themselves in a new union,” this must be done precisely as stated in the article by Fernández in “Medellín.” Meaning this :

“It is worth starting from the very interpretation that Francis himself did of his own text, categorical in his response to the Bishops of the region of Buenos Aires. Francis proposed a step forward, which implies a change in the current discipline. Maintaining the distinction between objective good and subjective guilt, and the principle that absolute moral standards do not concede exceptions, differentiates between norms and their formulation and specifically calls for distinctive attention to mitigating constraints. These are not related only with the knowledge of the norm but especially with the real possibilities of decision on the part of the subjects in their concrete reality.”

Both of these passages, however, seem anything but decisive.

First of all, the insertion of the letter from Francis to the Argentine bishops into the collection of proceedings of the pontificate says nothing about its level of authority, because this collection is extremely diverse and includes, for example, his spontaneous chats on every flight back from his journeys.

In the second place, there is a strikingly tepid hesitation in the way “L’Osservatore Romano” covered Fernández’s pretentious article. On page six, without any blurb on the front page, and with a headline that doesn’t give any idea of its contents:

> Il discernimento pastorale. Nell’ultimo numero di “Medellín”, la rivista di teologia del Celam, dedicato al magistero del Papa

And that’s not all. The citation by “L’Osservatore,” instead of coming from the actual article by Fernández, is taken from its “Summary,” and reproduces the first half of it.

In short, there remains the original sin of the confused and botched composition of “Amoris Laetitia,” and especially of its eighth chapter. But evidently that’s the way Francis likes it.

(English translation by Matthew Sherry, Ballwin, Missouri, U.S.A.)