On the St. Peter’s Mass Suppression Stunt Viewed From the Left

They may have their knickers in a twist over the CDF ban on blessing same-sex unions, but they're overjoyed that the TLM is now banned in St Peter's.

From Fr Z's Blog

People are still talking about the decision to suppress priests’ individual Masses in St. Peter’s Basilica to force everyone into uniformity.

I wrote HERE and HERE.  Card. Burke HERE

At Fishwrap, Christopher White – big surprise here – mischaracterized my main point about the suppression, cherry picking one bit:

Traditionalists such as Fr. John Zuhlsdorf disagree, arguing that the Novus Ordo Masses in St. Peter’s that priests are encouraged to now join or concelebrate will have lectors and cantors that incorporate laypeople and women, reforms of the liturgy that they continue to oppose.

The fact that the forced concelebrated Masses will have – look at how he wrote this – “lectors and cantors that incorporate laypeople and women” – weird – means that everything is going to be in Italian.  So if you are a priest on pilgrimage from, say, Korea or India, you are pretty much hosed, being forced to deal with the Italian.  So much for the full, conscious and active participation of the non-Italian faithful, too.  When individuals priests would come from the sacristy to find an altar, many of the pilgrims had at least a fighting change of finding a priest who was celebrating the Novus Ordo in a language they knew or who were celebrating in Latin, which favors no one except Roman Catholics… it is the language of the Roman Church, after all.

And I don’t know that traditionalists object to lay cantors: most every schola cantorum is made up of lay people, even though there is a strong argument to be made that they ought to be clerics.   I know I don’t have a problem with a lay schola.   Lectors… that’s another matter.  Most of the Novus Ordo crew fall into the trap of thinking that the readings are didactic moments, whereas the well-formed traditionalists understand that also the readings are raised to God as an oblation.   They should be read by the priest, for sure.  But even traditionalists in some places will have a cleric or lay man, read the readings in the vernacular as Father reads them in Latin at the altar.  It is done.  Some trads don’t favor that, but it is done.

Anyway, the real point is that this horrible suppression violates the freedom of both priests and laity, seeks to impose unnecessary uniformity, denies the priests and people of a unique experience and memory.  It’s just plain bad.

I dismiss the cliché-ridden defenses offered in Fishwrap by Fr. Mark Francis and Fr. John Baldovin, with his attack on Benedict XVI, out of hand.   Pfffft.

Lastly, I like the tone of my friend Fr. de Souza’s reaction to this debacle.  He uses an interesting term which he coined, aptly.  HERE