Anniversary of Summorum Pontificum. Wherein Fr. Z Rants.

Fr Zed remembers the issuance of Summorum Pontificum 16 years ago today and muses on the permanent changes it has made to the Church.

From Fr Z's Blog

Today, the Feast of the Exaltation of the Cross, is also the anniversary of the 2007 Summorum Pontificum going into effect.  This Motu Proprio – the Emancipation Proclamation for the faithful who desire the Vetus Ordo – was a keystone in Pope Benedict XVI’s program – I think it was a meditated program – for the renewal of Catholic identity and the life of the Church.

We are our rites.

Ratzinger/Benedict knew that the artificially cobbled up and brutally imposed post-Conciliar Novus Ordo interrupted the sacred worship of the Church without which we cannot fulfill the virtue of Religion.

If the virtue of Religion is absent, disorders in the Church will result.  Change the way we pray and the way we believe and live will, over time, change.

Since the Eucharist – that is, the Sacrament Itself and its celebration which is Holy Mass – is the “source and summit” of our Catholic identity and life, change the Mass and you cause massive waves in the Church.  Do it in a discordant way and with an artificial replacement, and the results will follow suit, as we have seen for some 50 years.

The imposition of the Novus Ordo did not only interrupt the Church’s life, it interrupted the organic development of liturgical worship, the kind that is necessary and prudent for a Church still in this vale of tears.

Correctives were and are – now more than ever before – necessary.

I think the idea of Eucharistic Congresses, etc., is great and necessary.  However, there will always be something missing if the Vetus Ordo is not also celebrated.

Hence, even after its seeming suppression Summorum Pontificum was and is still of monumental importance for the life of the Church today.

This is because, from 2007 until the attempts to crush the faithful who want the Vetus Ordo began in earnest, many thousands of committed Catholics learned of this way of prayer from our forebears.  Also, the internet and entrepreneurial ventures put all the tools people needed into their hands swiftly and economically.

In the 80’s and 90’s it was near impossible to find a Missale Romanum or information about what to do.  Now… this is no longer a problem.  It’s a wholly new landscape, and not one entirely controlled by modernists.

There will be more acts of persecution wrapped in weasel words and the faux-pastoral clucking and lisping about unity.

We must get through them with charity and our jaws set against the next pastoral uppercut.   And we can see more and more the vicious determination of powerful figures to cut down in the Church the people who want the Traditional Latin Mass.

Pressing and widespread problems plague the Church right now.  Hence it is hard to square the fury they’re applying to what they call a tiny fraction of the world’s Catholics.  It proves that the Vetus Ordo is of key importance.  They must feel threatened by something of which the Mass is for them a terrifying reminder

Stay strong and resolved and cheerful even as those who should be aiding you turn on you or, in cowardice, buckle.   What we needed to do before, we need to keep doing now.  Be the first in parishes to volunteer, especially involving works of mercy.  Make sure you know well your Faith and that you are not static, but in motion forward, always reviewing and learning more.  Show your joy in being Catholic and traditional.  Be inviting to others.

Never underestimate the power of an invitation.

All this to honor and to exalt the Cross.

Thank you, Benedict XVI, for such a great gift to the Church.