The Latin Right
June 16, 2008, 8:24 pm
Posted by Paul Moses
Pope Benedict XVI would like every Catholic parish in the world to offer the Tridentine Mass. Parishes would offer catechism classes to train Catholics to worship at the Tridentine Mass every Sunday, and help them to understand the theology behind this ritual. But the pope is not looking to return to the past. In fact, those who think the pope is trying to roll back the reforms of Vatican II are ignorant.
This, according to Cardinal Dario Castrillon Hoyos at a news conference in London that Catholic News Service reported on.
I would like to know more about what is being said here about Vatican II. Was there in fact a new openness to freedom in the rites?
The New Liturgical Movement blog has posted the complete text of the Cardinal’s remarks here:
http://thenewliturgicalmovement.blogspot.com/2008/06/full-text-of-cardinal-castrillon-hoyos.html
One of the interesting points that the Cardinal made was to reiterate that Pope Benedict sees the “Extraordinary Form” of the Roman Rite as open to continued development. He cites the decision of the Pope to alter the Good Friday prayer for the Jewish people as an example. Similarly, the Pope envisions that in most cases the readings should be read in the vernacular (although Hoyos did not mention the Pope’s suggestion in Summorum Pontificum that those celebrating the Extraordinary Form make use of the Lectionary used in the Ordinary Form). I think this is a fairly clear message to those who want to embed the 1962 missal in amber.
Cardinal Hoyos also stressed that Holy Days of Obligation should be observed according to the current calendar. One of the challenges created by wider use of the Extraordinary Form is the potential to have communities within the Church operating on different calendars. Whether this norm with respect to Holy Days of Obligation is sufficient to preserve a sense of “temporal” unity within the Church is obviously a matter for further discussion. I would add that if Benedict is serious about every parish celebrating at least one mass in the Extraordinary Form, the prospect of “temporal” disunity created by the competing calendars could become a serious issue indeed.
The current problem is that we do not have a sufficient number of priests to ensure Sunday Mass in every parish, let alone in both Latin and English. The projected priest-retirements in my diocese indicate that in 5 years time there will be only 65% of the current numbers. That takes no account of untimely deaths, debilitating illness or personal resignations. And 5 years is not long enough to train and ordain a priest. We have had no ordinands for some 3 years now, although some Anglican clergy have been received into full communion and now officiate.
My own parish priest is a man in his mid fifties. It is upon his agegroup that the extra work will fall. He has already had a breakdown, and cannot be asked to undertake much more. His education was very basic, he had to undergo “top-up” education before going to seminary, and Latin is not going to be his strong point. Indeed, Latin has slipped a long way; many who insert a Latin tag into a blog comment make elementary slips in the Latin they think they remember.
In practical effect, it will make little difference to the majority of Catholics whether they stay away from Mass in Latin or Mass in English.
The Motu Proprio and the new ICEL translations are a slap in the face to Paul VI, who created Ratzinger a cardinal.
These are two of the many ways in which he is creating division in the Church.
Also very divisive are Benedict’s political gestures. Many Catholics, including curial Cardinasl, were distressed to see Presidents Silvio Berlusconi and George Bush paying him fulsome homage being received by him as specially honoured guests.
Both men have reason to be grateful to the Pope. Berlusconi would not be President except for the two-year papal campaign against Romano Prodi’s government. In a shockingly partisan speech to the Italian bishops Benedict has hailed a new day in Italian politics marked by closer cooperation between Church and State. Nor would Bush be President if Cardinal Ratzinger had not intervened at his request in the 2004 election by urging bishops to crack down on pro-abortion politicians. At love-fests in the White House and the Vatican the Pope has embraced Bush as a champion of moral values, with no criticism of his policies on war, torture and capital punishment.
The character of the Pope’s thinking was always evident to those who watched his career as Prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith. In that powerful role, he devoted himself to reversing Vatican II, by undercutting the authority of episcopal conferences, suppressing liberation theology, shafting the careers of hundreds of theologians, working for a restoration of the preconciliar liturgy, copperfastening the exclusion of women from ordained ministry, and curbing ecumenical and interreligious dialogue.
The results of these policies are plain to see. The Church now has a voiceless episcopate dominated by Rome, and eclipsed by vibrant lay movements promoted by Rome, all of a right-wing stamp. The Church’s social teaching has become reduced to jeremiads about an alleged ‘culture of death’ or ‘dictatorship of relativism.’ Catholic theology and catechesis have lost the broad biblical vision of Vatican II, leaving the faithful in the lurch when questions arise. The liturgy is dead, since creative renewal and inculturation have been discouraged. The ‘vocations crisis’ goes on and on, while priests remain demoralized. The mental atmosphere of Catholicism is that of a sectarian ghetto, unable to open its windows in dialogue with the wisdom of Anglicans, Jews, Buddhists or the secular world.
In the short run, it is hard to see a reversal of these trends. Barack Obama, too liberal on abortion, may lose the election due to church opposition. In Europe the traditions of the Enlightenment face a war of attrition from a resurgent Christendom. The depleted Church will continue to fossilize. As Cardinal Martini recently commented: ‘I used to have dreams for the Church… Now, I can only pray for it.’
But those who remember Vatican II are counting on long term prospects, and on some surprise of the Spirit that will lift our Church out of the doldrums.
Yes, and there are rumblings that the Pope is being pressed to name Mary co-redemptrix, too.
How do we know that the pope didn’t say, “Well, it would be nice if the Latin mass were offered in every parish. And world peace would be nice too. And if everyone in the Christian family acknowledged the supremacy of the pope.”
I’m sure he’d like it. And I’m sure he knows he’s not going to get it, given the priest shortage, etc.
The whole thing strikes me as, well, overblown.
This is why we lawyers like to cross examine witnesses.
Fr. O Leary,
Seriously, dude, get a grip. You sound like you’re off your meds.
I don’t have hard evidence that Joseph O’Leary’s remarks are accurate, but they do seem to ring true. As for catechizing each parish in the wonders of the Latin Rite, what can one say? As my late mother-in-law would say, ” Are they nuts?” In the U. S., at least, the laity’s knowledge of the Bible, of the meaning of the sacramental rites, and of the theology of redemption, is hardly robust. Now we’re told that each parish, with its meager resources, ought to focus considerable energies on the glories of the Tridentine rite. I guess if Rome is determined to be irrelevant, there’s not much we can do about it.
I agree with Cathleen Kaveny that the whole thing seems overblown. The Cardinal, charged with assuaging the concerns of traditionalist Catholics, was in London at the invitation of an organization that is high on the Latin Mass. What else is he going to say in such a circumstance? Also, I think it was significant that no English or Welsh bishops were in attendance at the first pontifical Tridentine high Mass in Westminster Cathedral in 39 years.
The cardinal is certainly pushing his favorite agenda, but I do think he reflects the pope’s thinking, or at least the pope’s prferences and principles such as Joseph Ratzinger has long advocated. Yes, the vision of parish life is unrealistic, and simply diverts resources and energies that could be better spent on other aspects of liturgical life. My problem is that this is another step toward serious division between a favored rite–the Tridentine Mass–and a “lesser” rite that all the rest of us know and participate in. Having two masses in the church, with one finding greatest favor with the pope and the Vatican, will be a source of division, with those embracing the old form as being seen as somehow more orthodox. That is my fear, in any case, and I think we see it happening. What I think must be remembered is that these are not just two different rites, but they represent two different visions of the church, of ecclesiology, and of Vatican II. Or so it seems to this pew-sitter…
I second Bauerschmidt’s ad hominem attack on Fr. O’Leary. This is why I come back to this website again and again. I love the rigorous back and forth between theologians. Well done!
Vatican II’s Constitution on the Sacred Liturgy seems pretty clear, in that it (a) called for a reform of the Tridentine Rite; (b) allowed for greater use of the vernacular; and (c) admonished that the faithful should know at least the common responses in Latin.
To a greater or lesser extent, the Church has followed that prescription. The liturgy has been reformed; and vernacular has not only been allowed in the door, it has for the most part swept away virtually all Latin.
To the extent that a corrective is needed, istm that the right path to follow would be some judicious reintroduction of Latin into the *current, reformed* missal.
I agree with those who commented that two editions of the missal, side by side, is a sign of disunity. Nor would reshuffling holy days fix the problems of competing calendars. E.g. wasn’t Advent six weeks in the old rite? What is the parish supposed to do, deck the church in purple for the early mass, then take down all of the fabric for the later masses?
Just to second Jim Pauwels’ comment, I am someone who likes more Latin (though not English “Latinisms”) in the liturgy.
Just what we need in a Church already deeply divided -more liturgy wars, as the posts here show.
Let’s have more Greek in the liturgy, never mind Latin. Latin was only substituted for Greek because fewer and fewer people knew Greek. Now since very few know much Latin, why not go back to the good old days of Greek. In fact how about adding a little Hebrew, judiciously, of course. The original of the Sanctus is available in Isaiah. You could learn to sing it in s transliterated version very easily.
David Gibson:
I wonder why you say that the Pope and the Vatican favor the unreformed rite over the reformed rite. Benedict XVI is said to have decided against putting the two rites even on the same level–the reformed rite remains the “ordinary” version. The Pope does not say Mass in the unreformed version. If he has a personal preference, it certainly hasn’t so far affected his official roles as liturgical celebrant and through any other liturgical legislation apart from permitting wider use of the unreformed version.
As for the Cardinal’s proposal: I say Mass in a parish where five or six priests say Mass on Sundays. I am the only one of them who has ever said the Mass in the unreformed version or who knows enough Latin to be able to do so meaningfully. They’ve already warned me that if a “stable group” asks for the unreformed version, I’ll be the one celebrating it. But not a single person has requested it. I think the Cardinal was engaging in wishful thinking: the practical obstacles in the way of his desire could not be overcome easily, at least not for a very long time.
Mr. Bauershmidt, I don’t know why you think you have a right to be gratuitously offensive, but it’s an insult to everyone who reads this blog to have to encounter such rude comments as the one you posted above.
I enjoy reading this blog, though I very rarely leave a comment.
However, I would like to say that David Gibson and Joe O’Leary are correct in their analysis, even if people do not like the way one or another of them stated it.
Shortly after Joseph Ratzinger was elected Bishop of Rome in April 2005 some of my more reliable Vatican sources told me that the new Pope was preparing a “universal indult” to liberalise use of the Tridentine Rite. Whenever I wrote about this and the ensuing rumours connected to it in my column in The Tablet, I received angry emails and letters from readers. Some of them, among them well-known Catholic professors in the United States, accused me of stirring the pot and speaking nonsense. When the motu proprio “Summorum Pontificum” finally arrived there were a number of shocked people. I really do not know why.
Neither do I understand why people believe that Cardinal Castrillon’s comments might not reflect the views of Pope Benedict XVI. Until the Pope asks the cardinal to “correct himself” — as he asked Cardinal Claudio Hummes OFM when he said the ordination of married men could be reconsidered — then there is no reason at all to think that this is just one cardinal’s “wishful thinking”.
I think of Luke 12, 56: “You know how to interpret the face of the earth and the sky. How is it you do not know how to interpret these times?”
Even if the cardinal’s remarks go no further than to reflect wishful thinking on his part and the pope’s, the speech seems significant to me. The return to the Tridentine rite had been presented as a gesture of good will to those who felt estranged from the church because of the liturgical changes the Vatican Council brought on. But the cardinal’s remarks reveal a much different approach – not just to make the old rite available to those who yearn for it, but to build enthusiasm for the Tridentine Mass and its underlying theology around the world. I don’t expect it to happen, but the cardinal’s speech is a “sign of the times” for the Church. Catholic News Service did well to get this story.
I vote for adopting universal liturgical Sanskrit, myself ….. why shouldn’t we ALL be mumbling something totally irrelevant in our lives? Then we can adopt Buddhist prayer wheels to spin while we are reading the times and drinking our vente lattes. And don’t forget Islamic worry/prayer beads. Hey, this church could become fun again!
Well, we all have our bad days. I apologize to Fr. O Leary.
I read Robert Mickens regularly and with great interest and I have found that he, unlike Gwendolyn Fairfax, IS never wrong. Let those who have ears to hear, hear
It was the clear and unambiguous desire of the Council to reform the liturgy (Sacrosanctum Concilium).
This was accomplished and while there are some lefitimate and fair criticisms and areas of improvement, I cannot see how the insertion of this rite into the life of the parish coheres with the desire of the Council.
All of the issues raised by traditionalists (posture, Latin, spaces for silence) can be accomodated through the current missal.
The issue of calendar and cycles of readings will bring this issue into sharp relief.
PS
Benedict XVI has not, as far as I know, celebrated the extraordinary form publicly or privately….yet…..
That said, it is clear that Benedict XVI is sending out pretty clear signals. Yet he understands fully that the former right HAD to be reformed. Based on what I have read, he is not enthusiastic regarding the shape of that reform.
Therein lies the paradox.
Is this some kind of loosely styled Hegeleian thesis/antithesis moving to synthesis??
Re: Hegelian synthesis.
This is from the letter, addressed to the Latin Rite bishops, that accompanied the motu proprio:
The two forms of the usage of the Roman rite can be mutually enriching: new saints and some of the new prefaces can and should be inserted in the old missal. The “Ecclesia Dei” commission, in contact with various bodies devoted to the “usus antiquior,” will study the practical possibilities in this regard. The celebration of the Mass according to the missal of Paul VI will be able to demonstrate, more powerfully than has been the case hitherto, the sacrality which attracts many people to the former usage. The most sure guarantee that the missal of Paul VI can unite parish communities and be loved by them consists in its being celebrated with great reverence in harmony with the liturgical directives. This will bring out the spiritual richness and the theological depth of this missal.
Just to mention a few observations on the movement or whatever it might be towards sacrality, or Latin, or the “old Mass,” here are a few completely unscientific anecdotes that I nonetheless think worth pointing out.
I’m spending the week at chant camp. Mass will be celebrated in both forms of the Latin Rite. About a dozen priests are here and I would say 250 choir directors/ parish music people. I would guess the average age is somewhere in the 30s–not exactly kids, but young enough that any professional group would probably be happy to see a crowd like this at a summer week. Since we’re in Chicago, a number of the brothers (early 20s) for the Canons at St. John Cantius parish are able to be here. I guess their novice class last year had five new young men and they ordained 2 this year. This is the parish website: http://www.cantius.org/go
A woman across the table at the opening reception said her grandkids had just finished an intensive Latin course at Christendom College, a very conservative liberal arts college in Virginia. The class of 30 was filled and there was apparently a wait list of dozens. The people I talked to travelled from Seattle.
Here are some photos from the National Catholic Youth Choir, an annual chant choir for high schoolers that is in its 9th year: http://www.catholicyouthchoir.org/2008/PhotoDiary/June16.htm
These are just the few of these kinds of things I know about, as I generally run in more mainstream liturgical circles. I don’t make a habit of attending the Extraordinary Form, and in fact have only been to one, a few weeks ago. A very young crowd, a very young, excellent schola, a very young priest.
A friend of mine will be ordained this Saturday. He says that a priest on the faculty of his seminary believes that the motu proprio was a good thing in keeping with the Holy Spirit. The priest believes this because of all the seminarians he has taught in the past few years, every single one has wanted to learn how to say Mass according to the older form.
I don’t know how something can be considered passe if young people keep seeking it out. If we’re actually reading the signs of the times, what in the world is going on?
Joseph O’Leary, thank you for telling it like it is!!!
We have an aging, fearful pope doing his level best to stem the reforms of Vatican II (regardless of what others may say to the contrary), giving hope to a small group of Catholics who don’t like Vatican II and driving more and more Catholics out of the church because they’re tired of the old retreaded crap coming out of Rome and certain chanceries around the world (think Pell, Burke, et al).
To think that Latin was a vernacular concession to Roman Christians who no longer understood the original Greek — and now this old fella (and friend Dario) want us to accept an archaic rite “said” in a dead language!!!
I agree with all the criticisms, explicit or implied, on this thread.
The Cardinal’s reference to Vatican II is apt. We should not forget that Vatican II not only corrected the matters of the Reformation but also corrected many of the aberrations of the 4th century when the leaders of the church seriously undermined the gospel. The Church of the Martyrs gave way to the Church of the Peacocks and Persecutors. The first seven councils were called by emperors, for heaven’s sake. Thankfully, the wise people of this blog have set the record straight on the continued outrages coming from Rome. It is an honor to be associated with people who act according to their consciences and will see to it that those who govern will remember service and not domination.
Here again we are hearing nonsense from people who wear floor length gowns and who are out of touch and continually cater to a select elite. Vatican II was all about correcting a church of privilege and sacralized clergy. They are embarrassing. And that documents like these still proceed from Rome means that they have little respect for the People of God and continue to assert privilege instead of community. And this is from Ratzinger who as head of the CDF commanded a lessening of the Statute of Limitations for victims and only acted on Maciel when the evidence was overwhelming. And so on. Embarrassing is what they are. Holy Spirit. Don’t think so.
But Vatican II surely lives when Catholics here and in so many parts of the world know that responsibility to the gospel is our mandate and not subjection to the domination of those who depict royalty rather than Jesus of Nazareth.
I think a confluence of various factors:
1. A desire for deep, personal communion with the Divine in the midst of an excessively technological and dehumanized world.
2. A yearning for beauty, for aesthetics.
3. In such a pluralistic, democratized culture a crisis of foundation and desire to cling to what is perceived as immovable and unshakable.
4. At the highest levels of the Church, a fear that the institution will implode and so a movement towards clericalization and shoring up the externals. In times of crisis, we all revert to familiar patterns no matter how maladaptive.
5. Some of the liturgical forms of the 70″s and 80″s were, in retrospect, superficial and naive. I am thinking of some of the banners, butterflies, driven by excessive affectivity.
6. Fundamentalist styled groups and blogs are very adept at using images and pious sounding vocabulary. Also very combative which creates a certain siege mentality as well as a powerful energy (albeit negative). We know what they are against (what exactly are they FOR)
7. The advent of the internet (image over substance and deep experiential reflection).
The leadership of the Church is going to have to be very, very wise and very critical at this juncture in history. I think the allure is coming from a good place as far as young people are concerned (communion with the Divine, contemplation, holiness, high ideals, etc.). But they can’t be part of a Church that never was, a contrived organizational apparatus having a form of godliness but denying its power (as Paul said).
The Church must resist resting in any one historical period or allow itself to becomee frozen in one period. Foxes have holes, birds of the air have nests but the son of Man has nowhere to lay his head.
However the Church could do a better job of ensuring that we have communal places of prayer,silence and places of contemplation and our liturgy reflects that. I have no experience except for the newer mass and I have been to many where this has occurred. Gathered in a circle around a table. Simple, prayerful, reverent, powerful.
Father Komonchak, (if by chance you are still checking in on this thread–though as its about liturgy, it’ll likely go on forever) Benedict’s writings, even long before he was pope, expressed his preference quite openly for the older rite and the ad orientam stance and everything about the Tridentine Rite. His language has also been marked by superlative forms when speaking of the old rite. I think he is very aware that as pope he cannot and would not be seen to be using the old rite, as he knows how divisive that could be and would be…Besides, celebrating Mass in a way almost no one else in the church does isn’t really kosher for a pope. But I do think he wants to promote this old rite quite vigorously–I’d certainly agree with Robert Mickens’ reading–and the pope does so by encouraging his cardinals and church officials to work the hustings.
Two other points: I’m not saying Benedict is fomenting schism, though I think this divides the church, and I still can’t get my head around having two rites–I think that’s inherently problematic. But I do suspect what he likely wants with his push for a “reform of the reform”–and what is a more likely outcome–is a “hybrid” rite which takes elements from both. That could be messy, but who knows what it will look like in 100 years. Maybe it’ll all be sorted out. Or an Asian pope with an African liturgist will treat these documents like the Third Secret of Fatima.
Second thing about the promotion of the old rite is the paradox that this most “conservative” of popes (supposedly) is actually quite a liberalizer, in that he is allowing new and old forms and hybrid forms and all manner of innovations, all in an effort to “reform the reform,” an inherently progressive idea. No? Moreover, by restoring the Old Rite he could be seen as rewarding dissent by giving in to the demands (and threats and such) of the far right in the church who have been agitating for this move for so long. This should encourage those opponents of Humane Vitae and mandatory celibacy and proponents of women priests…!
David, I’d suggest you not take too seriously the business of having two rites, as evidently it is only really a temporary situation. I didn’t think there was any direct evidence of Benedict’s thinking on this point, but consult this letter: http://josephsoleary.typepad.com/my_weblog/2007/11/a-frightening-l.html
As to whether the pope has celebrated according to the extraordinary form, of course he did while still a cardinal, during his visits to encourage communities that use these rites. I don’t know if he has done so since becoming pope. Fr. Komonchak mentions that he did not put the old rite on the same footing as the new, but I remember reading that this was because of pressure from bishops, not because of his own preference.
David:
the paradox that this most “conservative” of popes (supposedly) is actually quite a liberalizer, in that he is allowing new and old forms and hybrid forms and all manner of innovations, all in an effort to “reform the reform,” an inherently progressive idea. No?
No. Because he is not encouraging all manner of innovations. He has been,or so it has been reported, critical of certain forms of inculturation of the liturgy. He has expressly been critical of circular form of liturgy. I prefer a circle. In aboriginal culture every ceremony is done in a circle. He has written tha a circle closes off (symbolically) the Divine who meets and acts on the people through the liturgy. I disagree but I incline towards Divine immanence which is probably part 2 on his hit parade. Rome has tightened up on the use of lay people in the liturgy.
I don’t know what reform of the reform means but I doubt it means increased participation by the laity, increased inculturation, flexibility of the rite, and creativity.
Finally, the decision to issue the motu proprio was his own (obviously). It was not a consensus opinion at all. In fact there was vigorous opposition to it.
“I think he is very aware that as pope he cannot and would not be seen to be using the old rite, as he knows how divisive that could be and would be…Besides, celebrating Mass in a way almost no one else in the church does isn’t really kosher for a pope. But I do think he wants to promote this old rite quite vigorously–I’d certainly agree with Robert Mickens’ reading–and the pope does so by encouraging his cardinals and church officials to work the hustings.”
So he is being deliberately manipulative?? I don’t think so. I think he is somewhat ambivalent about this. I think he is sending up a test baloon. He called for a review in a couple of years. If there are problems, I think he may be open to a Plan B.
Bill Mazzella, your critique of the historical Church risks throwing out babies with bathwater on every side. There is a seasoned methodology for critical retrieval of the Church’s past — it is what theology is mostly about.
The Irish Times published this letter from me, June 18:
Madam, – Many Catholics, including several Cardinals, were distressed to see Presidents Silvio Berlusconi and George Bush paying fulsome homage to Pope Benedict XVI and being received by him as specially honoured guests.
Both men have reason to be grateful to the Pope. Berlusconi would not be president except for the two-year papal campaign against Romano Prodi’s government. In a partisan speech to the Italian bishops, which also caused much unease, Benedict hailed a new day in Italian politics marked by closer co-operation between church and state. He seems to take Berlusconi at face value as a knight of Christian principle.
Nor would Bush be president if the then Cardinal Ratzinger had not intervened at his request in the 2004 election by urging bishops to crack down on pro-abortion politicians.
When the Pope embraces the president as a champion of moral values, with no criticism of his policies on war, torture and capital punishment, he allows him to claim blanket approval of his unsavoury record and hands him a trump card that will be used to help John McCain win the US presidency. – Yours, etc,
I don’t believe for a minute that Ratzinger supported Bush. I heard an account from somebody who was in the room when the Vatican delegation led by Cardinal Laghi tried to talk the Bushites out of the Iraq war. With their typical arrogance, they tried to lecture the Vatican delegation with Michael Novak’s warped version of just war teaching. I think that might have been Rice. The Vatican delegation left in a state of shock.
And as for the abortion thing, the right likes to believe the pope wants to cast all pro-choice politicians from the altar rails. It’s not true. A sophisticated theologian, Benedict knows what must be proven for formal cooperation in evil, and simply not wishing to criminalize abortion doesn’t do it. Besides, if the litmus test becomes manifest public support for any intrinsically evil act, then the pro-torture folks are equally culpable.
Here’s something you don’t see everyday: a full house in a French cathedral on a Tuesday night. Why? For a parish pilgrimage and Mass according to the Missal of Blessed John XXIII, the Extraordinary Form.
http://thenewliturgicalmovement.blogspot.com/2008/06/few-images-from-notre-dame-de-paris.html
This large file gives the text and program booklet of the Mass: http://archiparaphoniste.free.fr/programmes/2007-2008/08-pentecote/08-notre-dame-de-paris.pdf
“I don’t believe for a minute that Ratzinger supported Bush.” He certainly believed the Iraq war was immoral (which does not entail he would favor speedy withdrawal now, or that he necessarily disapproves of US control in Iraq through the bases etc.), and presumably must have been shocked by the torture and abuse revelations. Yet now he seems to approve of Bush whole-heartedly. Perhaps he believes that Bush has been converted to the cause of human rights to a satisfying degree?
“And as for the abortion thing, the right likes to believe the pope wants to cast all pro-choice politicians from the altar rails. It’s not true. A sophisticated theologian, Benedict knows what must be proven for formal cooperation in evil, and simply not wishing to criminalize abortion doesn’t do it.” Nonetheless, a “Catholic bishops versus Democrat politicians” scenario was played out in 2004, after Bush complained in the Vatican about lack of episcopal support for his prolife cause. It helped Bush be reelected.
Bush has chutzpah and speaks a la Constantine as the “bishop of bishops” repeating Benedict’s words about the dictatorship of relativism, and lecturing the Church on pedophile priests. Christendom, the pagan nuptials of Throne and Altar, as Noi Siamo Chiesa put it, is thriving again, so Bush want the star role of Emperor.
See this story (http://dir.salon.com/story/opinion/blumenthal/2005/04/21/tk/index.html); is it accurate?
Apr 21, 2005 | President Bush treated his final visit with Pope John Paul II in Vatican City on June 4, 2004, as a campaign stop. After enduring a public rebuke from the pope about the Iraq war, Bush lobbied Vatican officials to help him win the election. “Not all the American bishops are with me,” he complained, according to the National Catholic Reporter. He pleaded with the Vatican to pressure the bishops to step up their activism against abortion and gay marriage in the states during the campaign season.
About a week later, Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger sent a letter to the U.S. bishops, pronouncing that those Catholics who were pro-choice on abortion were committing a “grave sin” and must be denied Communion. He pointedly mentioned “the case of a Catholic politician consistently campaigning and voting for permissive abortion and euthanasia laws” — an obvious reference to John Kerry, the Democratic candidate and a Roman Catholic. If such a Catholic politician sought Communion, Ratzinger wrote, priests must be ordered to “refuse to distribute it.” Any Catholic who voted for this “Catholic politician,” he continued, “would be guilty of formal cooperation in evil and so unworthy to present himself for Holy Communion.” During the closing weeks of the campaign, a pastoral letter was read from pulpits in Catholic churches repeating the ominous suggestion of excommunication. Voting for the Democrat was nothing less than consorting with the forces of Satan, collaboration with “evil.”
In 2004 Bush increased his margin of Catholic support by 6 points from the 2000 election, rising from 46 to 52 percent. Without this shift, Kerry would have had a popular majority of a million votes. Three states — Ohio, Iowa and New Mexico — moved into Bush’s column on the votes of the Catholic “faithful.” Even with his atmospherics of terrorism and Sept. 11, Bush required the benediction of the Holy See as his saving grace. The key to his kingdom was turned by Cardinal Ratzinger.
With the College of Cardinals’ election of Ratzinger to the papacy, his political alliances with conservative politicians can be expected to deepen and broaden. Under Benedict XVI, the church will assume a consistent reactionary activism it has not had for two centuries. And the new pope’s crusade against modernity has already joined forces with the right-wing culture war in the United States, prefigured by his interference in the 2004 election.
Another version of the same story:
One of the most blatant examples of Ratzinger’s intervention into the political affairs of a country was his role in the 2004 US presidential election. A number of American Catholic bishops publicly declared in the run-up to the election that they would deny Holy Communion to Democratic candidate John Kerry, a Catholic, because of his pro-choice stance on abortion rights. Their intervention, a brazen violation of the secular foundations of the US Constitution, was tantamount to a religious injunction to Catholics to vote for George W. Bush.
In June 2004, Ratzinger issued a statement of guidance to US bishops that, in effect, gave the Vatican’s seal of approval to Church officials who were using the abortion issue to discourage a vote for the Democratic candidate. In his missive to the bishop of Washington DC, Ratzinger wrote: “A Catholic would be guilty of formal cooperation in evil, and so unworthy to present himself for Holy Communion, if he were to deliberately vote for a candidate precisely because of the candidate’s permissive stand on abortion and/or euthanasia.”
In an obvious reference to Kerry, Ratzinger declared that a “Catholic politician consistently campaigning and voting for permissive abortion and euthanasia laws” should be denied Communion.
Since the Vatican officially opposed capital punishment and had denounced the US invasion of Iraq, Ratzinger was obliged to resort to casuistry to justify placing the Church’s onus on Kerry rather than Bush, who had not only led the unprovoked attack on Iraq, but who, as governor of Texas, had approved more than 140 executions. “Not all … issues have the same moral weight as abortion and euthanasia,” he wrote. “There may be a legitimate diversity of opinion even among Catholics about waging war and applying the death penalty, but not … with regard to abortion and euthanasia.”
The timing of Ratzinger’s statement, coming just a few months before the elections, was not coincidental. A week before Ratzinger’s statement, Bush visited the Vatican. According to the National Catholic Reporter, Bush complained to Cardinal Angelo Sodano, the Vatican secretary of state, that “not all the American bishops are with me”. He asked the Church to pressure bishops in the US to take a more open stance on cultural issues such as abortion and gay marriage.
http://www.wsws.org/articles/2005/apr2005/pope-a22.shtml
However, there is also this:
Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, the Vatican’s arbiter of doctrinal orthodoxy, has given Roman Catholic voters leeway under certain circumstances to vote for politicians who support abortion rights, U.S. Catholic officials said yesterday.
In keeping with Ratzinger’s pronouncement, Archbishop Raymond Burke of St. Louis last week clarified the remarks he made earlier this summer, when he said any Catholic who votes for a politician who supports abortion rights is committing a grave sin and must confess before receiving communion.
Burke now says that, in theory, there could be “proportionate reasons” that justify voting for someone who does not share the church’s position against abortion — though in practice, he told the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, “it is difficult to imagine” what such reasons would be.
In other years, Ratzinger’s intricately worded statement and U.S. bishops’ efforts to parse it might have escaped general notice. But in this year’s super-heated political climate, they could make a difference to some voters in the tight race between Sen. John F. Kerry (D-Mass.), a Catholic who favors abortion rights, and President Bush, a conservative Protestant who has signed legislation aimed at restricting abortions.
Ratzinger’s statement came at the bottom of a one-page confidential memorandum that he sent in June to Washington’s Cardinal Theodore E. McCarrick, head of a commission of U.S. bishops on Catholics in political life. It was published in full by the Italian press this summer, and the section dealing with voting was first reported yesterday by the Detroit Free Press.
“A Catholic would be guilty of formal cooperation in evil, and so unworthy to present himself for Holy Communion, if he were to deliberately vote for a candidate precisely because of the candidate’s permissive stand on abortion and/or euthanasia,” wrote Ratzinger, who is head of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, the Vatican department charged with ensuring fidelity to church teachings.
But Ratzinger added: “When a Catholic does not share a candidate’s stand in favor of abortion and/or euthanasia, but votes for that candidate for other reasons, it is considered remote material cooperation, which can be permitted in the presence of proportionate reasons.”
Susan Gibbs, a spokeswoman for McCarrick, said Ratzinger’s statement means that “a Catholic can never vote for a candidate precisely because the candidate supports abortion.”
“However, there could be circumstances where a voter, bearing in mind the primacy of the life issue, supports the candidate for other serious reasons,” she said. “Each Catholic is called to consider these issues from a faith perspective and to weigh the candidates’ positions very carefully before voting.”
Gibbs added that “the church speaks on issues, not on individuals. The church never tells someone who to vote for.”
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A3534-2004Sep7.html
No similar document was issued on torture, so the concrete effect of this nuanced intervention was to give Bush a bigger share of the Catholic vote!
Kathy
In Rome in the just opened Roman Personal Parish on 15 june Sunday Mass there were about 150 people only, yesterday, weekday Mass 20 people.
Poor Card Castrillon:” nessuno è profeta in patria.”
“Bill Mazzella, your critique of the historical Church risks throwing out babies with bathwater on every side. There is a seasoned methodology for critical retrieval of the Church’s past — it is what theology is mostly about.”
What makes the presence of Jesus so powerful among the People of God is the fact that God is still with us despite all the scoundrels in leadership, past present and alas, future. What is uncanny is even liberals bend over backwards to defend an absurd Vatican.
You can torture your neighbor, starve her, kill her, bomb her, obliterate her but do not touch her before she is born. Some in this one issue movement, assert that birth control is abortion. This is from the same people who assure a teenager s/he is going to hell if she masturbates.
Liturgy is, no question, central to power and domination. What volumes have been written over such a simple rite, the liturgy of the Word and Eucharist. It is not that complicated. Sorry.
Nowadays Ratzinger is on the anti-modernity kick saying that the enlightenment is responsible for our problems and that the only reason is the one that submits wholly to the vicissitudes of the Vatican. And Cardinal Montini prays for her church. Ratzinger knows what he is doing and most are making fools of themselves saying he is not a restorationist. He is laughing all the way. If people have to acutely scrutinize your words to give credibility, then there is no credibility.
I understand the history, Joe. Time for the Spirit to lead the church.
The Cardianl Archbishop of Lima has mandated receiving the Eucharistic wafer on the tongue in his diocese. I wonder if the Pope will intervene. I wonder if he checked this mandate with the Pope.
A few words in response to the arguments of “An t-athair O Laoghaire:”
I have no doubt that Bush complained about the bishops as reported. It’s in character. But the Vatican did not respond. The famous “Ratzinger letter” that is so mis-quoted was a personal latter from Ratzinger to McCarrick who requested clarification on the issue. if you read the letter, you can see it was put together in 5 minutes, largely comprised of quotes from other documents (especially Evangelium Vitae). It was not intended to be a public document, let alone a teaching document.
And what happened? A tiny handful of bishops– you can count them on one hand– said Kerry should be denied communion. And their brother bishops rebuked them (in as much as USCCB diplomacy allows!). Benedict himself appointed one of the main opponents of this policy– Donald Wuerl– as archbishop of Washington. And at least one of these bishops (Chaput) has subsequently moderated his tone.
You quote: “When a Catholic does not share a candidate’s stand in favor of abortion and/or euthanasia, but votes for that candidate for other reasons, it is considered remote material cooperation, which can be permitted in the presence of proportionate reasons.” And that is exactly right, and spelled out in great detail in the Faithful Citizenship document. As for torture, I have been hammering away on this for a while– but it wasn’t really an issue in the public sphere until a few years ago– until Bush and Cheney made it so. And the USCCB document does indeed include torture as its list of intrinsically evil acts, putting it up there with abortion and euthanasia.
Another quote: “In an obvious reference to Kerry, Ratzinger declared that a “Catholic politician consistently campaigning and voting for permissive abortion and euthanasia laws” should be denied Communion.”
Obvious? I do not think so. I know many see the world through America-centric glasses, but the Vatican does not. Did Kerry campaign and vote for permissive laws? No. This supposed “right” comes from the Supreme Court; the legislature has very little say on the matter. When these politicians espouse support for Roe, are they (i) saying that abortion is a good, and to be supported; or (ii) saying that even though abortion is not a good, criminalization is not the answer? For Catholic moral teaching, (i) is indefensible, but (ii) can certainly be defended. Remember that in no jursdication in history when abortion was legal was it ever treated on par with homicide. It is legitimate to have lesser penal sanctions. If so, them what happens when the penal sanctions wither away to nothing? It can be defended. This is the issue. It is a nuanced issue, and many simply don’t seem to understand it.
Morning’s Minion,
It is true that a handful of bishops were the only ones willing to refuse Communion. Yet these are the ones the Vatican relates to most and who were clearly approved by Ratzinger. I am amazed that you buy Ratzingers labrynthian circumnavigation of the truth. He made sure to satify W and his fundamentalist bishops while leaving some doubt for those who question such tactics.
A pope who believes that the West is divinely sanctioned over the East (Turkey should not be allowed in Europe) should be constantly reviewed. Right, he really did not mean that..he meant….
Finally, why is so much credence given to a hierarchy who denied the reading of the scriptures to people for centuries, who kept a language people did not know, who kept the Eucharist so far away that people needed bells to know what was happening, who made a rule that people should receive once a year, when the nature of the Eucharist is that all should partake. Not to mention who were well fed while a French population starved to death prior to the revolution.
I mean there is not guillotine, no inquisition. Why are we afraid to use our reason? In prayerful accompaniment.
Yesterday we attended the weddings of two same-sex couples that are friends of ours. Both were religious rites (albeit not performed by a Catholic, so no heart attacks necessary) that were straight-forward and simple. The couples were properly albeit not formally dressed.
Then I look at the apparel of hierarchs like Castrillon-Hoyos, Burke, Pell, and, yes Benedict, and have to ask the question: what is wrong here? Who is acting “normal” and who is appearing like aged drag queens? Whose liturgy has captured the essence of the act of getting married, and whose is promoting something approaching a Gilbert & Sullivan operetta? Who is “straight” and who is “gay?”
This church is starting to resemble Orwell’s “1984” more each day. But what do I know, except what I see?
Mary,
While 150 isn’t a crowd, I wouldn’t say it’s exactly pitiful either, for a brand new parish competing with St. Peter’s, et al, in a city where very few attend Mass.
Jimmy Mac,
Your last quote was a “classic” (in the contemporary understanding of the term, of course). Thank you, I needed it.
I hope that “balance” can be achieved, but as I Journey I fear that Catholics in general have a poor understand of what “balance” is all about.
Spe Salvi facti sumus!
I think the Vatican is more Americo-centric than you might think. Ratzinger said to someone that America creates half of the business (of the CDF I think he meant). Ratzinger intervened in the debates of the Episcopalian Church by writing a letter in support of the conservatives (to the consternation of Card. Kasper, I understand). Recall also the friendhship between Reagan and John Paul II, Reagan quoting John Paul II as his moral ally in the support of the Contras.
Also recall that Paul Knitter and John Hick are two theologians directly named by Card. Ratzinger in prominent public utterances — he thought Hick was American — ; this suggests a special attention to American theology, perceived as to the fore in propagating the evils of moral and religious relativism (which Ratzinger has identified as the chief error against which the Church must battle today).