sábado, 5 de junho de 2010

Alfons Cardinal Stickler on the Disaster of the Post-Conciliar Church

"You can understand my astonishment when I found that the final edition of the new Roman Missal in many ways did not correspond to the Conciliar texts that I knew so well, and that it contained much that broadened, changed or even was directly contrary to the Council's provisions."
*****
Alfons Maria Cardinal Stickler,S.D.B. (1910-2007) was not a fan of the Novus Ordo. He was in a position to know. He served as a peritus on three Conciliar commissions: the Commission for the Clergy, the Commission for Seminaries and Universities, and the Commission on the Liturgy. Here are some of his thoughts on what the Liturgy is supposed to be for Catholics, but has not been because of the deformations of the post-Conciliar Church.

"When we consider that the Orthodox churches, despite their separation from the rock of the Church, through the symbolic expression and theological progress that continuously found entrance into their liturgy, have preserved the correct beliefs and the sacraments, every Roman Catholic liturgical reform should rather increase the symbolic richness of its form of worship than (sometimes even drastically) decrease it."
*****
"The Church and the liturgy grow and develop together, but always in such a way that the earthly is organized around the heavenly. The Mass comes from Christ; it was adopted by the apostles and their successors as well as by the Fathers of the Church; it developed organically, with the conscious retention of its substance. The liturgy developed along with the Faith that is contained within it; thus we can say, with Pope Celestine I, in his writings to the Gallican bishops in the year 422: Legem credendi lex statuit supplicandi: The liturgy contains, and in proper and comprehensible ways, brings the Faith to expression. In this sense the constancy of the liturgy participates in the constancy of the Faith itself; indeed it contributes to its protection. Never has there been, therefore, in any of the Christian-Catholic rites, a break, a radically new creation-with the exception of the post-Conciliar reform. But the Council again and again demanded for the reform a strict adherence to tradition. All reforms, beginning with Gregory I through the Middle Ages, during the entry into the Church of the most disparate peoples with their various customs, have observed this ground rule. This is, incidentally, a characteristic of all religions, including non-revealed ones, which proves that an attachment to tradition is standard in any religious worship, and is therefore natural."
*****
"It is not surprising, therefore, that every heretical offshoot from the Catholic Church featured a liturgical revolution, as is most clearly recognized in the case of the Protestants and the Anglicans; while the reforms effected by the popes, and particularly stimulated by the Council of Trent and carried out by Pope Pius V, through those of Pius X, Pius XII and John XXIII, were no revolutions, but merely insignificant corrections, alignments and enrichments."
*****
"There are several clear examples of what the post-Conciliar reform actually produced, above all in its core, the radically new Ordo Missae. The new introduction to the Mass grants a significant place to many variants and, through further concessions to the imagination of the celebrants with their communities, is leading to a practically unlimited multiplicity."
*****
"The essential center, the sacrificial action itself, suffered a perceptible shift toward Communion, in that the entire Sacrifice of the Mass was changed into a Eucharistic meal, whereby in the consciousness of believers the integrating component of Communion replaced the essential component of the transforming act of sacrifice. Cardinal Ratzinger has expressly determined also, with reference to the most modern dogmatic and exegetical investigations, that it is theologically false to compare the meal with the Eucharist-which practically always occurs in the new liturgy. With that, the groundwork is laid for another essential change: in place of the sacrifice offered by an anointed priest as alter Christus comes the communal meal of the convened faithful under the presiding priest. The intervention of Cardinals Ottaviani and Bacci persuaded the Pope to overturn the definition [in the original General Instruction that accompanied the new Missal-Translator's note] that confirmed this change in the Sacrifice of the Mass; it was 'pulped down' by order of Paul VI. The correction of the definition resulted, however, in no change to the Ordo Missae itself."
*****
'The Eucharist is not only the unique mystery of our faith; it is also an everlasting one, of which we should always remain conscious. Our everyday Eucharistic life requires a medium that fully embraces this mystery-above all in the modern age, in which the autonomy and self-glorification of modern man resist every concept that goes beyond human knowledge, that reminds him of his limitations. Every theological concept becomes a problem for him, and the liturgy especially as a support of the Faith turns into a permanent object of demystification, that is, of humanizing to the point of making it absolutely understandable. For this reason, the banishing of mysterium fidei from the Eucharistic formula becomes a powerful symbol of demythologization, a symbol of the humanizing of the center of divine worship, of holy Mass."
*****
"In my research for the Council decree about the Latin language, I became aware of the concurring opinion of the entire tradition: up to Pope John XXIII, a clearly unfriendly attitude had been taken toward all preceding efforts to the contrary. Consider in particular the cases of the statement of the Council of Trent, sanctioned by anathema, against Luther and Protestantism; of Pius VI against Bishop Ricci and the Synod of Pistoia; and of Pius XI, who deemed the Church's language of worship as 'non vulgaris.' Yet this tradition is not at all a question only of ritual, although that is the aspect always emphasized; rather, it is important because the Latin language acts as a reverent curtain against profanation (instead of the iconostasis of the Easterners, behind which the anaphora takes place; NOTE: the FSSP Fathers have also reminded us of this use of Latin as a verbal "iconostasis") and because of the danger that through the vulgar language the whole action of the liturgy might be profaned, which in fact often happens today."
*****
There's much more here. If you value the traditional Latin Mass and scholarship on it, read anything Cardinal Stickler has written.
fonte:http://gregorianrite2007.blogspot.com/