terça-feira, 25 de agosto de 2015

The goal of the Fraternity of St. Peter is the sanctification of the priest through the exercise of his priestly function, principally by conforming his life to the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass

The Liturgy of 1962

The Fraternity and the Liturgy

The goal of the Fraternity of St. Peter is the sanctification of the priest through the exercise of his priestly function, principally by conforming his life to the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass by the observance of "the liturgical and spiritual traditions" [1] of the Church. The use of the liturgical books in force in 1962 is granted to the members of the Priestly Fraternity of St. Peter as well as to other priests staying in the houses of the Fraternity or exercising their sacred ministry in the churches of the Fraternity [2].
The use of the "traditional" Roman rite (or "tridentine" or the "rite of St. Pius V") [3] in the form in which it was current in the Latin Church prior to the reform of 1969 is a specificity of the Fraternity of St. Peter. It is therefore fitting to explain our reasons in brief for being attached to this rite which in general is so little known.

The Liturgy in the Church

The entirety of the cult which the Church renders to God", wrote Pope Pius XII in the encyclical Mediator Dei, "must needs be at once interior and exterior. Exterior certainly, because the nature of man, being a composition of soul and body, demands exteriority, for Divine Providence intended us to be drawn by the knowledge of visible realities to the love of invisible realities (…). But the essential element of the cult is the interior element, because it is necessary always to live in Christ, to be entirely devoted to Him, to give glory in Him, with Him and through Him, to the Father in Heaven [4]. Thus it is that the "realities of the senses become the place wherein are expressed God's work of sanctification and man's work of cult to God" [5]. The Church, Bride of Christ, guides the hand of Her children in the course of liturgical prayer.
The liturgy is then defined according to the Constitution Sacrosanctum Concilium "as the exercise of the priestly function of Jesus Christ in which the sanctification of man is signified by perceptible signs and realized in a manner proper to each; and in which the public cult is peformed in its totality by the mystical Body of Jesus Christ, that is to say by the Head and Its members read...